Resurrected Life

Easter Sunday    March 22, 2008

Psalm 118    John 20:1-18

            Easter always puts me in mind of lives that have undergone incredible transformation or change.  The miracle of Easter makes me think of the ways in which people are resurrected every day, even though this may not be the term we use to describe it.  There are times in most of our experiences when we feel as though we have hit the end of the road, when we don't see a way through.  We may hope that something shifts for us, but we don't really expect resurrection, do we?  Resurrection is the extreme of all possibilities that might be out there.  Resurrection is about finding life when all we expected to see was death.  In today's reading, Mary goes to the tomb early in the morning.  When she finds the tomb empty, her thoughts go immediately to the worse case scenario – someone has stolen Jesus' body.  Weeping, she runs back to find some support in her friends, Jesus other faithful followers.  She doesn't seem to give any thought at all to the possibility that Jesus is alive, or that the empty tomb might actually be a good thing.

            When I think in terms of our lives, I think we often err on the side of imagining the worst, rather than holding out any hope for the best.  I don't know if it is human nature, or a side effect of the culture in which we live, but we seem to be much better at preparing for the worst than we are at looking for a miracle.  When I speak to classes about the mind-body connection in healing, it is always interesting to bring to light stories I have run across about how people's expectations color the outcome of their relationship with an illness.  If someone expects the worst, then it can be pretty much impossible for anything but the worst to happen for them.  It is almost as if our bodies are not willing to go out on a limb even toward something wonderful, like healing, unless our minds promise to come out there with them. In one of her lectures, Carolyn Myss spoke of this in her very candid way by saying that she has always thought it odd that people would pray to God for something to happen in their lives, and then they would run around shutting the windows and doors of possibility by saying all of the various ways in which what we were asking for could not happen.  By the time we are done outlining all of the ways in which God cannot do what we are asking, we have left very little in the way of options even for an omnipotent God.  If our minds have closed the doors and windows, then it is impossible even for God to open them.

For those who loved and followed Jesus, this may have been true as well, although in a slightly different way.  They desperately wanted Jesus to be right; they wanted him to be the One, the Messiah for whom faithful Jews had been waiting lo these many years.  And for quite some time they believed that he was the one.  When he preached, and healed, they could see how he could possibly be the one.  They listened attentively to his words and they watched him in action, finally allowing themselves to think "well, maybe he is the messiah after all."  But once he was killed, it was difficult for anyone to hold out much hope.  If he was dead, then how could he live up to the promises made and the hopes held so dearly in their hearts?  How could he effect change from beyond the grave?  How could a dead man be their leader, their king, and their savior? 

My sense of the situation is that Mary and the others were barely holding themselves together.  They knew that they were on the short list of those who were next in line for punishment if not death due to their loyalty to Jesus.  And so, not only were they dealing with their incredible personal sense of grief and loss as Jesus' friends, as well as their sense of renewed hopelessness in facing the harsh realities of being Jews under Roman rule, but they were also dealing with fear concerning their personal safety.  Mary took a risk by going off to the tomb that early morning.  In light of the danger of the situation, it would have been far more sensible for her to stay away from the tomb, distance herself from Jesus as much as possible.  But she showed up, and after running to inform the others, she stayed behind, weeping, mourning in the last known place where Jesus had been.

There is an interesting theory put forth recently about hope, which I think is pretty curious.  Derek Jensen, the author, claims that hope is not a positive thing.  He says that hope gets in the way of our taking action, and attempting to bring about change in our lives.  I have been wrestling with his thought for awhile now, and I wonder if we can tease out some new understanding of what is happening in this scripture, if we relate it back to Jensen's idea.  Maybe Mary's staying behind is a sign that she is unwilling to passively accept whatever comes to her in terms of Jesus' legacy?  Maybe the fact that she stays in the garden, near his tomb, is a sign that she is not going to settle for some false possibility that someone else will make everything okay again for her.  Maybe she stays behind because she wants to work things out for herself, on her own terms?  And maybe she knows deep down in her soul that there is more to this story than what they have seen so far.  Maybe, like so many of us, she needs some time away from the hustle and bustle of the world so that she can get her thoughts straightened out and bring some peace to her heart.  If hope is in the picture for Mary, it is an active hope, one that moves her to ask questions of people like the gardener, and get answers well beyond those she might have been willing to settle for.

When we refuse to settle for hoping that everything will turn out okay, when we take it upon ourselves to make a difference in our own situation, then we are choosing action rather than passively waiting for someone else to take care of us and make everything all right again.  The resurrection of Christ is a powerful event.  Easter is an amazing and miraculous celebration in the life of the church.  But this can also be, and should also be a personal event.  It should be a reminder that we too, might experience resurrection if we can trust God to create possibilities where we can't see them in the midst of the illness and grief that are part and parcel of human existence.