Year A

John 20:1-18

The Rev. Denise Vaughn

Easter: The Final Word

Who doesn’t like a good comedy? It makes us feel good to laugh and doctors even tell us that laughing releases endorphins which are actually healing to our bodies. Today’s resurrection story from the gospel of John, in both its characters and its plot, has many of the elements of a classic comedy. The characters include Mary Magdalene, Peter, and the other disciple-the one Jesus loves-two angels, and finally Jesus himself, who comes into the picture at the story’s end. Here is what the characters do: they come and go and run to see; they bend down and go in, then they see. They also come with expectations, they become confused and they weep and then again, they see.

The plot is the very stuff of comedy-missing bodies, running onto and off the stage, mistaken identity. It requires divine intervention in order to be resolved and its resolution does not end the story; instead we are left hanging at the end with Mary Magdalene going to tell the disciples, “I have seen the Lord.” If we didn’t already know this story and how central it is to our faith, we just might believe we were watching a comedy. Yet, without the witness of these characters and this confusing plot, we wouldn’t know that Jesus is alive! We wouldn’t know about the most spectacular miracle the world has ever seen.

If Jesus’ story had ended with his crucifixion, he most likely would have been forgotten, just another Jew crucified by the Roman Empire in a very violent century that witnessed thousands of such executions. Perhaps a trace or two about him would have shown up in Jewish rabbinic sources or maybe a sentence or two from the historian Josephus, but that would be all. And indeed, without this Easter miracle, we wouldn’t have “Good Friday,” for there would not have been a community of followers to remember and give meaning to his death. So Easter, and what occurred on that morning so long ago, is not a comedy but indeed a miracle story of love that is central to all we believe as Christ followers.

Yet, it does seem rather odd that people would flock to worship on Easter, of all days, a day on which we proclaim the very things that may be the hardest to believe; an empty tomb. Like Mary Magdalene and the others that Easter morning, in creeps our doubts and there is something in the story to doubt. The resurrection upsets all our expectations and so what do we do when we are faced with the incomprehensible? We try to make some sense of it; as Mary, tried to make sense of the incomprehensible. They must have taken him away. He cannot be alive. He must have been merely wounded, never really dead. He must have been God only and not human. Maybe, there was a conspiracy to hide him by his followers or he was never really there. It’s all been said and thought. Any explanation but the one he gave: I am the resurrection and the Life.”

Mary is face-to-face with the unthinkable. She had witnessed the trial, the crucifixion, the earthquake, the darkness, the angels at the tomb and now this incomprehensible moment. A dead man raised? Jesus, alive? Christ with us? What terror his presence must have filled her at first. A kind of terror that comes about when something impossible is happening. But it is real. The sun is beating down, her feet are sore from running and he greets her. What Mary discovered that day was that God is not bound by our rules….nor our expectations…nor constrained by human limitations. That moment when Mary met the risen Christ in the garden was a moment of transformation.

She discovered that Jesus lives, just as many followers of Christ have experienced through the centuries and just as we can experience him in our lives. Easter affirms that Jesus, through the Holy Spirit continues to be known. Many of us know this joy. We have experienced Christ when we have been surprised with answered prayer, a healing, a reconciliation, or a relationship; a grace that only a resurrected Christ could author. And if you have not experienced this joy, then I invite you to accept Christ into your life, and to get to know him better.  Get to know Jesus as your Lord, for Easter shows us that he is Lord. Easter affirms that the powers of this world are not of God and that they do not have the final word.

God raising Jesus of Nazareth from the dead shows God overcoming everything that seems to be against God-sin and death. In the resurrection of Jesus, the new world has broken in, and we are given a hope that does not tolerate anything outside of this new reality. On that first Easter morning, humanity and God are changed forever. In a miracle of risen life; love, hope and peace become the reality. So we do not have to “hold on” to the Lord, we simply run out to meet him in the new creation. Trusting what we see and hear, like Mary, and live accordingly. As the author of Colossians tells us; “So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

This is wonderful news! Death is behind us. Instead, our life is safe, protected, hidden in the risen Christ who is beyond the powers that kill and is united with God. Easter calls us to see ourselves in Christ, and Christ among us, so we live as Christ in our world. No doubts, just going as Jesus tells us, to carry the good news to others that the tomb is empty. So Mary lets go. She goes, as Jesus tells her, to carry the news to the disciples. “I have seen the Lord.” The plot of the comedy is resolved the missing body is found-alive! But the story is not yet at its end, as the curtain falls, a new story is beginning and will continue through you and me. It will continue through all who have seen the Lord and believe.
I have seen the Lord and I believe that God raised Jesus from the dead. I invite you also to see and believe that Christ is risen! What joy this brings for those who believe. The kind of joy, that makes you want to run, to run from your doubts into the arms of a loving and living God. The kind of joy, that makes you want to just shout out to the world the news that changes everything. Death is vanquished! Sin is overcome! Forgiveness offered. All things are new and nothing will ever be the same. Jesus is alive. He is risen! He is risen indeed. Alleluia!