Padre Josh and I agree that love is absolutely central to the Bible’s message and God’s purpose for sending Jesus. Since we’ve studied the Gospel of John over our Lenten season, we’ve seen the scriptures that really back this up, especially with Nicodemus, “For God so loved the World that God gave the only son that we should not perish but have eternal life.” and “God did not send the son into the world to condemn the world but that the world/cosmos might be saved by him.” Jesus shows love for the woman at the well by revealing his identity to her and spending time in her village. Jesus is loving Lazarus when he weeps for him. Because love is so important in our Christian faith, so many kids’ first song they learn in Sunday school is “Jesus loves me.”
Maybe it seems obvious that love is at the center, but when I look at this world and sometimes my own life, I don’t see love being put first. I see power and money influencing people’s choices and love isn’t always a consideration at all. We need the Easter message because we forget how powerful love can be, and how plentiful it is, available and accessible to everyone, and how it has the power to change things. Easter day is about God loving us too much to let us stay the same, God drawing near to us in a relationship of love, showing us in the life of Jesus how to share and grow that love, the powers in this world being threatened by that kind of power and trying to destroy it and how love cannot be destroyed.
I confess I have felt the heavy weight of the world’s troubles recently. Friends are afraid to travel in case they will be targeted because of their race. Other friends are affected by anti-trans legislation and sentiment. There are several major wars raging, one started by our own country with no clarity about why or when it might end. Children are going hungry in this country of great wealth and plentiful food. I feel discouraged sometimes and I wonder if anything can ever change.
But I am encouraged by the Easter story. We repeat the story about love and how much it means and how much it can change us, to give us hope, help us become aware of the world’s joy and pain, and to help us decide how to use our power. Will we use our power for ourselves or others, for hurting or mending, for controlling or for collaborating?
The story of Easter is the story of God changing us through love, God changing the conversation from death into new life. On Good Friday death was all around. Death was the tool used to control and end the relationships of love that were growing. It was the tool of discouragement, because discouraged people may well give up their dream. It was the tool of fear because fear can be used to control people. Death was on the hearts and lips of the women of Jerusalem and the disciples, the end of this relationship, that hope that Jesus brought, this ministry of helping those who are poor, sick, and imprisoned. Death and grief gripped everyone who was there at the cross and everyone who stayed home. And that was the feeling over the weekend.
Then a new week was starting, the first day of the week. That’s when God created the heavens and the earth in the book of Genesis, when love began to bring all things into being, Jesus the word, the Logos going out over the waters and speaking each thing into existence. This Easter day, that word Jesus tore down the gates of hell and put death in its place, so it would not have the final word, but love surpassed death as the most powerful. That power of love was so strong it tore open the tomb. It was so strong it made Jesus look like a gardener. So there comes Mary with death still on her mind, all the thoughts of what could have been, all the finality of a terrible, painful, traumatic ending, and all the power of Rome hanging over her and everything Jesus had ever taught her burning throat. But despite the threat, she goes to the tomb, out of love, putting aside fear and despair.
Mary finds a surprise there. The tomb is open and Jesus’ body isn’t there. Now she’s trying to make sense of this. The only possible explanation is that he has been taken away. But Jesus has given her a powerful tool which is love, so she goes to Peter. Because of Jesus those who follow him have something very powerful, each other. They have love for each other. They face none of this alone. They have community. They have each other’s help. So now Peter and the beloved disciple (probably John) are running to the tomb to confirm the story that Jesus isn’t there. Then they go home.
Mary stays. She sees and talks to an angel, a messenger and then she turns and someone is there who she expects to be the gardener, because they are in a garden. And let me tell you if anything gives me hope it is a garden. Jesus has just said to the thief on the cross, “Today you will be with me in the garden.” You’ve heard paradise all your lives but it is the same word as garden. Here they are in the place of abundant life, the place where everything was in right relationship with everything else at the beginning of creation, they are here in paradise, in the garden, in the place of growth and hope and love. Then Jesus says Mary’s name and she recognizes him. The gardener, the shepherd, the love of God on earth knows her name, says her name and finally she sees him and responds.
In our grief and fear the God of love sees us and knows us. Jesus loves me, this I know. He calls my name and your name in the garden of love and new life on this Easter Morning. So change isn’t only possible, it is promised, it is the end of the story that we already know. So we know we will be changed to be more loving. We can help that along if we choose by the choices we make. We know the world will be changed, although it may very well get worse before it gets better. Still we choose the way of love because we are followers of Jesus and we believe in God’s power, love, and grace.
We go to the tomb together, all of us in the beloved community and we find it empty this Easter morning. No tomb can imprison love, no chains can restrain it. Love is why God created us. Love is why Jesus came to earth, lived and died. And love is our power and purpose, bringing us together and sending us out changed people of new life, resurrection witnesses bearing that love to the world.
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