Easter morning. Early. The women b(r)ought spices and went to the tomb, hoping that they could find someone to roll away the stone from the opening. They were grieving. The hope they had discovered had been crushed by his death on the cross.
They had been there at the foot of the cross on Friday. The Gospel of Mark tells us that his mother, Mary, was there and Mary of Magdala, the favorite disciple, and other women too. They saw his body taken to the tomb and they saw the large stone rolled across the entrance. The hopes and dreams of his followers had been sealed in that tomb as well as his body.
Archeology in Palestine has revealed similar tombs from that time. The round stones that sealed the tombs were large and heavy…hard to move.
The women needed to prepare his body, as their faith instructed, and so,
The women went to the tomb…
On Easter morning.
They were surprised to find the entrance to the tomb open, the huge stone rolled back.
They were even more surprised…shocked… to find the tomb empty.
Had the Romans taken his body? Or had angels…some holy force…been at work?
In the Gospel of Mark Easter is a story of that surprise, of the unexpected emptiness…and as people searched for meaning in that morning, Easter came to be told as a miracle story.
The women expected to ease their grief by performing the rituals prescribed by their faith.
Religion understands loss. Religion has always known how to hold grief.
But the tomb was empty.
Fear was their first response..
The women fled from the tomb in “terror and amazement.”
As Esau McCauley writes in the NY Times, “Easter is a frightening prospect. For the women, the only thing more terrifying than a world with Jesus dead, was [a world] in which he was alive [again].’
They knew how to grieve…but after his death, they did not know how to hope.
There will be many sermons preached this morning comparing these Covid days to the tomb: these days of distancing when human contact has been dangerous…these days of retreat into the safety of our private spaces, those of us lucky enough to have them…
Could there be a more appropriate metaphor than the tomb when we have more than half a million deaths to mourn…the whole world has grief to hold.
But in addition to the deaths, there has also been the disruption of our lives, the disruption of so much that we accepted as “normal”… That too was a kind of loss we experienced…but not just loss.
We were forced to see just how completely our world had privilege built into it. Had OUR privilege built into it. How the culture in which we live required minimum wage workers to show up…despite the danger…while we worked from home or sheltered in place…the grocery clerks and delivery drivers…
Some of us were those front-line workers…to be clear…
But many of us had to begin seeing the privilege in our lives as a problem we would have to solve…as part of a system we would have to dismantle…or at least find a way to share our privilege…
These Covid days raised real questions about whether our confidence and our convenience were justified…whether our assurance had justice on its side.
I am not sure that most of us have truly dealt with the real implications of that awakening, of the inequality that has been so clearly on display. There are some among us who remain in a kind of shock…some even in denial.
So much to grieve. So much to do.
The metaphor of the tomb has some deep resonance this Easter…
I expect many preachers will point to the vaccines and liken the process of re-opening to the renewal of spring.
Some sermons will strike a triumphal note…call forth hallelujahs…the long Covid days are coming to an end…perhaps…
Our science and our system have triumphed once more…perhaps…
We scraped by,
By the skin of our teeth…perhaps…
But we survived…
And hope can be reborn…
Hope can be believed…once again.
Hallelujah??
I don’t think we are quite ready for hallelujah’s…not quite yet.
There are too many variants of the virus…
Too many new spikes
And too much healing…both physical and spiritual…that we know is needed
Denial is going to be harder to sustain…
But, I don’t think we are quite ready for hallelujahs.
The Gospel of John, the last Gospel written, tells a somewhat different story of Easter morning. There is the surprise of the empty tomb but the story does not end there.
In John’s Gospel, Mary of Magdala goes to the tomb alone. She finds the stone rolled back and his body gone. Surprised, she runs to get the other disciples, who return with her and search the tomb. They don’t know what to do and the others finally leave.
Mary remains, outside the tomb, weeping.
She catches a movement out of the corner of her eye. A man whom she takes to be a gardener asks her why she weeps. Desperate in her grief, Mary says: “If you’ve carried his body away, just tell me where you’ve put him and I will clean him so he can rest in peace.” “Just tell me…please.”
Then Jesus—because in the gospel story it was Jesus standing there whom she had not recognized—Jesus simply called out her name: “Mary.” And then she knew who he was, and she said back to him “Rabbi.”
The empty tomb is not just a story of surprise. It is also a story of recognition.
A story of recognition.
Most of us can’t quite make the leap of faith to believe in a literal resurrection. Our Unitarian religious ancestors early rejected such miracles.
We know that when our bodies die, they die. We belong to the earth…and return to it…
Our religious DNA distrusts miracle stories…
We may not believe in the resurrection of Jesus, but can’t we believe in Mary’s return to hope?
When Mary heard her name called, she was called out from the [despair] of her grief…she recognized her rabbi, her teacher.
He taught that the power of love was already here…within us…waiting to be called forth…
There are times in all of our lives, when something within us is called forth…a strength we did not know we possessed…the capacity to sustain hope when despair would be the easy answer.
Easter morning was a surprise for Mary but also a recognition that hope need not, necessarily, be lost.
Is that the recognition we need to find this morning?
What is the sermon we need as the stone begins to be rolled away from the entrance to our Covid tomb and we begin to believe that we will…soon…emerge into the morning light?
What will webring forth?
Valerie Kaur, in our reading, suggests: “What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb? What if? What if [our story] and America’s story is one long labor?”
