March 31, 2024
10:30 AM
Sunbury
“Son-Bury”
Let’s flag a few highlights tucked inside today’s Easter’s reading from John’s Gospel.
First day of the week – Sunday. Crucified Friday, buried in the tomb before sunset, somber Sabbath Saturday. Sunday, Mary comes to anoint the body.
Dark – without Jesus, where’s the light, where’s the dawn?
The body taken: by whom, what plot afoot? Mary suspects the religious big boys were so afraid of him they want to get rid even of his corpse
The linen cloth rolled up. I once heard a splendid sermon all about this linen cloth rolled by itself. The preacher preached: Jesus wasn’t in a rush, he was in charge, even tidying up
Woman, why are you crying? I’m getting less interested in Church meetings that want to talk about talking about the purpose of church so we can talk about what we can do about the church. For me, it’s pretty basic, as we said a few weeks ago: go where the people are crying. Jesus is neither concept nor idea nor belief – Jesus is action. So is Christianity. Go where the people are crying.
Supposing him the gardener. And there it is!
John’s gospel puts the tomb in a garden. Weird.
And the other Bible word for garden is paradise. John paints for us the picture of the new Eden.
Mary, lost, looking for her friend. This isn’t mother Mary. This is younger Mary, the new Eve, first-born of the resurrection, who is chided because you cannot cling to the old nor can you grab the new: you can only receive the new.
Why do you suppose Mary thinks Jesus is the gardener? What was Adam’s job in the garden? To till it, cultivate it. Adam was a gardener.
When I read the Bible, I always try to listen to what the author is proclaiming. Here John proclaims Jesus as the new Adam. The new man. The last Adam. The new humanity.
Listen please. John 20: 1-18:
20Early 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. 2So 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.” 3Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. 4The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. 6Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb.
[John likely was 16 or 18 years old. Us older ones are more familiar with death]
He saw the linen wrappings lying there, 7and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. 8Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10Then the disciples returned to their homes.
11But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; 12and 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. 13They 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.” 14When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15Jesus 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.” 16Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). 17Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to 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.’” 18Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.
Can we have an echo please.
Leader: Christ is risen!
Congregation: Christ is risen!
Leader: Christ is risen!
Congregation: Christ is risen!
Leader: Christ is risen indeed!
Congregation: Christ is risen indeed!
Have you noticed? This is present tense. Today too is the first day of the week.
~~~
Maundy Thursday, which means Mandate Thursday is so meaningful. Hope it was for you with Sally here. The service invites us, present tense, to gather in the Upper Room when Jesus at the last supper mandates, coaches, his disciples to love one another just as he has loved them. Sacrificial Maundy Thursday reminds me how blessed I am that Jesus wasn’t concerned with happiness. Let’s face it, Jesus was a loser. He never drove a BMW or won an Oscar. Jesus wasn’t successful by worldly standards. He failed, executed alongside two other rejects. Likely they were terrorists. They probably got captured with Bar-Abbas. Bar-Abbas means son of the Father, likely a famous Jerusalem Rabbi. Barabbas got off, his followers didn’t. The reverse O Jesus. Jesus -- How weak. He disappointed his friends who wanted him to be a winner. What Jesus did instead was steadfast love and show us how to love steadfastly.
At our Presbytery meeting here the other week one of our leaders raised eyebrows by praying for Jews to accept Jesus. She meant well. It was mentioned afterwards that many Jewish friends know Jesus better than many Christians. They love truer. I’d rather we pray for Christians to be more like Jesus.
The older you get the more you realize how you get to Easter through Maundy Thursday, through Good Friday, through that trembling, silent, awful Saturday.
~~~
Christians this week especially might well remember how we are defined by Easter for Jesus is our Lord not Caesar, a Lord who turns the world upside down: Rejecting self-preservation for other-salvation; That to die is to live; How the last shall be first, and the first shall be last. That’ll surprise a lot of so-called Christians. Better is having something worth fighting for than only fighting against. For we are what we love. Jesus tells us we are most important when we are servants. Scandalous!
Christians might especially remember how the reason for Easter is less about a bus ticket to heaven after you die, less about being enlightened to bathe in how spiritually superior we are. Easter reminds us that death is necessary. Our sins of inhumanity must die for Jesus-love to arise. New humanity laboring, planting, sowing, reaping in a new garden. Our Easter reality is our path for resurrection from a cross littered world. Jesus tidies up death. When it seems all is dark, just wait.
We might remember how we die many times in a lifetime, don’t we? Each little death is a coming attraction of the big one. I graduated from High School and those happy days died, shoving me toward someplace new. The bachelor dies when he marries and is reborn a husband. The young woman dies when she gives birth and is reborn a mother. We die when the kids leave home to start their own.
Are these deaths worth it? You tell me. You cannot cling to the old nor can you grab the new: you can only receive the new.
We all know what it is to lose. I’m just grateful for having had the chance to find.
~~~
I don’t know what your plans are for this afternoon. Family gathering? Traveling? Reservations at a favorite restaurant? Maybe it’s as simple as a lean cuisine.
For us it’s just us. The kids, you know, live on the other side of the United States. My brothers and sisters haven’t gotten together since mom and dad died shortly after they had to sell our family home. They couldn’t keep up with the taxes. The old homestead got pulled down and an incredibly pretensious new home got built there. My sister lives two houses up the street in the house Dad originally built from Grandma and every day Peggy has to look at the memories. There were times when Easter dinner required place settings for nearly 30 of us.
All that’s left of Elaine’s side is her brother and his family in Florida, and likely, due to hospice and Parkinson, he’ll be eating at his nursing home. Things do change. One constant for us is that I’ll be roasting a 7 ½ lb leg of lamb in about four hours. Roasted leg of lamb. Rubbed down with marjoram and thyme. Dozens of slivers of garlic inserted. No mint jelly, we prefer black raspberry.
My wife’s English side comes out when she on Monday will put together a shepherd’s pie with the leftover lamb, with a can of Guinness of course.
It does change, doesn’t it? It do require adaptation. Social psychologist Erik H. Erikson argued how identity formation is the direct result of crises at various stages making us uncomfortable. We seek resolution, which forces us to grow, provided we’re able to model ourselves on positive examples.
Easter traditions are changing. Have changed. We can miss certain traditions.
I feel sorry for kids raised without Easter rituals. We starve them if every day is ‘same old, same old.’ Even the pagan rituals of bunnies and eggs and things are wonderful, giggly traditions. They all combine to remind us of something sacred and wonderful: new days, new beginnings, fertility and abundance, something sweet after months of winter drab. Pastels instead of grey. Willows and lilies and taffeta frocks on little girls. Mary Janes and white gloves.
Gotta love what happens to those rather plain looking bulbs we bury in our gardens in the fall. They become daffodils, tulips, lilies. Jesus is a gardener for sure.
Something special is happening. A new Adam. A new humanity. Finally human.
Or do we starve our kids when we remain silent about Easter? Or treat it ho-hum? Or the obligatory church holiday? Or commercialize it? Or want Easter without Good Friday and Maundy Thursday?
Sure Easter’s message seems incredible, incredulous, incomprehensible. Jesus jumping up like a jack-in-the-box, thumbing his nose at death, at hatred, violence, separation, at our atrocities and tragedies, at what the cross does, at all those who did their best to get rid of his humanity, to bury his shining love. Easter reminds us how small and petty we can be, how we try to limit the work of the Holy Spirt. Surprise!
After all, isn’t that which this is all about? For on Friday, they threw the full force of fallen and fell humanity at him and…it failed.
~~~.
Okay, I admit, it’s a cheesy pun. Son-Bury.
Sunbury. Named after Sunbury on Thames, which itself is named from its earlier Scandinavian name, Sunna-burgh, named for the Goddess of the Sun. Here comes the sun… Good day sunshine…
It’s all about the sun. How many sunrises have we seen? How grateful we are when we wake to see them. Have you noticed the way flowers will tilt toward the sun? Soaking in promise, life?
How grateful we are for a son they – those Good Friday people -- tried to bury away – Son-bury – but life and love, truth and justice are irrepressible. Good Friday doesn’t win. It may have its moments in the sun, but it never ever wins. Try as you might, you cannot bury the son.
~~~
Between the two which really is the better story? Life without Easter or life with Easter?
I know which message I prefer.
A Roman Catholic theologian named Hans Kung reminded us: “Indeed the church has a future, it has the future.” If only we’d live this, rather than be as irrelevant as we can be. Peeps are fun, and we want children to have their baskets of joy. We also want them not to fear Russian missiles or fouled drinking water or starvation or measles, free from this cult of violence. Meant instead for the experience of grace.
We can see ourselves as the small and petty Good Friday world would like: futile, broken, mean, vanity of vanities, justifying cruelty. Or we can see each other as created – re-created -- in the image of God, sacred, with gifts, abilities, capacities to make decisions to change the world and ourselves into gardeners of paradise. We can be either Easter people or Good Friday people. I know which I choose.
It’s a good line: “We are an Easter people living in a Good Friday world.”
Now I lay me down to sleep…
Jesus loves me this I know…
You tell me: life without Easter or life with Easter?