I can imagine Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, walking to the tomb. They have waited for the first light after the Sabbath, and now, their hearts heavy, they make their way slowly along the path to where Jesus was laid.
What are they saying, I wonder?
Are their low voices exchanging the “would-a, could’a, should’a’s” with which we are so familiar?
You know:
- If only he had gotten more exercise…
- If only she had watched her cholesterol…
- If only he had quit drinking…
- If only they hadn’t gone out that night…
- If only…
The “Jesus variations” might read:
- If only Jesus hadn’t gone to Jerusalem…
- Couldn’t Jesus have just kept his mouth shut and followed the Law?! Why did he have to heal on the Sabbath or call Lazarus out of his tomb – or raise such a ruckus in the Temple?!
- Jesus should have fled the garden instead of staying there to pray…
- If only the disciples had insisted Jesus get rid of Judas – he never fit into their inner circle anyway, and nobody really liked him!
- Well, those guys certainly shouldn’t have fallen asleep! If they’d been awake they’d have heard the guards coming and could have alerted Jesus! Why, they could have fought them off, and Jesus could have escaped!
Human thinking! But – they – we – are human, after all, and grieving.
What they – we – long for; what they – we – miss and beg God to give back – is dead. So mostly we flagellate ourselves or others with “if only’s,” or ask the inevitable question: Why? Why?! as though the answer could somehow undo what has happened.
I read recently that the grief resulting from death is the sorrow that knows no remedy. That great 18th Century English “man of letters,” Samuel Johnson, observed, “Ordinary desires, virtuous or vicious, contain within them the theoretical possibility of their satisfaction: the miser always imagines that there is a certain sum that will fill his heart to the brim, and every ambitious man, like King Pyrrhus, has an acquisition in his thoughts that is to terminate his labours, after which he shall pass the rest of his life in ease or gaity, in repose or devotion…”
But with death – well, we can’t yell loud enough, pray hard enough, work smart enough, to “fix it.”
Jesus is dead, and his friends and followers are grieving; they are suffering “the sorrow that knows no remedy.”
And so the Marys make their way to the tomb.
They know Jesus is dead – that he won’t “be there” – and yet, unable to let go of him, they want to be as close as possible to his body, to what remains of this person whom they loved, to hang on...
We hear what happened, of course: the earthquake; the angel; the rolled back stone and the announcement that Jesus had been raised from the dead.
Raised from the dead?
How is that possible?! It doesn’t make sense!
Yet “How?” is the wrong question to ask about the resurrection, just as “Why?” is the wrong question to ask about death.
We should be asking, What does it mean, to be raised from the dead? Is it
- raised like Lazarus, who will only have to die again?
- Raised so that things can go on just as they were before? A kind of resuscitation, a breathing-back-into-life of what was, so that things continue after that inconvenient “blip” or hiatus of crucifixion?
Because, for many of us “the resurrection” is about restoring things as they were: The disciples can still wander through the countryside, eating and talking and healing in that camaraderie they have developed; we can still gather for holiday meals around the family table, with everyone there. We want to restore things as they were – or as we would like them to be! (Thus, the questions and comments we get about hoping that in the resurrection we will have our own teeth or wondering whether our bodies will be their aged selves, or a younger, less lived-in version of us…)
As in our response to death, so in our response to the resurrection: we do not think with the mind of God; we are limited in our thinking by our human and finite minds. But living in the past is impossible – we need to let go of the hope that Jesus will take us back to the way things were – or, perhaps, to an improved-upon version of what they were.
Just as the earthquake causes the solid and familiar ground to roll and crack and tremble under our feet, and caused the stone to roll away from the tomb, something shattered on Easter Day: the world as it was understood. The Resurrection breaks all the rules: life, the “normal” and the “familiar” are no longer the same.
Oh, things may look the same on the outside: we still have to do our laundry and pay our taxes! – but there is something different about the WAY in which we do these things, something different within us that shapes our priorities and animates us as we move through our lives. We see things through a different lens: the Resurrection changes our perception of reality.
So, what IS the reality of the resurrection? What DO we know about this world that was changed as the result of the rolling away of the stone on that tomb?
What we Do know is that that Easter morning, the Resurrection BEGAN with the empty tomb – but it did not end there.
What we DO know is that the Resurrection is about encountering the risen Christ – outside the tomb that morning; in Galilee where he has asked his disciples to go to meet him; in the Upper Room where Jesus encountered them, huddling together in fear; journeying on the road to Emmaus, barbequing fish beside the lake – and here, in the Church of the Messiah, on the streets of Santa Ana, in our own homes or workplaces, today.
Resurrection is our completion in God. It is qualitatively different from “life as we have known it.” It has nothing to do with having your own teeth or recognizing your long-lost relatives… all those things we’ve been concerned about, which are translations of our this-world needs/longings/desires. Resurrection is God gathering up our broken pieces and making us whole.
What does the Resurrection tell us?
That nothing we can do can kill God.
NOTHING we can do can kill God.
Nothing.
- Not our active hostility – the nails we drive into his hands and feet, or the abusive language we hurl as we try to force the fullness of life into a rational and manageable cognitive box, or seek to justify our ego-centric lives;
- Not our benign neglect – our being too busy or too stressed or too caught up in the many idols we make of drugs or work or electronics or opinions…
Because Jesus is here, risen and present, and wants to reveal himself to us.
Jesus is here, risen and present, and wants to reveal himself to us.
I heard someone once issue an apt Easter Day warning: The Risen Christ is on the loose. And he knows our names!
Imagine:
The Risen Christ is on the loose – and he knows our names!
What good news is that!
Amen.
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