Is that the message that this Easter is trying to break through to us. That there is work ahead?
We know that we will emerge into a world still filled with anti-Black racism and anti-Asian racism…a world in which families struggle to reach our border and still struggle at our border…in which mass shootings come one after the other and gun violence is on the rise…
We will not emerge into a world of celebration…we are not headed for Mardi Gras or a party on Miami Beach.
We will emerge into a broken world in which it is not clear that Officer Chauvin will be held accountable…not clear that policing can be re-created as public safety for us all or that the profit motive can be limited by the public good…
None of these things are settled.
Just returning to the normal we knew would be a disaster…unless we recognize that we are emerging into a world desperately in need of both justice and mercy.
But…but It was the same for the women at the tomb. They, too, were called to return to the same world that had crucified their teacher…
His death did not transform that world…no, that was not the Easter miracle for them. It is not the Easter miracle for us.
We are still in the wilderness, far from the promised land.
The women knew how to grieve. The surprise of the empty tomb was that grief was not necessary.
Despite the loss of their beloved teacher… the miracle of that Easter morning was that they began to recognize that they had all that they needed to sustain hope.
They had been given what they needed not only to survive the loss but to bring forth love into the world.
Just as we have already received what we need…on this Easter morning.
The theology here can be a challenge. And I am not talking about the miracle stories. Believing or not believing the miracle stories…that is not our challenge this Easter.
The challenge for us is to find ways to sustain hope.
We have been taught, the privileged among us, that we deserve safety and comfort…
We have been schooled, most of us, to want the Promised Land delivered without pain…we have forgotten the labor required for new life or 40 years wandering in the wilderness that often precedes it.
What are the instructions of the midwife…first, breathe… and then push…
I said that the theology is a challenge. Here we go.
How can a world which requires such labor…how can a world that allows such injustice and seems to reward such inequality…how can lives in which pain is predictable…how can such a world be considered a gift? How can that world and those lives be the result of grace?
Given the nature of our world, is there a conceivable justification for hope?
Howard Thurman speaks of Easter first as the rebirth of spring which comes to us unbidden and lifts our spirits. But he goes further:
“It is as if a [person, lost and] stumbling in the darkness, finds that the spot at which they fall is the foot of a stairway that leads from darkness to light. … Such is the … surprise [and the promise of Easter]…that there is no road that [must lead to] an ultimate [despair],…that life is bottomed by the glad surprise…
Life is bottomed by the glad surprise…
Climbing that long staircase is still ahead…labor and even pain will be required…
But despair is not our destination.
That is the grace. Not that the journey will be easy…not at all.
The grace we are given is that our journey can end in hope.
In the words the quartet sang:
“It seems that all my bridges have been burned
But, you say that’s exactly how this grace thing works…”
That’s exactly how this grace thing works.
It is given to us. Like the surprise and the recognition of Easter morning, we have to be open to it. We have to recognize it. But it is a gift.
We speak often, in this liberal religious space, of human agency…our ability to direct our lives and shape our world. Our belief in human agency shapes our vision for Beloved Community. We understand our agency as inherent, along with our worth and dignity…and all of that is true.
But it leaves us with a theology that seems to begin and end with our own power.
William Sloan Coffin, long-time minister of Riverside Church in NY and one of the great religious voices for justice, joked that Unitarian Universalism has such a thick ethic…he could count on UUs to show up at every protest…
What he did not understand is how we could have such a thick ethic…grounded in such a thin theology.
A thin theology. He was talking about a theology that seemed to begin and end with our own agency…our own power…rather than drawing on a source beyond the individual personality…or the individual will.
Call that source, that power beyond our own power…call it the Spirit of Life, call it Love…call it God. Don’t call it anything at all. The language we use truly does not matter here.
But is our strength the only strength we can call on? The only strength we can count on?
“We use the word God so easily, so casually,” writes Brian Doyle, “as if our label for the incomprehensible meant anything at all; and we forget all too easily that the wriggle of holy is born only through the stammer and stumble of us…”
The stammer and stumble of us…is how the holy is born into the world.
It is not just about us. Not just about our power or our ability to imagine what justice and mercy might look like.
It is not just about us but the chance for love to win does depend on us…
It is a humbling thought on this Easter morning.
The grace is that we, like the women at the tomb, we too have been given everything we need…to rise to the occasion. To rise.
We are not quite ready for hallelujahs. But we are ready to have the stone rolled back and to leave tomb-life behind….
We have been given reason to hope…
And faith that love can change our lives and ultimately change our world.
By the grace of god knows what, we have been given the gift of hope and the ability to emerge from the tomb and push toward love.
Our challenge is to recognize the gift and reach out to receive it…
Our challenge is to recognize what we have been given…and on this Easter morning… remember first to breathe…and then to push….
Prayer
Will you pray with me now?
On this easter morning
With the truth of spring emerging
In the earth all around us,
We, too, are ready to emerge.
May we find ourselves surprised
By strength we did not know we possess
And by the return of hope we thought we might have lost.
May we find ourselves ready for new life.
We have only begun to imagine justice
And mercy.
Help us, Great Spirit, emerge with faith
That love can win.
And gratitude for all the gifts we have received.
We will sing our hallelujahs soon
Praise and thanks for the spirit of life
That rises within us
And gives us hope to begin again
In love.
We will sing our hallelujahs soon
But for today, this Easter day, it is enough
That the stone has been rolled away.
Amen
Topics: Awe