You deserve lasers. And smoke machines. A big stage.
You deserve well produced videos in high definition. You deserve YouTube channels and scripted dramas. You deserve arias and organs, or a big band with a drum set and a lead singer in tight jeans. You deserve something more than my face on a fuzzy computer screen, my words, rambling on. I should at least have something polished and profound to say.
There should be trumpets. There should be spiraled hams with the pineapple rings on top. There should be Easter egg hunts and fancy dresses and ridiculous hats. There should be ticker tape parades and baton twirlers and ribbon dancers. A marching band with feather plumes and polished leather boots. There should be somersaults and handstands.
There should be overflowing church parking lots and picnics in the park. There should be shouting and rejoicing in the streets. Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen indeed!
There should be cancelling of debt and freedom to the captives and healing for the sick. There should be political revolution and racial justice and homes for the homeless. Polio should be eradicated, along with homophobia, sexism, and billionaire tax breaks. There should be environmental renewal and peace on earth. Christ is Risen after all, Christ is Risen indeed.
Instead, we have a quiet morning. We have frost-bruised tulips. We have cloudy skies and tiny backyards. We have bored and bickering brothers and cracked Easter eggs. We have quarantine.
We have social distance and disrupted schedules. We have masks and gloves and runs on toilet paper. We have record unemployment and high anxiety and so many graves. We have mourners mourning alone.
We have Zoom meetings and anxious nights and too much screen time. We have crippling self-doubt and insufficient sermons and infrequent tooth brushing.
Christ is Risen? Christ is risen indeed?
The world is not as it was. Everything has changed. It’s a new paradigm, a dramatic shift, nothing will ever be the same again.
Instead, we have a deep dark morning. We have a woman, alone, walking toward the tomb. We have a stone removed. Thinking the worst, she races towards Peter and the other disciple to tell them that Jesus is gone. His body is gone. We have confusion and fear. We have frustration and anger. We have a race to the tomb. We have discarded grave clothes. We have a mysteriously folded face cloth.
Peter and the beloved disciple enter the tomb. They see nothing where something should have been. The beloved disciple sees and believes. But we’re not sure what it is that he believes. He believes Mary’s words? He believes that Jesus is gone? He believes that someone has stolen the body? Does he believe that Jesus has been raised from the dead? He sees and believes…something, but in the same breath, in the same sentence, “they do not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.” We have belief and misunderstanding in the same breath. We have both doubt and faith. Confusion and certainty.
And then they go home. They simply go home.
There are no choirs of angels; there is no shining light. The Roman Empire doesn’t fall apart, the religious structures don’t shatter. Oppression still reigns. The earth isn’t healed. Somewhere a woman goes about her day, makes the bread, fetches the water. Somewhere a man tends to his goats, checks on his fields. Somewhere a child goes hungry and a beggar asks for bread. Somewhere a slave is whipped, and a soldier prepares for war. And Peter and the other disciple see the empty tomb and they go home. They simply go home.
Mary stays to weep.
Christ has risen from the dead, has left the tomb, Christ is somewhere…out there…in the world. And yet the world keeps turning. Siblings keep bickering. Tyrants keep ruling. The earth keeps groaning. People are sick and poor and broken and tired. Christ is out there, somewhere, and Mary stays to weep.
There should be earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and lighting from the sky. Prison gates should be opened and feasts should be shared. Sicknesses should be healed. The voice of God should come from the clouds, commanding everyone’s attention. Christ is risen after all. Right? Christ is risen, indeed?
Instead, we get weeping and confusion. We get despair and grief, racing disciples and empty tombs. We get a sunrise. We get two strangers, dressed in white, suddenly sitting in the tomb, filling it up with light. Mary sees these two angels and they ask her, “Mary, why are you weeping?” As if there isn’t enough to weep over. As if the earth has stopped turning and the people have stopped sinning and everything that has been broken has been made right again. But it’s not. The world still mourns. People still die. Abusers still abuse and swindlers still swindle.
Why are you weeping, Mary? Because Jesus is dead, and now he’s gone, and my world is over. Why are you weeping? Because what we hoped for has been lost. Because our world is shattered. Because everything has changed. And now, with Jesus gone, there’s no moving forward, there’s no moving past this, there’s just emptiness and the silence of God.
