Today Is a New Beginning
A Sermon by the Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams on the Sunday of the Resurrection: Easter Day, April 17th, 2022.
“..Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!” She turned and said to him, ..’Teacher!’ John 20: 1-18
Alleluia! Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!
What a joy, what a glorious privilege it is to gather this morning to proclaim these words. This has been our Easter salutation for over 2,000 years and yet these words are new every time we celebrate the Day of the Resurrection.
Alleluia! Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!
We especially appreciate our alleluias after the 40 long days of Lent when we did not use the “a” word. On Ash Wednesday we wrapped the alleluias up and put them away in a beautiful box (so to speak) and today we reopen that box and they fly out like colorful birds and fill the air with their unending song.
And I have an “Alleluia word search challenge” for anyone 12 years old and younger this morning. There is a chocolate bunny in your immediate future if you can count all of the alleluias in the bulletin and tell me exactly how many there are. I’ll be at the big doors at the back of the nave after the service. And here’s a hint: most of them are in the music. And there’s a reason for that- saying alleluias is pretty awesome but singing them takes them to a whole new level. You can ask our choristers if you don’t believe me.
So why all this joy? Why all these alleluias? We look around at the facts on the ground today and the world looks a lot more like Good Friday than Easter morning. There is suffering everywhere we turn. The war in Ukraine is raging, Covid is still a thing after over two years of illness, death and constant pivoting to meet changing circumstances. There is divisiveness and significant erosion of our common life, political discord at every turn. And within this larger context of chaos and uncertainly, we all are facing challenges in our individual lives. It’s a lot. Where do we turn when the world seems to be falling apart? What do we do with all of this loss and devastation?
Jesus’ disciples had the same question. They had been through unspeakable horror the week before that first Easter morning. They had watched while their dear friend, their beloved teacher whom they had been with for 3 years, bringing hope and healing, love and a new vision of what living in God’s perfect kingdom looks like, they had helped him bring all of that to so many people and then they had stood helpless and watched as he was mocked, scorned, vilified, betrayed, unjustly convicted, and then tortured by crucifixion until he died. Talk about trauma. And on top of that, they feared for their own lives. They were disciples of a criminal now, associates of an enemy of the Roman Empire. They could be next. A few were at the foot of the Cross. The Gospel of John tells us that Jesus’ mother Mary, Mary Magdalene and the Beloved Disciple were there. Everyone else either watched from a distance or went into hiding. They were afraid for good reason. It was a very dark time.
Our Gospel today begins, “Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark.” Mary Magdalene came to the tomb, much like people visiting the grave of a loved one. She came to mourn and to begin to come to terms with Jesus’ death. And on top of everything else that had gone on the week before, she is shocked to see that the stone covering the entrance to the tomb has been removed and assumes that grave robbers have been there. So she runs to get her friends and fellow disciples, Peter and the Beloved Disciple (the disciple that tradition holds is John.) And the reality of what has really happened slowly dawns for Peter, John and Mary Magdalene, each in different ways.
The way that the Gospel writer John tells the Resurrection story is the most beautiful, poignant and nuanced of all of the Gospel accounts. We don’t go from utter darkness to blazing light like turning on a light switch. It’s a process, a gradual dawning of a new reality. John, the contemplative one, the disciple who had leaned his head on Jesus’ chest at the Last Supper, stood at the entrance to the tomb, looking at the linen burial wrappings, pondering what it all meant.
Peter, the man of action, the disciple who loved Jesus fiercely and yet out of fear denied him three times the night before his trial and crucifixion, ran into the tomb to look at the evidence. They both believed that something incredible had happened, but neither of them really understood at first that everything that had been foretold in the scriptures, the beautiful vision that God had cast since the beginning of time, everything that Jesus had promised them, had all been brought to fulfillment.
