He is risen! [He is risen indeed!] For many of us, this must be a strange time to celebrate Easter. It is a different time to preach a sermon on resurrection for sure. Some have called for us even to pause our Easter until churches can meet together and truly celebrate the victory that is the resurrection, extending Lent until we might emerge from our own metaphorical grave. I do understand this impulse. Nevertheless, I am more inclined to follow the wisdom of a certain young Maggie Brannon, who it was related to me in a text from Drew a little over a week ago, has declared!
“No one can stop our Easter!” — End of sermon!
Nothing can stop Easter. I think this is important because we must remember that Jesus’s resurrection does not occur when everything has first gotten better. Jesus’s resurrection comes when things seemed bleakest. The resurrection is an intervention into our darkest hour. When it appears that the darkness and violence around us has won, he is risen.
We read in Matthew that two Marys’ approach Jesus’s tomb this morning, Mary his friend and Mary his mother, why she is called “the other Mary” we will have to leave for another time. But these women are not expecting resurrection. What was their experience that morning? We can only imagine, but I thought it might be fruitful for us to try, so this morning I want to focus on a few of the complicated feelings that I imagine that they were experiencing.
MOURNING
As the Marys approach Jesus’s tomb, we might rightly imagine that they come while in mourning. Jesus was their friend, their son, and now he’s gone.
Perhaps this feeling resonates with your Lent this year. While Lent does not necessitate mourning, we begin Lent with a reminder of our mortality, which can be unsettling, a cross of ashes with the word “from dust you have come and to dust you will return.”
The concreteness of Lent this year has surpassed any in my memory, where the very rhythms of the world, or lack thereof, have pointed to our uncomfortable dependency. There are many complex experiences in our current world. Some fear for their health or that of a loved one, some bear a psychological burden of anxiety or solitude, other face the loss of financial means to pay for basic necessities, or are forced to work in jobs that put them at risk so as to not lose those necessities.
I want it to be clear on this resurrection morning that, throughout this, your pain and mourning matter. Resurrection is not a time to forget our pain, but to recognize God coming within it. Just as God came to dwell with us in the incarnation, the resurrection is God’s relentless Yes to Creation, to continue that work of presence and New Creation, even when the world has said No to God, crucifying Jesus. The God of the resurrection, is the God who stands with us in our mourning.
Note that your experience, mourning, pain, joy, complexity, it all matters. The words of my good friend Kim struck me this last week. She manages a blog where she records her journey through multiple chronic illnesses and cascading list of physical responses, and she shared this:
For whoever needs to hear this right now: your pain, suffering, fear, disappointment, and anxiety is just as valid as anyone else’s. This pandemic has us all struggling in different ways. I’ve had multiple people in the past week tell me about some way that they are suffering, and then promptly discount their own suffering by comparing themselves to other people stating other people have it worse. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from chronic illness, it is that you can hold both gratitude and grief at the same time. You don’t have to choose between the two. There is room for it all. We are more in touch with the human experience now than we’ve ever been. We are humbled by our fragility and encouraged by our perseverance. We don’t have to choose one specific feeling. They are all valid.”[TR1]
Resurrection comes into these moments, not by ignoring or downplaying pain or simply telling people to focus on joy. We come both in lament and joy, bearing our complex selves. The resurrection is not a panacea, it is a victory in which God’s kin-dom prevails, and a call for us to gather and bear our loads together, knowing that our healing is assured.
HOPELESSNESS
We travel through Holy Week knowing the outcome. But the Marys do not have that expectation. They walked with Jesus; they put their hopes in him, but it was only two days ago that their hopes were dashed on a Roman cross. Will the powers of the world always overpower the hopes of liberation, will the darkness always prevail over the light, and injury over healing, will death always conquer? Has history once again chosen the violent and the powerful, over the just and meek? Has even God turned away from Jesus?
