Gospel:
Matthew 28:1-10
1st
Reading: Acts 10:34-43
2nd Reading: Colossians 3:1-4
When
I was a teenager, I felt the call to be a pastor. My parents drove me up to Pacific Lutheran
University, in Tacoma to attend a little workshop on becoming a pastor. On the way there, that night it snowed and
snowed. The big rigs were fishtailing on
the freeway. We got to Tacoma and it
seemed all the hotels were full. We
passed countless “no vacancy” signs.
Finally, in the distance I saw a vacancy sign and we found a place to
stay in a little hole in the wall place.
The room was probably 10 by 10.
My parents slept in a double bed and they set up a cot for me. And the next morning the sun was shining so
brightly off the snow. We made our way to
PLU where I learned that this Gospel reading for this very morning is the proof
in the Bible that women can be pastors.
Here these women come to the tomb to do women’s work, preparing Jesus’
body for burial, and they find a new reality, new life. They find that Jesus is risen. The angel tells the two Marys to go quickly
and tell the Disciples that Jesus has been raised from the dead. Even Jesus himself tells the women to go and
tell the good news. The first women
preachers, a couple of thousand years ago!
They
never in their wildest dreams expected it that morning. They walked with more than heavy hearts. The events of the past few days weighed heavy
on them. Their grief was fresh.
Last week I walked through
Doernbecher hospital to visit my niece.
It was like the hallway was miles long and the lights beating down. I caught sight of a little kid in a tiny
hospital gown and was completely overwhelmed by the thought of 10 floors of
suffering little kids, thinking of all their frantic parents, wondering what
was next for my niece, if we would be saying goodbye to her sometime soon, what
life would be like without her, how heavy this would weigh on our family. I guess I had that kind of anticipatory
grief. I just felt like I was
swimming—sound was distorted and the lights were weird and everything just felt
heavy. That’s the way I picture the two
Marys that morning, their eyes still red from crying, the spring gone from
their step. Their friend, their Savior,
the supposed Messiah, arrested, tortured, and killed in the prime of his life,
at the height of his powers. All the
good he had done had been undone. All
his vibrancy, gone from this earth. And
his disciples hiding in fear, wondering if one of them would be next for
execution.
We
live in a world where death is a supreme power.
We know we each will face it for our loved ones and for ourselves. We try not to dwell on it, but we also can’t
pretend it isn’t there. The power of
death is strong even as we live our lives.
We hurt each other. We get
sick. We divide ourselves based on
gender, age, class, race, citizenship status, and any other way we can think of
to make ourselves better than another person.
For the Colossians, they were giving better communion to people of
higher class. The rich were fed first,
with better food, on better dishes. The
poor were kept in their place. The
church in Colossae was using this meal of unity to make some people better than
others. Most of the time, we aren’t so
different from them. Our world is full of hunger and disease and pain and
divisions and death. That is apparent to
us. And it was apparent to the two women
named Mary and they were afraid.
As they
walk, there is an earthquake, just then, when they enter the garden where the
tomb is. Something earth-shattering is about
to happen. Have you ever been so shaken
up by something unexpected, you lost your balance? This is both an inner earthquake, in which
the two women named Mary are shaken to the core, and an actual earthquake in
which the earth itself is responding to the presence and grace of God. Something has truly changed. A stronger power is replacing the power of
death, because Jesus is risen—he has been raised, he continues to rise.
Into
this frightening world, Jesus speaks the words, “Do not be afraid.” When I was a little kid I had night terrors
about Jaws, the deadly shark. I’ve been pleased so far that Jaws dreams are
not genetic. Sterling has fears and bad
dreams once or twice a month, but for the most part he doesn’t seem to have as
much fear as I had at his age. These
days, he has started to be afraid to enter a room at night when the light isn’t
on. Telling him not to be afraid, isn’t
going to make any difference. I go in there ahead of him, turn on the light. Jesus doesn’t just speak the words,
either. He goes before us and shows us
that we’re not alone—we have each other, we have Jesus leading the way, and he doesn’t
deny that the power of death is still frightening, there is a greater power and
that is love.
Easter is about love. It was love that compelled the two women
named Mary to get up and go out to the tomb, even though they were sad and
afraid. Jesus showed love to absolutely
everyone. Sometimes it was in the form
of bread and fish. Sometimes it was in the
form of a truth that someone needed to face.
Sometimes it was simply in the form of his presence—we call that
“showing up.” Sometimes it was in the
form of healing from disease. Jesus
showed them love and he showed love to people of all times and places, in fact
he loved all Creation, and it was too much for our little minds to comprehend
and that is why we crucified him. We
were so used our death-worshipping world, our divisive favoritism, our idols,
that we couldn’t stand it and we tried to kill love.
If
Jesus had been like us, he would have come back and struck each one of us
down. Instead, he continued to be who he
is, Love in the flesh. Instead, Jesus
brought us forgiveness and new life.
In
the waiting room at Doernbecher, there is also a feeling of love that sustains
many family members. There is the hard
work that the physicians and surgeons and nurses and cooks and housekeeping and
anestesiologists and x-ray technicians and chaplains and everyone
contributes. There is the hope of healing. It is not only a
place of suffering, but a place of love.
The stone that was rolled away
that day was not just the stone on Jesus’ tomb, but it was the stones on all
our tombs. The resurrection was first
for Jesus, but it is also for us, each day.
We continually lock ourselves into these tombs of division and
anger. We still live in ways that hurt
people, that hurt ourselves. But there
is a greater power that Jesus showed us in the way he lived, in the fact that
he was willing to die rather than live in a death-dealing way, and in the way
he rose from the grave, forgave all who denied and betrayed him, and gave new
life to us all. Whenever we close the
tomb on ourselves, Jesus opens them again and invites us out into the hopeful
garden of life.
When
the doors of our tombs have been opened, I have no doubt we will all be
afraid. The question is whether we will
let it cause us to be like dead men, if we will be immobilized by our fear, or
whether, like Pastor Mary and the other Pastor Mary this morning, we will
continue to live the good news despite our fear knowing that with God there is
grace and ultimately no need to be afraid, because death doesn’t win, love wins.
This
morning and throughout the Easter season we proclaim, ”Christ is Risen!” Some have asked, wouldn’t it be proper
English to say, “Christ was raised”? Yet
that would put it in the past tense, something that happened long ago that has
no bearing on Christ’s state today. To
proclaim, “Christ is risen!” has an ongoing feeling to it, that Christ is
continually in a state of being risen.
The resurrection happened that Easter Day for Jesus, but it continues to
happen each day. When our loved ones
die, we trust God who keeps God’s promises to raise them to eternal life, but
each day, Jesus is calling us forward from our tombs to follow him. This is our chance to proclaim with Mary and
Mary, “He is risen!” Not that we would only proclaim with our voices, but also
with our actions. Jesus is bringing an earthquake, an earth shattering reality
to what we thought we knew, calls us from our mistakes and brokenness, he calls
us from our grief and pain, he calls us from our divisions, he calls us from
warfare, he calls us from blindness, and he breaks open that tomb. It is earth shattering, as that light comes
in. We have free will to ignore it and
stay where it is safe. But Pastor Mary
is calling us to something more, the something more that our heart has been
longing for. We’ll have to be
courageous. We’ll have to move forward
despite our fear. We’ll have to take
risks. But at the end of it all is a
Savior calling us to eternal life, abundant life right now, and a most amazing
peace and unity and love that is the whole point of living.
