Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday
16 and 17 Apr 2022
I thought it would be really cool if Mary Magdalene had carried a cell phone and a gimbal with her as she ran to the tomb and met the stranger outside. (A gimbal is the name of a device that you hold to stabilize a camera while you are moving.) If she had shared that video on Tik Tok I bet it would have more likes and shares than any other before or after it.
Mary didn’t have a camera and frankly that is a good thing. The resurrection was and is a mystery. There are times we need to know facts, to know truth in a legal or scientific way, but in the Gospel story, in the resurrection, we need to know truth as mystery. I would love to have a theological discussion about how people picture the resurrection, but not today. Now I want us to
place ourselves where we feel complete and overwhelming awe and joy. You can still be afraid, but it is that holy awe you feel in the presence of God. Take yourself there in whatever way works for you. For me it is a frigid winter morning when the snow is fresh and deep and the trees are covered in frost, so bright when the sun first bursts above the horizon that I cannot look at them without being blinded. The seeming impossibility of it all is the resurrection.
On Friday night, at the Good Friday service, I asked people to name their sorrows, their griefs and their pain. Good Friday took us to a place of the deepest mourning. Holy Saturday leaves us in that liminal space between death and life, like floating in outer space.
But now we come into a full realized joy. The joy should be ours and, for a brief moment, we hold it unto ourselves. Don’t hold back. Picture Mary weeping as she talks to the gardener and then is shocked as she recognizes Jesus. And what did he say to her? Your father and mine, your god and mine. We are brothers and sisters with Christ, we are part of a new family. It was enough to turn sorrow into joy, even as she only begins to understand what had been shared with her. Her conviction to share this with others comes from her own encounter with Christ in the garden. God is very near to her and to us. She has been called by name, as each one of us are called by our own names in our baptism and made part of the family. You are called with as much desire and delight as was Mary. It is your father and Jesus’ who is calling. This is the beginning of the new heart in all of us, one that is not of stone. This is the vision of Isaiah realized where we have an intimate relationship with God. Death seemed to have won, but it did not and it does not.
This day is the day when the new thing God is doing is made known fully. We are called to be part of the new thing, to be co-creators in the realm that God is creating. Don’t get distracted by trying to figure out just what bodily resurrection means. Resurrection happened and it will come to its full fruition when the kingdom is realized.
When you leave, leave renewed and, in some way, resurrected in your faith. We are in this world, with all its flaws and all of its deep-seated hatreds. Jesus called us to be messengers of love in a world that tried to reject love. But love won. And will win.
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