The resurrection says, no, death will not remain. No, God has chosen this Jesus and this way, and the powers of the world, those who think themselves chosen, shall not prevail against it. The resurrection tells us, Yes. This is the one whom I have chosen. Yes, this is the path that undoes the destruction and oppression of the world, and Yes, I will walk it with you.
And so, when Paul says in Ephesians that God chose us, it is not some dispassionate theology of predestination. It does not mean God is picking who is saved and who is damned. It is a theology of the resurrection. God has shown in the resurrection whom God has chosen. God has not chosen the powers and principalities and those that put their hope in them, God has chosen the crucified one, the rejected one, and those who put their hope in him. God has chosen the lowly, despised, and rejected things in order to shame those powers, to shame the darkness, to shame the wise.
From the foundation of the world, in God’s purpose, God has chosen this Jesus (and us in him), whom the powerful and wise have deemed foolish, weak, and dispensible, not to the exclusion of the world, or in any sense of superiority, but that all Creation, all people, might find peace, wholeness, and life, abundantly and overflowing. And, so amid our pain, mourning, and anxiety we have this hope, even when you yourself find it hard to hope, we, as a community, a people, hold our hope together for all of us.
FEAR
Finally, the response emphasized in this account more than any other is “fear.” Fear is mentioned four times, but it is not said that the Marys come with fear. If anything, they are the brave ones, though they have every right to fear. Their king has been crucified.
The first reference to fear, however, comes with the soldiers, as they fall over and play dead. When the angel comes the angel tells the Marys (not the soldiers!) “do not fear.” Nevertheless, the resurrection is disturbing and unsettling, fear inducing. Thus, it seems appropriate that they leave with complex feeling, both fear and great joy.
What is your response to the resurrection? The resurrection speaks both of God’s ultimate and unstoppable victory, good news to us who need justice and redemption from the injustice that we are captive to serving. Do we shake in fear like the Roman soldiers, do we go forward with fear and joy as the two Marys. Jesus bids the Marys to rejoice and to not fear, yet, I think it something to hold in tension.
God bids us forward and to the yielding of ourselves to this resurrected life. We may shake dead like the Roman soldiers, but we may at the same time yield ourselves to God’s transforming life. Perhaps we seek in our appropriate fear to yield ourselves to this terrifying event that we might be formed into the joy that calls us from it.
Conclusion
Whatever your mourning, hopelessness, or fear, God meets us in the midst of it all. Resurrection does not eliminate our pain, but it assures that God’s plan to redeem his Creation cannot be stifled. The Jubilee community that Jesus declared will prevail, and God comes with us to bear together each other’s needs and to celebrate each other’s joys. The resurrection is a cause for joy as the kin-dom of God has defeated death, but it also comes in the darkest moments, calling us to not abandon the way of life.
In the resurrection, God chooses those thought foolish, weak, and expendable. God chooses the elderly, the sick, the differently abled, the independent contractor, the incarcerated, the sojourner over the powerful, the market, or the economy. God chooses those on the margins of a system, whose racist underpinnings are further on display, as Black, Brown, and Native American peoples suffer disproportionately across the country in this pandemic. The resurrection does not say to these, “do not fear, simply rejoice, everything is fine.”
The resurrection does not tell the person without health insurance: “Do you have no faith? God says do not fear.” No! They tell an unjust world that all things belong to God, and God demands that we use the resources that God has granted us as a divine gift to care for each other.
Jesus’s resurrection is not the end of the story, though the end is assured. The resurrection tells us that the work of peace and reconciliation begun in Jesus cannot be thwarted. May we be a resurrection people. May, the presence of God brought near in Jesus, continue with us as we yield to the Spirit of the God who chooses the crucified one, and binds us together in love, mutual care, fidelity, and hope. May we who are followers of Jesus commit to this new society of God, in joy and fear, with the hope that all Creation and all people may be healed, trusting in the God who makes all this possible.
Pasadena Mennonite Church, within our mourning, hopeless, and fear; he is risen.
We sadly did not capture audio for this sermon from Tim Reardon, but invite you to listen to audio available most weeks.
Pasadena Mennonite Church 