"From Weeping to Witnessing!"
John 20:1-18
April 12, 2009
St. Paul United Methodist Church
Rev. John A. Fleming
Easter people raise your voices; sounds of heaven in earth should ring. Christ has brought us heaven's choice, heavenly music let it ring. Alleluia! Alleluia! Easter people let us sing.
It is Easter and I find myself wanting to sing the Easter songs more than ever. It is Easter. It is the day when we know that death has not won and that living has the last and lasting word. Today millions of people will be in churches the size of family chapels in small towns to ornate cathedrals that when you walk in, it feels like a church, and every other kind of worship space between those two. We will all be singing. All of us will be singing the one simple message, "Christ the Lord is risen! He is risen indeed!"
Today we announce that life is stronger than death and that tombs and stones cannot keep our Savior in. With our choir and countless numbers of altos, basses, tenors, and sopranos, we will join in, again, singing, The Hallelujah Chorus!
It is quite a celebration! Now, I am smart enough to know that our worship today is greater than a sermon. You don't need anything else from me but to hear the simple message, "Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!" Easter is more than a sermon. In fact I will just be grateful if you will listen to whatever I have to say. Easter is about the music and the crowd and the building and the excitement and the atmosphere. Easter is about believing. It is believing that Jesus is right here in the middle of the celebration, alive and well.
It is quite a celebration and I find myself longing for it and yearning for it more and more every year. It is Easter. Thank God it is Easter!
Of course the atmosphere we find in our scripture lesson for this morning is very different from that. The scenes, two of them really, are painted with words by John, the gospel writer. John tells us what happened at that first Easter sunrise. Let's look at the first scene. John tells us that Mary Magdalene made her way, in those pre-dawn hours, to the tomb only to find that the stone sealing in the Savior had been rolled away. We know what Mary does not know. We have been to this cemetery before. In fact, we have been many, many times. We do not assume what Mary assumed, that someone has stolen he body of Jesus. We know better.
We know of God's power over death. Could it be that the power of the Easter message is not that his body is missing in action, but that it is time for us to realize the power of his resurrection?
Flip forward a few pages and a few hundred years and you will see the old church planter and pastor, the apostle, Paul, near the end of his life. He is sitting in a prison cell in Rome with little hope of seeing the light of freedom again. There are some things he still wants to do and there are some things he still wants to say and so he writes to his favorite church, the one at Philippi. You will remember his words, "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection." Me, too! How about you?
Jesus spent his time in this world telling us that he came to give us abundant lives, abundant and adventuresome lives. Lives lived to the fullest. Lives lived to the maximum. Read your Bibles and you will see that Jesus had encounter after encounter with men and women where he asked them to get up and go somewhere and to do something.
He encountered a man who had laid on a mat for thirty-eight years. Jesus said to him, "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk!" And he did. Jesus looked up and saw a man who had climbed a tree, a Sycamore. Jesus told him to come out of the tree and to start living a new life, and he did. Jesus saw a man in a graveyard. He was living there. He was a demoniac. He lived among the stones and the tombs and the caves. Jesus said, "Get up! Go home to your family and tell them what the Lord has done!"
Could it be that Jesus is saying that to us today? Could Jesus be saying for us to get up, to get out of the beds we have made and walk? Could Jesus be saying to us to get up from our premature deaths and live? Could Jesus be saying to us to get up from whatever is keeping us down so that we can make a difference in this world? I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection. How about you?
Maybe we are like the man I heard about this week who checked into a motel room. He found his room, set down his things, and immediately called the front desk in a panic. With an urgent voice he said to the front desk clerk, "I am stuck in my room! Please send someone to get me out of here!" The calm clerk asked the man to explain his situation. How is it, he wanted to know, that the man was stuck. The guest said, "It's like this" he said shaking, "There are three doors in this room. I opened one and on the other side of it was a closet. I opened a second door and on the other side of it was a bathroom." Church, are you ready for this? Are you sure? I'm warning you! The guest said, "The third door has a Do Not Disturb sign on it, so I have no idea where it opens!" "Can you get me out of here?!"
I know, I know. It is a silly story, but there are times when we feel trapped. We feel topped out. We feel up against it all. We feel fenced in. We feel burned out. We feel terminally ill. And all the while we sing one of the great hymns of the church, words written by Natalie Sleeth as she watched her husband's illness getting the best of him. "There's a dawn in every darkness, bringing hope for you and me." I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection. How about you?
Look back at Mary. She doesn't know the power of the resurrection just yet. What she does know is that Jesus' body being gone is the crowning blow in her life with him. The stone has been moved. The tomb is empty and his body is missing in action. John tells us that she ran to find Peter and that he and another disciple ran to the tomb. Those two soon left and left Mary there by herself, weeping. This was more than she could bear. I think Mary feels helpless and hopeless.
An angel, you will remember, asked her, "Why are you weeping?" Well, why not? If you're not weeping, you haven't been paying attention. If you're not weeping, you have not seen the news, you haven't listened to the radio, and you haven't heard what happened in Jerusalem. Evil is running rampant. Evil has the upper hand. Evil is winning!
Only a short time before the disciples and the other followers of Jesus had been playing Follow the Leader. Jesus took them all kind of places, including graveyards. All the while, they thumbed up their noses at death. Jesus had called one of his best friends from one of the tombs. Lazarus came out, but who was going to call Jesus out of a tomb now?
Jesus had dared them and us to imagine a different world, a world where masters wash servant's feet, a world where winners come in last and a place where there is more than enough food for everyone. Jesus had dared them to imagine a world where instead of it being the survival of the fittest, wolves and lambs laid side by side and people who are enemies sat at the same table and knelt together in prayer, but now it looks like the game is over and evil had won.
Beloved, the game isn't over, its just beginning. That is what today is really all about. With only the mention of her name, Mary goes from weeping to witnessing! Listen again to the excitement in her voice as she catches up with the disciples now a second time, "I have seen the Lord!"
We have a new purpose and a new possibility today. We have life today that really is life if we will just grab it. There is more light around that we can possibly imagine! Today disciples don't play by the same old rules. I know this is still hard to believe today, but if Easter does anything, it reminds us that we have been set free. We still play an exhilarating game of Follow the Leader, running through cemeteries and streets, board rooms and back alleys. We still thumb up our noses at death and today we say that the only real sermon that needs to be preached is being preached, "Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Amen!"
(Special thanks to the late Dr. J. Howard Olds for a story in this sermon and to the preacher who helped me see the image of the Follow the Leader. I dedicate this sermon to our friends at St. Paul and for their strong witness. I especially dedicate this sermon to Lewis Wells who now knows the power of the resurrection! Happy Birthday, dear friend)