SEEING, HEARING, AND BELIEVING

Homily for Easter Day

23 March, AD 2008

TEXT: St. John 20:1-20

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

        We have said for many years now that in order to really know and be able to experience the message and power of the Great Reality, Mystery, and Miracle we call Easter Day, we have to set aside at least a small portion of our daily routines and demands between what is known as Palm Sunday and today in order to be with Jesus or at least try to imagine what he went through on account of and on behalf of you, personally; all of us in this Church this morning; and for all who have ever been born, lived, and died ~ past, present, and future. However you reckon your own salvation – and maybe there be some who don’t or who haven’t as of yet, if we just see and hear Jesus ride triumphantly into town on Palm Sunday as the great king, the Son of David, and then listen to the pretty music, hear a sermon about Easter, and then go on the obligatory Easter Egg hunt with the kids, then Easter is little more than a Hallmark moment, because you’ve gone from mountain top to mountain top without having crossed through the valley of death, called Holy Week, which gives all the meaning to the reality of Jesus’ Death and Resurrection for you. For the Church does not proclaim on this day, the miracle of a rescessitated body like Lazarus, but the miracle of Our Resurrected Lord and Saviour with a new, glorious, and transfigured Body – a Body which now reflects its true nature as Son of God and Son of Man, which we could neither have comprehended nor borne the presence of prior to the Resurrection on Easter Day. It is that perfect Man and perfect God whom we proclaim this day, even Our Resurrected Lord, Jesus Christ. The great Orthodox hymn sung throughout the Paschal season best sums up the Truth of today as it proclaims, “Christ is risen from the Dead, and by His death, he has trampled upon Death, and has given life to those who are in the grave.” Today and from now unto all eternity, we live, not in the fear of death, but in the promise and reality of Life! Jesus challenges us to believe in Him and to claim His Victory as our own which He bestows upon us by virtue of His Resurrection! But each of us have to confont something first. Enter the Gospel for this morning.

        St. Mary Magdalene is the only woman St. John mentions in his account of Our Lord’s Resurrection. Evidently, she has gone to the tomb while it was still dark, what we might call “o’dark thirty” and has observed that the great stone put in front of Jesus’ tomb has been rolled away. She hightails it back to Peter and John, and tells them both that someone has taken the Lord’s body from the tomb and she doesn’t know where this “someone” has laid Him again. Peter and John run as fast as they can to the tomb and examine the evidence for themselves. What they find is astonishing. It is clear that the Lord’s body is not in the tomb, but the graveclothes are! And what’s more, the Greek insinuates that the graveclothes have retained the three dimensional shape of a man’s body, especially the head covering as if they were some kind of cocoon! Peter doesn’t know what to make of this scene, but the other Apostle, the one whom Jesus loved, believed that the Lord’s body had not been stolen, but that He had, indeed, risen from the dead! What the Evangelist tells us next sort of exonerates poor Peter because he writes in verse nine, “for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.” So we have one that believes, one that doesn’t know what to believe, and one that is beside herself with grief. And the Gospel reading for Easter Day ends. It takes the remainder of the Easter season to know for sure that Jesus is risen from the Dead, to proclaim to His Apostles all that they must do as His witnesses, to be present at Jesus’ Ascension, and then to experience the bestowal of the Holy Ghost upon all of the Disciples at Pentecost. That’s certainly a lot! But we’re not quite through with Easter Day, yet.

        True, Peter and John have gone back home; one shaking his head and the other quietly hoping against hope in his heart that his Lord had risen, indeed. Bit it’s to Mary Magdalene, again, upon whom our attention falls. Now in verses 11-18, she finally has the courage to confront the tomb, herself and leans down and looks in and sees two angels; one at the head and one at the foot where Jesus’ body had previously laid and they ask her a question, “Woman, why are you weeping?” Now I don’t know about you, but Mary must be so upset as to think not just one, but two angels are an everyday occurrence! She answers them just like she would anyone else – “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” We don’t know if the angels responded because Mary, evidently perceiving that someone was near, just like you or I might, looks up and sees this man in front of her who asks her the same thing, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do ye seek?” Since it was in the midst of a garden in which they had buried Jesus just three days before, she supposes this man is the gardener and answers him forthrightly as well, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” It is only then, after Mary has confronted the empty tomb that she is given incontrovertible proof that Jesus has been raise from the dead. How? Because He calls her by name! One word – her name, Mary. The blindness, caused by her grief, is shattered. She recognizes her Lord and Saviour and responds to His call of her name so enthusiastically that Jesus has to say, literally, “Stop clinging to me.” or as most of us know someone who would say, “Don’t touch me.” Yes, Jesus said that to Mary, literally, but also figuratively. “Mary, don’t become so overwhelmed with my presence that you don’t listen to what I need to tell you to do. Go to the Apostles and say unto them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” And Mary went and announced to the Apostles, “I have seen the Lord” – and all that he had said unto her.

        Mary shows us the correct path of our Easter faith – the faith with which we need to live in this world, if we are not going to be consumed by it. Like Mary, we need to confront the tombs in our own life – the tombs of the Pharisees who felt superior because of their heritage, the tombs of the Scribes who felt intellectually superior; tombs of every shape, color, size, and dimension – bigotry, jealousy, envy, hatred, malice, egotism. And finally, the scariest of all, our own mortality. That one great fear of all of us, mortality, feeds all the other smaller tombs in our soul just like the great Deadly sin of Pride feeds the other six. What we find from the continuation of the Easter Gospel this morning is that the Resurrected Lord, Jesus Christ has vanquished that fear once and for all and because He lives, you who believe in His name will live also – even for all eternity after your physical body stops working. To be sure, the Apostles came to know and experience this reality in all its fulness with their subsequent meetings and encounters with the Resurrected Lord. But Mary came to know it first, just by the call of her name. Mary didn’t encounter the Risen Christ until she had confronted the empty tomb. Her grief gave way to joy and death gave way to Life everlasting. So it is today that Jesus, Himself, stands beside whatever tomb might be staring back at you from the depths of your soul and by the power of His Resurrection gives you the ability to hear Him calling your name right now. But unlike Mary, He wants you to touch Him – to hold Him in the palm of your hand, to partake His Sacred Body and to drink His most Precious Blood so that you and He can become One, to confront all that would separate you from Him, and then to bring you into the reality of an Easter of never-ending Life, Light, and Joy. It is the message of a new Creation and new Life that the Church proclaims this day as she has for almost two thousand years and, again, it has all been prepared, made ready, and fulfilled for you because of the Resurrection of Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. May you truly come to know and appreciate all that Our Lord’s Resurrection holds for you this day and always. Happy Easter to you all!

And now, unto God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost be ascribed all might, majesty, power, and dominion as is most justly due this day both now and forever. World without end. Amen.

                                                   SOLI DEO GLORIA – JEU+