He is risen! He is Risen indeed!
But is he?
Debie Thomas is an author who serves as the Minster for Lifelong Formation at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Palto Alto, California. In an essay she writes: “In my own life, I am finding it increasingly true that clarity, hope, and healing come when I am willing to linger in barren places, places where the usual platitudes fall flat, and all easy answers prove inadequate.”
The story of the resurrection takes place in the dark . . . “Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark . . .” In the darkness Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb where Jesus had been laid. There she finds the stone across the entrance removed and she runs to tell Peter and the other disciple that someone has removed Jesus from the tomb.
Again, in the darkness, Peter and the other disciples ran to the tomb. The disciple gets there first, looks, but does not go in. Peter goes straight into the tomb and sees the burial cloths lying there. The disciple follows him in, sees the cloths . . . and believes. The writer gives us no clue as to what Peter thinks or believes. All we know is that the two of them departed.
In the meantime, Mary is outside the tomb crying. She still has no clue what is going on . . . for all she knows someone stole the body of Jesus. As she is crying she is approached by a person—Jesus, who she assumes is a gardener. He asks why she is crying, and she explains everything that has taken place. Then she asks him to return the body if he has taken him. At that point the stranger—Jesus, says her name: “Mary.” In that moment, in that recognition, Mary believes.
There you have it according to the Gospel of John about that first Easter morning. You have three disciples. One sees the grave cloths neatly folded and believes. One sees the same thing and there is no indication that he believes anything. One is surprised into believing by hearing the sound of her name. One story but three different experiences . . . such is the journey of faith. And like the three, how we see and believe all depends upon us.
What you see is what you get.
Though it is Easter I want to share a Christmas story. For a long time these two little farm boys had been asking for a pony for Christmas. Well, Christmas morning came and the two of them leaped out of bed and ran straight to the barn. Upon entering the barn all they saw was a huge pile of manure sitting in the middle of the barn. The older boy turned in disgust. “There is no pony in here!” he proclaimed. Disgusted, he started to leave until he saw his brother standing in the middle of that huge pile of manure throwing it left and right.
“What are you doing?” asked the boy.
The little boy responded, “Looking for a pony! With all this manure there has to be a pony in there somewhere!”
So, it is with our Easter story this morning . . . each disciple saw what he or she believed in what was being seen. One believed with the littlest of evidence, another wasn’t sure what to believe, and the third . . . well, the third took a little prompting but in the end she believed. And here is the truth, in each of these we find ourselves at one time or another. With the Easter story we are given plenty of room to experience and understand it from how we see it at this point in our lives and journey of faith.
What you see is what you get. What do you see this Easter morning? What do you see in this Easter story?
For each of us Easter carries its own understanding and impact upon our lives and our faith. It is not an “one size fits all” experience. Our story clearly demonstrates that point. In the darkness of that morning each of the three had different experiences, and each walked away with different understandings. Each was on his or her own journey, thus how they encountered the situation was different.
The story begins with great distress and mourning . . . someone has stolen the body of Jesus. Not only is he dead . . . he is gone. In panic two others are invited into the story. They, too, witness the empty tomb . . . see the burial cloths . . . find no body. One believes, the other . . . well he is not sure. He doesn’t understand what is going on. Lastly, the third who discovered the empty tomb comes to believe with a little prompting from the one she sought.
There are times in our lives . . . in our journeys . . . when believing is not so difficult. When it doesn’t take much for us to believe . . . to believe that Jesus lives. In those times when everything in life is going well, things are going right, and there are no hassles . . . we believe. What is there to doubt? Life is good . . . God is good . . . Jesus lives!
There are times in our lives when we wonder. We wonder about God and God’s existence. Wonder whether God is with us or not. Wonder about our faith. We question where God is . . . where Jesus is. We want to believe, but believing is hard to do when it feels like the world and life is against us. In those moments we wonder and we are not sure what we should believe. In these moments we understand the darkness, feel the darkness, and we struggle to understand.
And, then there are those moments where the darkness consumes us, makes us immobile and unable to do anything. In the darkness we struggle. Was this not the case for Mary Magdalene? The empty tomb. The two disciples witnessing and running off with no explanation . . . leaving her at the empty tomb in the darkness. The writer of the story tells us: “Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying.” She had seen the burial cloths . . . she had encountered the two angels in the tomb . . . had seen the reaction of the other two disciples . . . and yet she stood there crying and not believing. We know this because when Jesus asks her why she is crying she tells him the story and pleads with him to return the body.
Then Jesus spoke her name . . . prompted her in the intimacy of the moment . . . and she believed. Unlike the other two, Mary stayed and endured the darkness, and she discovered clarity, hope, and healing. She encountered the living Jesus. She believed.
Your experience of this Easter day . . . of this Easter story . . . all depends upon you and how you experience and see it. How it touches you depends upon where you are in the journey of your life and faith. It is a personal thing . . . a private thing . . . this encounter with the risen Jesus. I imagine that those of us gathered here this morning are all over the place. And that is okay. That is okay because we all encounter Jesus differently.
This is a story of hope and Easter is always about hope. Out of the darkness light shined . . . a new day dawned. There is hope in new beginnings. Jesus lives. God is with us. It all comes down to how we experience and see it. We get what we see. If nothing else, there is hope.
He lives . . . yes, he does. Blessings upon our Easter experience. Amen
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