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Homepage >> Ministry >> Worship And Music >> Sermons >> I Believe in the Resurrection A Commentary on the Easter Gospel
Happy Easter. I wish each one of you a very happy Easter—happy in the risen Christ. I love today’s beautiful story from John’s Gospel, a story of meeting, of encounter with the risen Jesus. … Mary stood
weeping outside the tomb. "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know
where they have laid him." When she had said this, she turned around and
saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. For a brief time, we read in the Gospels, the risen Jesus was visibly present with his disciples. The Book of Acts tells us forty days. In these stories, Jesus comes to be with the disciples, but they do not recognize him at first (but she did not know it was Jesus). To me, the writers are saying, this was truly the same Jesus, but—to use Paul’s great word—changed. We shall all be changed, Paul wrote. It is the same Jesus, the whole person, changed, but truly there. The risen Jesus said to Mary: “Woman, why are you weeping?
Whom are you looking for?” Mary thought it was the gardener—they were after all in a garden—and in Fra Angelico’s lovely fresco of this scene, Jesus is carrying a gardener’s hoe over his shoulder. Well, so may the risen Jesus make a garden within us, if we let him. Mary said, thinking she was speaking to the gardener: “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him,
and I will take him away.” Then Jesus very simply spoke her name. “Mary” And here in the dawn light, Jesus once again spoke her name, as he must have so often. “Mary” As he spoke the names of Simon and his brother Andrew, calling them to follow him—and called Mary, and calls you and me to follow. “Mary” In these Easter stories, the disciples do not recognize Jesus until he does or says something familiar and characteristic. At the Supper at Emmaus, they recognized Jesus when he took the bread and broke it, as he had at the Last Supper, as he has us do in a few minutes. And here it is when Jesus spoke Mary’s name, and she knew it was him. She turned
and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to
her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father.” “Do not hold on to me.” Pictures of this scene have these words in Latin as the title: Noli me tangere. Do not cling to me. Do not hold on to my physical presence. Oh, hold on to and trust my presence, but not something visible. “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have
not seen and yet have come to believe.” (John 20:29) But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and
your Father, to my God and your God.’” That is our mission. To go to the world and say that Jesus died and rose and is with the Father in heaven. Where is that? Where God is. Where is that? Beyond us—therefore we use the imagery of “up.” And he is also with us. With us. When my wife Eve and I lived in New York City, when our kids were little—Addie, who is now twenty-eight was a baby—a good friend used to invite us to her house on Newfound Lake in New Hampshire. There was a large family compound along the lake, with a big yellow house that was her parents’—indeed I believe they were married on the porch. And family members had houses dotted along the lakeshore. Our friend had a modern house, lots of big glass windows looking out over the lake. We used to visit some times in the depths of winter, sometimes she would be
there and sometimes we had time off when she was teaching, so she kindly lent
it to us. It had heat, good heat actually, but she would turn the water off for
the winter. So the WC (not what they call it in What fun we had there. Our friend had a record—phonograph in those days—of the pianist Dinu Lipatti’s last concert, and listening to a CD today of him playing Bach or Schubert brings back memories of sitting by the fire. There were long hikes if there wasn’t snow, and if there was (and sometimes there was a lot) cross country skiing. I’d carry Addie in a knapsack on my back—one time I thought we had quite frozen her. I would see people ice fishing out on the lake. Normally, with New England’s famous pattern of thaws and deep freezes (which created havoc at my boarding school with hockey practice and games until a proper rink was built) the ice would not be smooth enough for skiing across. But one January we were there and the ice was smooth, with fresh snow, it was very cold indeed, but there was brilliant sunshine. Eve decided to stay in the house with the kids and I skied across the lake to the town of Hebron and back. Once out in the open on the lake, I stopped to rest on the poles, and look up at the beautiful view of Cardigan Mountain to the north, and the hills around the lake, and the lake stretching out. All that beauty is from the hand of God, made by God. Human life is made by God the Book of Genesis tells us, in God’s image and likeness, which above all, first of all means we are made capable of loving, our deepest human need to love and to be loved. God sent Jesus, the Son of God, that we might see in him God’s love for us. This great central day, there is the promise that when we die, we will be held in God’s love. Jesus died and was buried and on the third day rose and our Easter faith is that when we die we shall be raised to life with him. That when those we love die, they will be with him. And here and now—here and now—Jesus invites us into the new life, trusting that God is with us and loves us in him, and calls us to follow him on his way of self-giving love. “Do not hold on to me.” Do not hold on to this visible presence, given for just a short time. But hold on to God’s unseen presence, hold on in faith and love to the gift of the presence of God with us—God who loves us with Jesus’ love, Jesus, risen and glorified at the heart of God—with us, loving us. God gives us this gift of love, and calls us to trust in this love, and to build a life as a disciple of Jesus, following Jesus on his way of love, welcoming him into our lives—with us—with us when we come here to Holy Communion; with us when we listen here to his story told, when we read from the Bible, when we listen to what the preacher has heard; with us when we ask forgiveness and are forgiven; with us in times of prayer (when we go to the quiet place as he did) with him—it can be anywhere (a place of beauty, out on a frozen lake in the sun, resting on my ski poles, at a desk, in a hospital room); with us when life breaks—calling us to trust Jesus holds us; with us in the joyous loving in life, calling us to be thankful; with us in human beings in need (Jesus in what Mother Teresa of Calcutta called his distressing disguise)—the hungry to be fed, the stranger to be welcomed, the sick to be visited, kids to be taught and welcomed and brought up with being told, in word and sacrament that God loves them in Jesus. So come, risen Jesus, this Easter day of your rising, and be with me, be with us, be with those we love. Accept our trust and thanks and love. Amen.
The Bible quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Church of Christ in the USA, and used by permission. (This sermon was preached by the Rev. Raymond Webster, Rector, in St. Chrysostom’s Church, Chicago, Illinois, on Sunday, March 23, 2008, The Sunday of the Resurrection: Easter Day.)
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