But she turns. Mary turns around, and she sees a gardener. “Why are you crying? Whom are you looking for,” he asks. There is confusion and pleading. There is no recognition of the man she loves. There is desperation and desire. “Sir,” she says, “if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”
And then he says her name. He simply says her name. There is no wand waving, no sleight of hand, no Jedi mind trick. Still no trumpets. Still no marching band. Still no choirs of angels singing from the sky. He simply says her name. And suddenly there is recognition and surprise. There is shock and delight. There is embodied experience, fleshy and real. She grasps for the real. She wants to hold on to it, to have it, to keep it safe.
There is no long and satisfying embrace, no delightful ending, no orchestral crescendo, no running of the credits. There’s no walking into the sunset, happily ever after. There’s simply more mystery, a gentle rejection, a confusing koan. Jesus says, “Do not hold on to me,” when that is all that Mary is aching to do. “Don’t hold on to me,” he says, “Because I’m not done yet. I haven’t ascended to my Father and your Father, my God and your God. Go tell the others.”
How hard must it have been for Mary to let him go a second time? Now that she sees him in flesh and bone once again, now that she has him in her sights, now that the unthinkable has happened, how did she let him go? How could she leave him again?
But Mary does. She does as she’s told. She is the first to see Christ alive again, and she leaves him. She leaves him to share the good news. She is the first to profess Christ raised from the dead. She is the first preacher. This is the first sermon. “I have seen the Lord,” she tells them. She doesn’t get a purple robe or a pope’s mitre, she doesn’t get a cathedral with parapets and balustrades and flying buttresses. She doesn’t bring the brass band with her; those angels have disappeared. She comes as herself, a lonely peasant girl. She simply tells her story. Christ has said her name. She has seen the Lord.
This Easter, there are no chocolate bunnies, no family get togethers, no Easter egg hunts or overflowing baskets. There are no crowded churches, no operatic arias, no overflowing collection plates. This Easter, there is a quiet morning. There is coffee at the table. There are grocery store workers and gas attendants, there are janitors and bus drivers. There are postal workers and local government representatives.There are doctors and nurses with bruised faces and weak knees. There is the budding forsythia. There is the peeking of crocuses through last year’s leaves and weeds. There’s Zoom meetings and social media. There’s singing from porches, and there are letters written by hand. There’s slowing infection numbers and ceasefires and neighbors helping neighbors. There’s mask makers and food donations and pizza delivery. There’s online school and adaptive teachers and resilient kids. There’s sourdough starters and herbs planted and birds at the bird feeders. There’s waiting. There’s contemplating. There’s an end to busyness for busyness sake. There’s reflection and renewal. There’s sleeping in and walks in the park. There’s seeing one another’s suffering. There’s doing what we can to help. There’s weeping and groaning. There’s frustration and anger. And then there’s a new day. It’s all a resurrection.
Jesus’s resurrection changed everything. The whole world shifted. No, it wasn’t tilted off its axis; corrupt powers and principalities didn’t suddenly fall. The sky didn’t part. The seas didn’t calm. People were still people. But a woman heard her name. A peasant recognized her Lord. She preached the first sermon. A butterfly’s wing made ripples in a quiet pond. And the world was never the same.
They all had to decide what to do with this news. They all had to decide how to respond to her story. They all had to fit themselves into this new paradigm. Would they believe? Would they doubt? Would they do a little bit of both? Would they struggle to understand? Would they still mourn and weep, even as they rejoiced and celebrated?
They didn’t parade it through the town. They didn’t shout it from the rooftops. They sat in awe. They stayed at home. They wondered and questioned and doubted and believed. They pondered what this all might mean. They made bread and broke it. They poured wine and drank it. They did the laundry and washed the dishes and scrubbed the bathroom tile. They went back to work. They mended the nets and counted the fish.
They told the story in quiet whispers. They didn’t ransack the emperor’s palace or raise an army. They didn’t plot to overthrow the government or disrupt the economic system. They watched and waited.
This is how Christ entered in to the world again, person by person, story by story, one life, one name, one testimony at a time. And that is how the world is changed.
Christ is risen. Christ is risen, indeed.
Thanks be to God.
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