Easter Sunday 2024

Sermon 31 March 2024

St. Alban Episcopal Mission

Rev. Betsey Moe

 “New Every Morning”

 John 20:1-18:

"Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. 2 So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” 3 Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. 4 The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, 7 and the cloth that had been on Jesus’s head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. 8 Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed, 9 for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10 Then the disciples returned to their homes.

11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb, 12 and she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. 13 They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”14 When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). 17 Jesus said to her, “Do not touch me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ” 18 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and she told them that he had said these things to her."

 Last month, Eric, Zoey and I flew up to Tikal on a day Zoey had off school, and we decided to do the Sunrise Tour at the suggestion of our guide. We arrived in Flores in the evening, settled into our hotel, and then woke up at 2:45 to pick up our guide on the side of the road at 3. We arrived at the park at 3:45 a.m. – we were the very first car in the parking lot – and after checking us in at the front gate, our guide led the three of us out on the dirt paths by the beam of his high-powered flashlight and the light of the full moon.

 At 4:30, we huffed and puffed our way up the wooden stairs to the top of Temple Four. Still, no one else was around. Our guide told us to walk to the highest spot on the stone steps, get comfortable, and then keep our eyes and ears open. The wind was blowing, the constellations were twinkling above us, and the jungle canopy spread out below us in the dark. Even though this was called a Sunrise Tour, I didn’t really know what I was watching for.

 As more and more people started to arrive, I thought about how much this experience felt like church. The steps of this ancient Mayan temple were our pews where we sat waiting for the service to start. We had been the first ones there, because, Hello, we’re the pastor’s family. Then, other people had started filing in from below and taking their seats on the temple stairs. They nodded at those of us already seated, respectful of others having their spiritual moment. The acoustics somehow amplified sound, so when someone started talking a little too loudly to their neighbor, everyone around would turn around and say, “Shhh!” There was even a woman below us that took out a granola bar and took forever to unwrap it. It was like someone unwrapping a cough drop during the sermon – (that interminable “crinkle, crinkle.”)

 So there we were, families, young people, old people, people from all over the world, waiting in silence before the altar of the horizon, staring straight ahead in the darkness as the stars and planets in front of us inched higher and higher. And then, the choir started singing. First one howler monkey let out this terrifying roar on the right-hand side of the jungle canopy, and then two more on the left responded, and soon the whole jungle below us was filled with roars.

 That would have been enough; I could have gone home giddy at that point. But the pink line that was spreading out in front of us turned to yellow and, finally, the big celestial ball we had been waiting for started rising until everything – the sky, the canopy, the tips of the temples, our faces – everything was bathed in gold.

 With fifty or so complete strangers, we experienced something holy: the take-your-breath-away beginning of a day. And to think that this same thing happens EVERY DAY!

 In the Easter story, Mary Magdalene came to the garden, to Jesus’ tomb, while it was still dark. Who knows if she had a full moon lighting her way like we did, but she was definitely the first one there. In John’s gospel, darkness is always a spiritual metaphor, so we know that John wanted to emphasize that Mary had completely lost hope or was not seeing the whole picture, or both. Jesus, Mary’s dear, dear friend, as well as the hope for her people, had been condemned by a sick system and killed in the cruelest way. A few days later, Mary had come to his tomb, and when she got to the garden and the tomb was open and empty, we see the whole range of Mary’s emotions. First, she panicked, running to get two other disciples. Then, after the disciples came and went home again, Mary wept. Finally, she got angry: “If you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” For Mary, there was no glimmer of hope in the darkness of this garden. Jesus was dead, and now, his body was gone, too.  

 John uses darkness – and here, the darkness just before dawn – to represent the things we cannot see or understand, and the sense of despair we have because of it. But for John, not only is the darkness representative, Mary herself is representative. Mary as an individual devoid of hope may reflect all those of us who are people of faith, people who have known Jesus, but who are panicked by the injustices we see around us, bracing for things to get worse. Mary represents those who weep, those who get angry in frustration at the way things are. Mary Magdalene is us, we are Mary Magdalene. All we can see when we take a good, hard look around us is cruelty, violence, loss, and endings.

