Rosie and I were at a
fitness place the other day. Rosie was
with a class that was teaching a group how to strengthen their muscles. Mostly the class was older people like us. I was walking on a treadmill and getting some
exercise while waiting for her class to be over. When the door opened and the people came out,
there were several little old ladies accompanying Rosie as she came to me. “This is my husband,” she said to those
women. “Oh, you still have one of
those,” was the reply. That put a lot of
things in perspective for me. We don’t
live forever, do we? There comes a time
when we come to the end of our lives and are separated from each other. That is what the marriage service means when
we take vows to be true to each other “until death does us part”. The time comes when we part from each other,
as much as we don’t even want to think about it. That is what life is all about.
But listen to what Jesus tells
Mary: I am ascending to my Father and
your Father, to your God and my God!
Jesus is focused on life, not death.
His words to Mary, and to his followers is that even though he died on
the cross, even though his life ended in a terrible tragedy, he still lives and
has moved from this world into the arms of our God. That is what resurrection means. That is the antidote to me for the grief that
I certainly experience when I have a loss. And it is God’s ultimate answer to all
of the tragedy that we see around us. I
know that those women who met us at the fitness place had lost spouses and were
getting on with their lives, even though the grief had been terrible. God loves us absolutely and none of us need
fear that after our death we won’t continue to live, not on this earth, but in
the place where our God will continue to love and care for us through all
eternity. That is the joy of this remarkable
day. We can live our lives in the
certain knowledge of the resurrection and know it to be ours. It is the greatest gift that our God can
give. That is the meaning of Easter and
why it is such a day of celebration.
When I read the gospels for Easter Sunday, I am somewhat
astonished at what a small thing they seem to make out of the resurrection of
Jesus. When I read all of the New
Testament, I am struck by the fact that resurrection is the end point of Jesus’
ministry. It is what he has been heading
for since his birth. He relentlessly
preaches about the constant love that God holds for us all. He heals and restores and always shows a
miraculous compassion for all of humanity.
That this would not extend beyond life itself is beyond my
understanding. But in Mark’s Gospel, the
end of the story is the women finding the body gone and the angel telling them
that Jesus has risen and instructing them to tell his followers, and then they
run in fear away from the tomb. In the
Gospel of John, the story is a bit different, but still remarkably
subdued. Mary Magdalene arrives at the
tomb and finds that the stone has been rolled away from the entrance. She runs and tells Peter and the disciple
whom Jesus loved what has happened. They
run to the tomb, find it just as Mary described it with the wrappings lying
there, but Jesus body has disappeared.
Meanwhile, Mary stays at the tomb. She looks in, sees two angels in white who
ask her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” which seems to me to be almost a sick
joke at this moment. She tells them that
they have taken away the body of her Lord and she doesn’t know where they have
taken him. She turns around and there is
Jesus standing there, but she doesn’t know who it is. She supposes him to be the gardener. He says to her the same thing that the angels
said: “Woman, why are you weeping?” With great anxiety, she says to him, “Sir, if
you have carried him away, please tell me where he is.” Jesus says to her, “Mary.” She replies, “Rabbouni”, which means
teacher. She tries to hold on to Jesus,
but he tells her not to touch him because he has not ascended, but to tell his
apostles that he is ascending to God.
Mary goes and reports to the disciples:
“I have seen the Lord”
So why is Jesus’ resurrection so downplayed in these
Gospels? Why aren’t there bands playing
and people shouting and a great fuss made over this incredible event? One of the reasons might be that resurrection
is something that is completely out of our experience. I know that I have never seen one. I have stood in church aisles many times with
caskets and wished that I could preside over a resurrection instead of a
funeral. The grief that surrounds our
death is very difficult and it hurts a lot.
Mary, grieving at the tomb of Jesus is certainly proof of that. All of you have had the experience of grief,
sometimes over your parents, or your spouse, or sometimes a child. We all know what it feels like to experience
loss, and how hard it is to get back to our lives.
This is a terribly violent world. ISIS is on the march in the Middle East with atrocities
unbounded. We don’t even know what side we
are on in some of the conflicts. I am amazed
at how those nations and tribes and cults feud with one another and we have no idea
how to do anything to stop it. We argue with
each other about it and can’t seem to solve much of anything. The tragedy is overwhelming. Where is there help? In the face of all of this loss, how can we get
back to some kind of normality?
No comments:
Post a Comment