March 23, 2008
Easter Day (Year A)
Acts 10: 34-43; Psalm 118:1-2.14-24; Colossians 3:1-4; Matthew 28:1-10
This week someone asked me in all seriousness, "How is it that you, an intelligent, educated, articulate woman, can really believe in the resurrection? Do you really believe it?”
This time of year people sometimes have the nerve to ask me that question; and each time I am asked it, I say, “Yes, I do believe in the resurrection. In fact, I have a difficult time understanding how any intelligent, articulate, educated person does not.”
I guess that I am very much like each of the Marys who came to the tomb that first Easter morning. I have a deep and holy - passionate even - relationship with Jesus. I know him, and he knows me. He knows my deepest secrets and my stupidest mistakes. And the amazing thing is, he hangs in there with me; he is always there, even when I can’t find him or I think he is not there.
Later evidence always proves that he was and is.
Now I admit that sometimes I forget about Jesus. I get busy with my life. I get busy around here doing services, or praying for people, or organizing something, or listening or talking to people, and I forget Jesus is right there with me all the time. And then I go to look for Jesus as the two women did this morning and he is not there.
Let me tell you about what I mean.
When I was seven and a half, my sister died of crib death. Until that time Jesus had been this sort of long-haired, blond guy in the picture in the bedroom at my friend’s house. I knew stories, but I didn’t know Jesus. When my sister died, some well-meaning priest walked me from the car to my home trying to get me to be okay – which I wasn’t, of course. He told me that he wanted me to know, and he hoped my mother also knew, that my sister was in a better place, that she was okay, and that Jesus had taken her.
Well, at that moment I left Jesus. If Jesus took baby sisters, then Jesus was not for me. And I ignored the possibility that Jesus could exist for years, literally for years, decades. And then when I was twenty-four, I gave birth to my oldest son, Mark, and when I looked at him, I knew that he was indeed a gift from God, God whom I had not thought of, let alone believed in, that he was my son as Jesus was Mary's son. He was every bit as much a miracle as Jesus, and he was amazing – he still is. But his birth made me realize I needed to find a way to bring Jesus back into my life to help me raise this kid. And I went to where I had left him, in that picture on the wall of my friend’s house, figuratively of course, and he wasn’t there.
Instead, I found him to be a far different Jesus, one who was there with me when I nursed my baby, one who would listen to my fears and joys, one who walked with me as we strolled around the block pushing the baby in a stroller.
And thus began a long relationship with Jesus.
And each time I would think I had figured out just who Jesus was, or I would take Jesus for granted, and I would go back to find him where I left him – just like the Marys went to the tomb that first Easter morning. And you know what? Jesus wasn’t there. Just as when I found him in the birth of my son, he was in a far better place, a deeper place, a more intimate place. Jesus was usually not where I expected him to be at all.
When I was divorced, I felt utterly abandoned, and (deservedly so I thought) abandoned by Jesus. But I found him again, alive and well, and not only willing to forgive me, but waiting to forgive me for my part in the separation. Each sad or wonderful thing that has happened, each move I have made (and there have been thirty-four of them!), I would try to leave Jesus in a box the way I wanted him or needed him to be, and yet I would not find him until I was ready to give up the old, the dead, and accept the new life in new ways he was offering me.
I would imagine that if you tried to think of your own spiritual journey with Jesus, you would find that you too have left Jesus behind; and when you came to try to pick up the relationship, even if, as the Marys did, you tried to bury it, Jesus is not where you left him.
Jesus is like that – because of the resurrection. That is for me proof of the resurrection, that I have a relationship with a living God - that you have a relationship with living God - that the world has had a continuous relationship with a living God for 2000 years. That is proof that Jesus was resurrected. He died and was put in the tomb – I don’t doubt that. But he didn’t stay there – I don’t doubt that either. Because life and hope and promise were what God’s intentions were for him, for all of us, and he shows us that all the time by inviting us to be with him in the new life and the new places.
Jesus is always ahead of us, inviting us, cajoling us, paving the way, making it possible for us to be more than we thought, get through more than is bearable, receive gifts beyond our imagination, and always because God’s intention for all creation was and always has been and always will be that we have life abundantly, and that we share that abundant life with God. God can’t bear to be without us, and God can’t bear to leave us alone in times of joy, or times of trial, or even when we are just strolling the baby around the block.
It’s simple enough, and it’s also so deep enough, profound enough, that we never get tired of telling the story or of living it, even though we often forget and we go back to old places to find that Jesus, even though he is not there. He has left a trail as he did that first Easter morning, a trail to new life that doesn’t seem possible, but then we are in the middle of it and it is possible. I think sometimes we long for the old Jesus of our childhood or a particularly happier time in our life, but that Jesus has moved on. And even though the tomb is empty, the story goes on.
Follow the trail, the clues, and no matter how intelligent or educated or scientific you are, you too will rest contented in the indisputable evidence of the resurrection, rest knowing of God’s everlasting love for you and God’s promise of life and hope for all of creation. The truth is right there in the empty tomb.
I believe it! I hope you do, too.
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd