Year B

John 20:1-18

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

Is there anyone here this beautiful morning that doesn’t love to hear good news? We all love good news. Whether it is the announcement of the birth of a child, the report of a new-found job, or the discovery that a sickness has been healed, we hunger for good news. Well, there is plenty of good news today because Christ has risen! He has risen indeed from the grave. The tomb is empty!! “Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation!” Ann Weems in her poem “And the Glory” speaks to the joy of this Easter morning. “The silence breaks into morning…the one star lights the world. The lily springs to life and…Not even Solomon…Let it begin with singing…and never end! Oh, angels, quit your lamenting! Oh, pilgrims…upon your knees in tearful prayer…rise up…and take your hearts…and run! We who were no people…are named anew…God’s people, for He who was no more…is forevermore.”

This is news that turns our lives upside down. God has brought life out of death and nothing will ever be the same for us again. Of all the mysteries our faith invites us to contemplate, the resurrection is by far the most astonishing. Not simply in the sense of being difficult to believe in a logical way. That, in a way, is the very point of it. The very idea of resurrection shatters everything with which we make sense of our world. It draws us instead into a reality that transcends all possibility. As we peer into the empty tomb with Mary and the disciples we are forever changed. There is hope and joy! Death is vanquished! Sin is overcome! Jesus is alive? 

And even thought Jesus had warned his disciples of what was to come, they were not prepared for that Easter morning.  For the previous three days, the followers of Jesus had moped about looking sad and downcast. Their beloved leader had died and been buried. They were in shock and felt totally lost. Some huddled in fear back in the upper room. Others scuffled home down a dusty road to the village of Emmaus. Before dawn, on the first day of the week, a grieving Mary Magdalene went to the burial site making her way through the darkness and light fog. I imagine much like it was here in Vidalia Saturday a week ago in the morning.

When she discovered the empty tomb, she raced back to tell Simon Peter and the beloved disciple, John. In haste, they run to the tomb to check out Mary’s report and it is hard not to suppress a smile at the thought of these two engaging in a footrace to reach the tomb of Jesus. As we heard read in the gospel text, what they see in the empty tomb affirms Mary’s conclusion at first: grave robbers would have left the linen cloths behind. Then finally, the Beloved Disciple’s eyes seem to be opened, he sees and believes but as of yet he cannot fully understand the scripture and so they return home.

But Mary stays and we hear one of the most beautiful stories in all of scripture. Mary does not realize the gardener is Jesus who can only be the resurrected Lord. The moment of recognition is when Jesus calls Mary by name. And in that moment, the empty tomb becomes more than the abstract truth of God’s power over death. In that moment, the empty tomb becomes the concrete reality of the presence of her risen Lord. Who then right away commissions her to go tell others what she has seen and heard, and this Easter story seems to end with exactly that—Mary going and announcing to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord.”

But we know it was not the end because we are sitting here this morning celebrating this Good News with Alleluia’s! We are so filled with excitement that we can hardly stop ourselves from jumping up and running to tell the world. Much like those original disciples who were so filled with excitement, so enthusiastic and energized, they could not hold still. The Acts of the Apostles chronicles their new found joy with the events of the church’s birth which certainly gets off to a running start. Peter may have been physically panting hard when he got to the tomb on Easter morning, but that was nothing compared to what followed in the next few weeks.

From Pentecost, though our text this morning, Jesus’s followers are described as being caught in a spiritual whirlwind. The story culminates in Peter’s radically changed attitude concerning the direction of their common ministry. In a vision of spectacular proportions, Peter is convinced to lead the early believers from their Jewish faith into becoming participants in a rapidly growing world movement…Christianity. Paul who arrived on the scene somewhat later, still managed to get in on the excitement because it doesn’t really matter when you come on board. When our eyes are opened to the risen Lord in our lives, we become full members of the Christ followers group.

We certainly can’t question Paul’s zeal or enthusiasm for sharing the gospel even though he was not with Jesus from the beginning. First Corinthians 15 is one of the greatest explanations and affirmations of the Resurrection ever composed. Paul realized that we need to hear this good news of the love of God often. His writing of today’s text from 1 Corinthians is a refresher course on what the risen Jesus Christ means to us as he lays out the basics of our faith. Returning to the basics is a healthy practice for even the most mature Christian disciple. Paul knew we needed to repeat our belief in Christ so that we would know how to practice it, not only in times of crisis, but in our everyday lives.

Our relationship with the risen Christ is not to be a once-in-a-while, when-its-convenient-for-me kind of thing. We are to practice the wonder, beauty and excitement of this day every day. We have a story to tell and when we know it well, when it is deeply imbedded in our hearts and souls, we will be able to share it with power. We really should be jumping for joy and running around our church building, as the children will soon do to find all the Easter eggs, instead of sitting in our pews this morning. The God of hope, joy and new life is ever full of surprises causing us to feel like shouting with all the saints in glory: “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

As Jesus and Mary say their good byes in the garden that Easter morning, Jesus told Mary not to hold on to him because he had not yet ascended to God. Mary wanted to hold on to him and that moment, for dear life. But this Gardener, who plants and prunes and waters souls, had risen from the grave not only for her but for everyone. He is alive and available through God’s Holy Spirit living in us, for all people and all time, even for eternity. Today, let us remove the barriers that keep us from jumping for joy and shouting “I have seen the Lord”, like Mary, and all disciples thought the centuries as we run to share the good news of hope. “Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation!”