Mary Magdalene, the one for whom Jesus had done so much, the one he had healed of unknown illnesses, whether physical, mental or spiritual, the one who out of profound gratitude for all that Jesus had done for her, the one who had, along with John, been with Jesus at the Cross, she was the one who received the incredible gift of actually seeing Jesus in his resurrected form, just as night was turning to day on that first Easter morning. Peter and John had returned home and Mary Magdalene stayed and wept outside the tomb, still thinking that Jesus’ body had been moved. And the pivotal moment comes when Jesus calls her by her name, in Hebrew, “Mariam”. And through her tears she recognizes him exclaiming, “Rabbouni”, teacher.
This moment of mutual recognition is the most beautiful scene in all of Scripture. One of the most lovely renderings of it was painted by Giotto in the 12th century. It’s on the cover of your bulletin. This moment goes beyond words, beyond all understanding, even beyond joy. This realization that death does not have the last word, that love really is stronger than death and that perfect love casts out fear. And most of all, that gloriously impossible things are possible. Redemption happens in very unexpected ways. Resurrection comes forth from death and sorrow.
Mary recognized Jesus when he called her by name. That is the heart of the Easter story. Each of us is the Beloved One. Each and every one of us. We are uniquely created in God’s image and Jesus sees us individually and loves us just as we are. He offers his love freely, unconditionally, and yet he longs for us to reciprocate that love. He loved Mary Magdalene, Peter and John for who they were, with all of their amazing strengths and their great weaknesses. He loved all of his disciples with a fierce love, the ones who were faithful to the end, and the ones who couldn’t go the distance. He forgave them all. He died to show the world the depths of God’s love for all of us, the whole human family, believers, skeptics, and atheists alike.
And he was resurrected so that we would know that the crucifixions of our lives do not have to be an end. Resurrection is possible. New life really can come out of death. And Jesus is with us always to show us the way and to help us on the way that leads to life in all it’s fullness, not a life that denies death, but that sees it as a beginning and not an end.
Today is a new beginning. And Jesus is calling each of us by name. Jesus is calling my name and your name just as surely as he called Mary’s. Sometimes we hear Jesus calling our name in joyful times, but often we can hear it most clearly when we are going through a difficult time, when Jesus comes to us in our very darkest moments and gives us the precious gift of his presence.
Mary reaches out to Jesus but he doesn’t allow her to touch him. There is intimacy and yet there is always a longing for more in our faith journey. Jesus is as close to us as our very breath and yet he is still the “divine other”. That is what we get in touch with when we come together each Sunday. We come together to reach out to God to pray for the world, to pray for ourselves, and then to go into the world knowing that Jesus has spoken our name and that he is with us as we take his love into fearful places and see that he is continually resurrecting a Good Friday world.
My deepest hope for all of us today is that we will know that at the core of our beings. My prayer for long-time church goers is that we hear today’s Gospel as if it is the first time, because it is a story that is new and fresh every Easter. My prayer for anyone who may be standing on the edge of the tomb looking in today, is that you will take the next step in, just the one next step. It can be scary to make ourselves vulnerable. Faith can seem illogical when all the evidence in the world is to the contrary. But our hearts, and our minds and our spirits gradually come together over time when we are on an intentional faith journey. Church is about coming together to be healed and to be instruments of God’s healing in the world.
Our children experience that at Saint George’s in Catechesis of the Good Shepherd where they learn that Jesus calls each of them by name and always comes looking for them when they are lost. They learn it in choir as they sing alleluias and learn how to extol God’s praises in joyful times and in hard times. Our older children and teens learn that in Sunday school and EYC (our youth group) as they grapple with social justice issues and prepare to take a first time service trip this summer to rebuild a home in Appalachia. And we all learn as we come together for worship each Sunday, and grow in God’s love to work for justice, healing and reconciliation. We do that internally through small groups like our LGBT+ group, house churches, 20s 30s group, our men’s group and various adult education classes. And we do it externally through our outreach and advocacy work for refugees and others on the margins, reminding us that we truly are one human family for whom Jesus gave his life.
“Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.”
We too are loved and called and blessed to be Jesus disciples and to continue his work in the world. Alleluia! Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!