The Day of Resurrection 2010

The Day of Resurrection Year C
April 4, 2010
In her book Practicing Resurrection, Nora Gallagher recalls a conversation with her friend Harriet who told her about sitting in church at the National Cathedral in Washington. During the course of a boring sermon the priest asked the congregation in unctuous tones, "Now what do you really want for Christmas this year?" "I nearly rose from my pew," she told Nora. "I was gathering myself up until I looked over at my sister who was giving me That Look, and I sat back down, but what I wanted to do was stand up and call out, 'I would really like to believe in the resurrection.'"
For many of us, this is also the deepest desire of our hearts, why we are here this morning. We want to believe in the resurrection.
Our gospel reading for today provides us with some help in this. I love all the resurrection stories, but this one may very well be my favorite because it truly captures the widest array of human emotions. First, there’s Mary Magdalene, arriving alone in the dark to discover the open grave. So she runs to the disciples, to Peter and the other, the one whom Jesus loved, and she reports to them what she thinks she has found. Then Peter and the other take off running toward the tomb to see for themselves, and this seems to dissolve into a contest, with the beloved disciple outrunning Peter and arriving first, but then Peter acting with his characteristic boldness and being the first person to actually enter the tomb. They look around and see nothing, except the empty grave clothes, with the head covering rolled neatly by itself (obviously the Risen Christ’s mother taught him well).
With this evidence, the gospeller tells us, the beloved disciple believed, but they did not yet understand. Then, the two men just leave and go home (“Nothin’ to see here, folks; go about your business…. “) leaving Mary Magdalene alone in her grief, weeping outside the tomb. As she happens to peer into the darkness of the tomb with the sun coming up behind her, she sees two angels, bookmarking the empty space, and they ask her why she is weeping. She seems unfazed by the appearance of the messengers of God and replies with a hopelessness and a despair that echo across the centuries, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”
After she says this, she turns away from the angels to see the Risen Christ, (who had laid aside his grave clothes and picked up some more clothes somewhere else, perhaps borrowing some from the gardener) and she does not recognize him. When he questions her, she pleads to know where Jesus’s body has been put, and finally, Jesus calls her name and she recognizes him. She goes to embrace him and he will not let her saying that the story is not yet complete and there is work still to be done, and he instructs her to go tell the disciples what she has witnessed. So she goes back to them and announces with joy, “I have seen the Lord,” and she tells them what Jesus has said to her.
This is what strikes me most about this story. There’s a lot of racing around, people trying to figure out what’s going on and what they can do, but in the face of the empty tomb, there is nothing for them to do. Peter goes home; Mary Magdalene stands outside, lost and grieving, sick at heart; and the beloved disciple believes even though he does not yet understand.
In the depths of her grief and desolation, Mary hears the Risen Christ call her name and in that one word that symbolizes their care for each other, the trust and the hope that she had placed in him that she believed was dead with him in the tomb, in hearing him speak her name, her hope is restored, and he returns her joy to her. Her belief in the resurrection is a pure gift of his presence and his call to her. Then he sends her out to tell the story, to spread the good news, for the story is still unfinished; he sends her out to spread the good news and to resurrect hope in the hearts of the disciples and people everywhere, to proclaim that death no longer has the ultimate power over us, that betrayal and murder, despair and desolation will not triumph in the face of the power of God’s love. The beloved disciple walks away from the empty tomb with no more evidence than the absence of a body and the empty grave clothes. And yet, he chooses to believe in the resurrection, even though he does not yet understand. Peter does even have that. He walks away from the empty tomb, and until he actually encounters the risen Christ later in the story, what he has is the belief of others, the faith of the others, the stories of the others. He must trust the choice of the beloved disciple to believe; he must trust the story of Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the risen Christ and her joy at hearing him call her name. Each one of these three disciples has a very different way that they believe in the resurrection.
This is why I believe in the resurrection. Because I choose to believe, to stake my life on it, even though I do not understand; Because I have heard the Risen Lord call my name through the depths of my sorrow and despair, and in his call, I have found my hope returned to me, and because I have witnessed this in the lives of others, again and again and again. Because the stories of our scriptures tell of an almost unbelievable transformation in the lives of Jesus’s disciples after his resurrection; those who were so afraid and misunderstanding become enlivened and emboldened, and they work ceaselessly to spread the good news throughout all the world; and because I have seen others’ whose lives have been radically transformed in a similar fashion: those who were once enslaved by the powers of darkness through greed, drug addiction, self-centeredness, and corruption have been called by name, forgiven and sent out, transformed, to do the work of the Risen Christ in this world.
And at the very heart of what we call belief is really hope: hope that Jesus really is who we’ve been saying he is over the course of all these years, hope that he has in fact proven once and for all that God’s love is stronger than sin and death, that he has, in fact, destroyed death, and that we will be included in that salvation.
I have stood beside the bed of those who were dying, and I watched as they gently entrusted their lives to hope in the resurrection; I have sat across my office from those who are wrestling with painful decisions, and I watched them discover peace through hope in the resurrection. I have been in the depths of despair, and through an unspoken prayer have been regifted with a small light of hope in heart that is hope in the resurrection.
Sometimes it is a gift of the Risen Lord, and sometimes it is a choice, the sheer force of our will, this belief, this hope. Sometimes we must rely on the choice and gift, the belief and the hope of others with whom we walk those whom we trust and love, and that is enough to carry us through. But above all, that is why we are here today. To walk this way with one another, to sing and rejoice together, to believe for and with one another, to jingle our bells, to sing, and to say again and again, in hope: “Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!”