Online Worship Service April 12, 2020 (Easter Sunday)
Last week I said it was kind of weird holding a Palm Sunday celebration. Self-isolation and parades just don’t seem to go together very well.
If Palm Sunday was weird, though, Easter is definitely weirder. I have not, in my past fifteen years of church-going, spent Easter Sunday this way. Away from friends, away from strangers, away from singing, praying, and joyfully celebrating with a congregation of people. Choir anthems, daffodils, baptisms. One of the hardest things for me is not spending this time with you. So I can’t imagine what it’s like for some of you who haven’t missed an Easter like this in ninety years or more!
While today doesn’t follow the pattern of many Easters past, though, this Easter shares some unexpected commonality with the first one. In our scripture passage Mary Magdalene, one of Jesus’ closest followers, stood outside of Jesus’ tomb. There she stood weeping. Weeping with grief. Not only did her teacher and Lord die a criminal’s death. But it also looks like he was snatched from the tomb, no doubt to further desecrate his already broken body. Adding insult to injury.
On the first Easter, there were no friends. No songs, no celebration. No joy… and no Jesus. Instead, Mary stood outside an empty tomb. All alone. With nothing but her own grief. The first Easter, like our own, was a moment of fear, and isolation. Like our own, it was marked by anxiety. And aloneness.
Now, for most of us, the isolation and anxiety we feel during this crisis comes nowhere near the levels of the first Easter. Some of us are continuing to work, some of us are on the frontline as doctors, nurses, and others who are in risker situations. But for the most part the rest are more or less safe in isolation. We may be isolated. But thankfully, we have been—for the most part—spared much of the immediate destruction and death experienced by the rest of the world.
What we haven’t been spared from, though, is fear of what the future holds. Things may be relatively okay right now for most of us. But what’s scary is what tomorrow might bring. Not just a prolongued crisis, but what the world’s gonna look like. What’ll happen to our jobs, the economy. What’ll happen to our neighbourhoods, our businesses, our families, our future, when all is said and done?
That’s the fearful, anxious thing. We may not be experiencing the same kind of immediate destruction and death of the first Easter. But we share this sense of isolation. Of fear, anxiety as to what tomorrow will bring.
Predictions, of course, are a dime a dozen. From a post-apocalyptic Mad Max future where we’re all riding dune buggies fighting over scarce resources, to “everything’s gonna end up more or less the same.” And everything in between. Personally, I don’t know what to think. And, as much as I want to say something reassuring about how things will be fine and life will go back to normal, I really can’t say that. None of us can. And that might just be the scariest thing of all.
I can’t say what our immediate future will hold. What I can say to you, though, is that our faith, Christian faith, was built for days like today. And situations like ours.
Because on the first Easter, Mary Magdalene wept in the garden alone, disoriented. Fearful, and grieving. Like us, having no idea what the future might hold. But as she took one last look inside the tomb, she saw two angels. Two messengers in dazzling white, sitting where the body of Jesus once lay. “Why are you weeping?” they asked. “They have taken away my Lord,” she said. “I do not know where they have laid him.”
And as she said this, she turned around. And there Jesus stood before her. But she didn’t recognize him at first. We’re not exactly sure why this is. But no doubt her grief and fear anxiety blinded her to his presence. She assumed he was the gardener. Because that was the only rational possibility. In the same way depression robs a sunrise of its beauty, she couldn’t see Jesus even though he stood right there. In front of her face.
What got through to her, though, what broke the spell of her sadness, was a simple word. “Mary,” Jesus said. And suddenly, she recognized him. “Rabbi!” she replied. Her eyes being opened to the presence of Jesus, raised from the dead. Just in hearing him call her by name she was able to see. And he told her that even though she couldn’t grab on to him then and there, he would always be with her by the power of God’s own Spirit. That he would never leave. And with that, it says, she ran to tell the other disciples saying “I have seen the Lord.”
Now, the thing about the resurrection of Jesus is that it didn’t ensure a fairy-tale ending for Mary, or any of his other disciples. In fact, many of them had a long road of heartache, struggle, and persecution ahead. Some of them—disciples like Peter and Andrew—would even face the same fate Jesus did on the cross. The empty tomb, and their mysterious encounter with the risen Christ didn’t lead to a happily ever after. In fact, their lives would never be stable, or normal again.
What it did mean, however, was that no matter what tomorrow would bring, they were never abandoned by the power, or the presence of the living God. A God whose great love for the world could never be stopped. Not even by death. A God who was not only eternal, but one who came to bring eternity to them. Here and now. And forever.
That’s why Mary ran to tell the good news that first Easter morning. And that’s why I’m here to tell you this Easter morning. Because if it’s true, it means the same thing for us as it did for them. The great civil right leader, Clarence Jordan, put it like this:
“The resurrection was simply God’s unwillingness to take our ‘no’ for an answer. God raised Jesus, not as an invitation for us to come to heaven when we die, but that he himself has now established permanent, eternal residence here on earth. He is standing beside us, strengthening us in this life. The good news is not that we shall die and go home to be with him (though he is faithful to us in death), but that he is risen and comes home with us, bringing along all his hungry, naked, thirsty, sick prisoner brothers and sisters with him.”
I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. It could be better. It could be worse. I don’t know. I can’t say. What I can say today is that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. And that means that whether tomorrow is good or tomorrow is bad is, in the end irrelevant. Because if Christ is risen, it means that the heart of all reality burns with an unshakeable, unbreakable love. One that has grabbed hold of each of us—me and you, will never let go. Even into the dark chasm of death. One who promises not only be with us, now, in the middle of a pandemic crisis, but one who’ll carry us through this and anything else life throws at us. Kicking and screaming all the way into eternity.
So my friends, brothers and sisters. Today may be a strange day to celebrate, because it’s so unlike all our Easter’s past. But if we ever needed to celebrate it’s today. Because our faith was built for situations, for days exactly like this one, exactly like today. We may not know what lies on the horizon, good or bad. But we know that Christ is risen. Which means we belong to Christ we can face today. It means we can serve our neighbors and love each other, family children and neighbors with everything we’ve got. It means we’ll get through. It means we can sing and we can dance, we can praise and we can thank God for every single precious moment. Because we have today and we have a future. No matter what tomorrow may hold.
Hallelujah. AMEN.