 This last week I was in San Salvador for the launch of a protestant network of migration ministries. The fifty of us who were there were sent out in smaller groups to rural communities outside of the city, and let me tell you, there were so many signs of cruelty, violence, loss, and endings. I went to a town where the main and closest source of work was cutting sugar cane. Workers are paid a pittance in an industry that feeds obesity and other disease. One community sat right next to the cane fields that were regularly sprayed with Roundup from helicopters, and in this community, cancer and kidney failure were wiping out more than half the residents. One woman lost four of her seven sons to cancer; she herself sat with an amputated leg in a wheelchair next to one of her remaining grown sons who had multiple tumors jutted out from his forearms. Yet this family had no place to go, had no other work to do, and so they stayed. (How can this be?) While I was at this conference, I learned of the Baltimore bridge collapse that took the lives of six immigrants originally from Central America. These men lost their lives working to make Baltimore roads safer for people who would never want to do that work.

THAT is the kind of injustice that makes this world feel so dark. We are in the midst of a violent and hope-sucking time in history. When all we see is endings – the end of democracy, the end of women’s rights, the end of workers’ rights, the end of civility, the end of polar icecaps, the end of the world.

 But into this very sense of despair and ending, John proclaimed a beginning. John had seen the beginning of the reign of God in Jesus Christ – and he decided to write his own Genesis story. Think about this: in Genesis, we hear, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth;” John’s gospel starts, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…and the world came into being through him.” In Genesis, we hear, “Darkness was over the surface of the deep, and God said, ‘Let there be light;’” John said, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

John’s whole gospel is a new creation story. John’s gospel shows the truth that we often cannot see: that while the world seems lost, God the creator and lover of the universe is still present. God came in Jesus Christ, revealed who he was through his actions, submitted himself to death which fully revealed the dark injustice of the world, and rose again to proclaim victory over sin and death and despair. John’s gospel announces the new beginning for the world God deeply loves, and the new beginnings we all have with each day, with each breath, when we place our faith in Jesus Christ and not in ourselves. John’s new creation story culminates in the garden, a new Eden centered around Jesus’ empty tomb. In a way, Mary was not mistaken to say that Jesus was the gardener – because he is! Jesus is at the very center of new creation.

But what, for Mary, was the moment of transformation? When she arrived, thinking only about loss and about this tragic ending, she had panicked, she had wept, and she had gotten angry. But all of that changed when Jesus called to her by name. Mary recognized Jesus, and at that moment, the day transformed from an ending to a beginning – the beginning of the rest of her life, the beginning of a whole new creation. At that point, Mary was sent out (not cast out, like Adam and Eve) of the garden to share with the other disciples this new reality.

Now, there is nothing in the text that says the sun rose while Mary was standing there. I like to picture the sun still below the horizon, and in the darkness, Mary running back to tell the disciples what she had seen and heard. Because really, just because it’s Easter doesn’t mean that the world’s circumstances have changed. That mother is still living next to the cane fields in El Salvador while chemicals are blowing through her community. Injustice, violence, cruelty, selfishness, pain, are still very much a part of life.

Easter does not require us to deny the facts of our context. But when we worship together as people of God, we see and proclaim a greater reality. In Christ, there is new creation. The mercies of God are new every morning. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. Every day, the God who causes the sun to rise places us firmly at a new beginning and sends us out in hope and action. We are given grace to live as Jesus lived: empowering women, restoring health, speaking truth, washing feet, and including everyone at the table.

Perhaps we should wake up early more often and watch the sun rise. It happens every day. And as long as you and I have breath, we are a part of and participants in God’s new creation. Thanks be to God.