Easter Sunday
Here’s
something you may not know: most pastors don’t experience a deep sense of
worship very often. That’s the irony of
being a pastor: although we go to church every week, although we always try to
create a meaningful worship experience for others, but when it comes to the
pastor, this is not the place that we’re going to get fed. The wise pastor will seek out other ways to
get fed, because it is not likely to happen in this setting.
I
bring it up because there is the occasional exception. Every once in a while, we find ourselves
surprised by the Spirit, as we are brought into a deeper spiritual place. This happened to me the other day during our
Holy Week service.
If
you’ve not been, our Holy Week service covers a lot of ground: we try to
reenact the major events and messages of the days and hours leading up to
Jesus’ crucifixion. We start with a meal
because—as Scripture teaches—Jesus shared a meal with his disciples before his
arrest. We include the Lord’s Supper
after that meal because—as Scripture teaches and as we remember here—it was
after that meal Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper. Often, we will also read the story about
Jesus washing his disciples feet because—as Scripture teaches—it was in that
same setting that Jesus showed his followers how they ought to love one
another. And then, to finish our Holy
Week service, we slowly read through chapters eighteen and nineteen of the
Gospel of John (right up to, by the way, where this morning’s Scripture lesson
begins). And it is in that part of the
service that my spirit was transported.
Now,
I don’t do all of those readings. I
often take one, but there are six other people taking turns with the rest of
it; giving me a chance to actually listen to the story. As I listened to that story of Jesus being
betrayed, arrested, tried, and crucified, I found myself surprisingly engrossed
by it; I wasn’t distracted by what I had to say next or worrying if my mic was
working; so I could just listen to what God’s Word was saying.
And
in that moment, I was struck by how terribly tragic the story was. Not so much for Jesus; I didn’t forget that
his story was leading to the Resurrection; I’ve read this morning’s Scripture
lesson before. No, I realized how tragic
it also was for everyone else involved. It was as if I was watching some tragic play,
like from Shakespeare or something, where the characters make unfortunate
decision after unfortunate decision and can’t seem to see the consequences.
We
see it, of course. As the audience, we
have to fight the urge to yell at the stage, “Don’t do it!” but of course, the
characters can’t hear us. They just keep
making mistake after mistake.
At
one point, as I was listening to this tragedy unfold, Pilate strangely seems to
be trying to do the right thing: he seems to be trying to get Jesus
released. But the religious leaders
respond by saying, “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die
because he has claimed to be the Son of God.”
[19:7]
“We
have a law,” they say, and my heart just sank for them. I realized in that moment that they cared
more about the law than they did about the possibility that this might actually
be the Son of God; that this might actually be the Savior of the world; but no,
they have a law.
I
heard from God in that moment, in the way that you are supposed to hear a
tragedy: as a cautionary tale; don’t make those mistakes; don’t let your
version of obedient legalism cut you off from what the Savior of the World is
up to. Whether you are watching Hamlet
act so crazy that he actually drives his girlfriend crazy; or it is Peter, so
fearful that he denies the Master he just swore to stand by no matter what, the
lesson is always the same. Don’t be like
them; don’t make their mistakes. As the
audience, we hear the lesson, but tragically the story still continues to its
sad end. Hamlet’s mistakes kill him
too. Peter is left with the empty regret
of a rooster’s crowing. Jesus dies and
the curtain falls.
If
the eighteenth and nineteenth chapters of the Gospel of John are written in the
genre of “tragedy,” chapter twenty takes an unexpected turn. If you see what comes immediately before as
tragedy, then what we read today can only be described as “comedy.”
A
Sunday school teacher was asking her six-year-olds about the meaning of Easter.
“Children,” she said, “Does anyone know why we celebrate Easter?”
Jenny
raised her hand. “Yes Jenny,” said the
teacher.”
“Is
Easter when we put on costumes and go trick-or-treating?”
“Um
no, Jenny. That’s Halloween. Anyone else?”
Jimmy
took a stab at it: “Is that when we set off fireworks?”
“No
Jimmy, that’s Independence Day. Anybody else?”
A
shy little girl in the back said, “Easter is when Jesus died.”
The
teacher gave up a relieved sigh. “Yes,
that’s right! Then what happened?” she
prodded.
“Well,
he got buried, and every Easter, we remember that, when he comes out, if he
sees his shadow there’s 6 more weeks of winter.”
There’s
a danger in letting Easter fall on April Fool’s Day. For people like me, who can too easily make
everything into a joke (just ask my wife), it’s tempting to see the
Resurrection as merely some cosmic prank; like Jesus is jumping out from the
rolled-away stone yelling, “Gotcha!” But
Jesus is not fooling around. His victory
over death, although joyous, is no laughing matter; what his followers on that
morning must have felt was not at all funny.
Which
is not to say that the telling of this story isn’t comical. The Gospel of John is telling a different
kind of story here; so much so, that his story-telling method has to abruptly
change. At the end of chapter nineteen,
the curtain falls on a tragedy. But then
it rises back up in chapter twenty to a comedy!
In a classic sense, this story is suddenly told in classic comedic form:
there is confusion and misunderstanding, there is even running on and off
stage, there are even jokes that only the audience seem to get.
“Three
disciples come to mourn over an empty tomb.”
What an oddly unsatisfying joke that is.
It gets worse because it feels like an eternity before they get to the
punchline. As jokes go, it’s very
unsatisfying. It’s a little like
planning a children’s sermon for Easter morning: I’ve read a hundred of them
and none of them are satisfying. How do
you talk to children about an empty tomb in a satisfying way? What object lesson is there where not finding
something is the fun part? I’ve tried
it. It goes like this: you show the kids
a plastic Easter egg, open it up, and it’s empty like the tomb; or worse, it
contains a piece of paper with the words “Alleluia” or “He has risen” on
it.
You
should see their poor little faces. They
know what is supposed to be in those eggs: they are supposed to get candy! Sure, an empty tomb is better than candy, but
you tell that to a five-year old.
Besides,
the empty tomb is not enough. These
disciples don’t need anyone, in this moment, making light of their loss; they
don’t need joking angels or a vacant tomb; what they need is a living Jesus. Let’s face it, that’s what we all need;
that’s what the world needs, today and every day. We need to know, more than anything, that
there is proof that Jesus has been raised from the dead; that he has conquered
death for us as well.
I
can tell you it’s true, but that’s my job; you can’t just blindly trust anyone
to tell you something they get paid to tell you. Better yet, we prove it; and by “we,” I mean
“you.” What I do is to remind us of what
Jesus taught at this Table: that in the giving of his body, we become his body
to this world. What this world needs is
not the absence of Jesus; a Jesus who has gone back to some lofty, far away
place, does them no good. What they need
is his presence; a presence we bring with us everywhere we go.
By
the end of this story, the only disciple to have actually seen Jesus is Mary
Magdalene. She is the first follower
ever to proclaim the Truth of Jesus.
Notice how she does it, because this part is important. Notice what she doesn’t say: she doesn’t
explain it; her proclamation isn’t even “Jesus is risen!” No, it is vastly more personal than
that. She says (as our anthem so
beautifully also puts it), “I have seen the Risen Lord.”
Today
we once more celebrate the glorious news that Jesus has conquered death for
us. Today we imagine the grief and
confusion that those first followers must have felt. Like them, the world today needs more than
just an empty tomb; our world needs to see Jesus. This is no laughing matter. May his Spirit abide with us as we strive to
meet that need. As we go into this
world, may we boldly proclaim through our actions and even our words, that we
have indeed seen the Risen Jesus. And
may this world see him too in us.
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