Easter Sunday - Move out of the Tomb

The New Revised Standard Version The Resurrection of Jesus

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they went in, they did not find the body. 4 While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. 5 The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. 6 Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, 7 that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” 8 Then they remembered his words, 9 and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. 10 Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. 11 But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. 12 But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

I’m sure many of you were shocked by the photos of the cathedral of Notre Dame aflame this week. This magnificent structure, an architectural icon, engulfed in smoke and fire. Even before the fire was contained, the flames put out, we were hearing lament at all that had been lost. The spire, the art, the iconic horizon. The people of Paris and around the world raised their voices in sadness, stunned at this sudden loss.

In a moment like that, if this is a place or symbol that you’ve held dear, how can you not simply stand stunned, shocked? Many of my friends on Facebook started posting photos of their own visits to Notre Dame from years past. Memories, eulogies, trying to claim something from their own stories to help resonate and make sense of the sadness of loss.

This loss of Notre Dame is a very public and accessible entry point to so many other losses we feel. A parent dies. We lose a job. Our bodies break down.

There is an inclination to reclaim what we’ve lost, but be honest, we know we can’t. And so we feel the pain, the stuckness, the stunning truth of a world not as it should be.

Buildings fall. Lives are lost. Health changes.

Where are you today? Are you stuck, stunned, lost, hitting the wall? Aren’t we all, in some way? Let’s acknowledge that.

Are you stuck? Are you looking around among all the dead things? Are you hitting the wall?

Aren’t we all?

The Good News of this morning tells us this: Jesus has moved through loss, through death. Through darkness, through brokenness. He is on the move still, out ahead of us and calling all creation into life, fuller life, truer life, life to the fullest.

If you’ve gathered here this morning to celebrate Christ’s resurrection, I’m gonna guess you have some inkling that this is true. Some sense that it is worthwhile to hold a vigil of hope, a movement toward the possibility, even with all that we face. That there is something going on in this story of life from death.

If you’re like me and like so many of us who have discovered this liberating story, you also know that you’re stuck along the way. You’ve stopped somewhere in the story.

Where are you?

Are you stuck, sitting with the disciples at the house? Did you come home on Friday night and just lay out on the floor? Through the rest of the Sabbath day, could you only just sleep and cry and do nothing? You’ve hit the wall and you’re stuck there, all hope was lost, your close friend and mentor was brutally murdered, all that you’d been working for seems lost. Are you stuck there on the floor?

Or maybe you’re at the tomb. You’ve gathered up enough energy to collect up the spices and you’ve gone to pay your respects. Your head is in a daze still — your grief is overwhelming, your thoughts like scrambled eggs — nothing coherent, but you can put one foot in front of the other to get there. Are you standing in a stunned fog? You’re expecting to find the dead among the dead. How will you move on? You don’t know, maybe you won’t be able to. But you’ll pay your respects.

Can we just say, for a moment, that it is ok to be in these places? To acknowledge the pain and the turmoil of these disciples and to also link it to the pain each of us know? We long for life and hear the promises of it, but a lot of the time, we find ourselves standing stunned or facedown on the floor.

May you hear that there is love and grace for you if you are in that spot.

“Come, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and you will find rest for your souls.”

In our community, we say that you are welcome here, all are welcome here. And we mean that. Come with your burdens, your heavy loads, your sorrows, your foes. You are welcome.

So where do you place yourself among these followers in the morning of Easter?

Once you have found yourself, recognized and identified where you are, I want to also share with you that there is an invitation to movement.

The messengers in bright clothing invite with the question and testimony: “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.”

Do you hear it? The invitation — friends, I kindly ask you to open your eyes — what you expected to be the continuation of the story of death and loss — this is not what is happening. He is no longer here — he has risen. Remember what he told you, how you have already received this message of life beyond death. The invitation is this: go find him, move toward the life, move with him into the way of the living.

Elsewhere in the Christian texts, there is a similar questioning invitation: “O Death, where is your sting? O Grave, where is your victory?”

Where there was the expectation of death, something else has happened.

Death has been undone, unmasked, its power passed through. And the one who is on the other side of it, who has passed through horror, through pain, through sadness just like we know and experience — Jesus Christ — he invites us to come join him.

The Good Story that we’re hearing today invites us to move out of those places of death and sadness into a new kind of life. When we talk about resurrection, it is easy to think that it means returning to how it was before the pain, before the loss.

But the story we find here is one of movement ahead. The tape is not played backwards, rewound to some better day. No, the pain and the struggle has been passed through. And we are invited to step out and move forward with Jesus into a new kind of life. The scars remain, the pain is not erased…but there is movement beyond into a new way of living.

Here at St. James, we take this movement of Jesus seriously in how we understand our lives and our service. We seek to move into the world in the way Jesus did, faithfully seeking to love our neighbors, to act for justice, to seek forgiveness and reconciliation. We seek to take part in making all things new, all of creation, all relationships, all lives becoming the fullest that God intends them to be.

We participate in this life together, belonging to one another. Like the women who hear the call to find life, we feel the call to share the stories of life and acceptance and grace that we have experienced with each other, with you. We know we are not perfect, but we have also touched up against the grace of God which allows us to move forward from our imperfections, moving into life, together.

The Hope of Easter is not confined to this one day. The Hope of Easter, this movement by God out of the tomb which calls us all out of our own deaths as well is a Hope for all of life. It is a call for us each to hear, an invitation for each of us, wherever we find ourselves today. It is a call to new life, a call to re-made life, a call to participating in the re-making and restoring of all things.

It is an invitation and a task to be lived out today, yes, and tomorrow, and the next day, and for all time. It is a call for Earth Day, not staying silent or spread out on the floor in despair for our world, but turning to active engagement in the small and big ways that we can participate in the restoration of our world, the renewing of Creation. It is a call for our nation, whether we feel downtrodden, or bitter, or apathetic — a call to rise up and speak that there is life beyond our division, possibility when we lean upon each other’s gifts and strengths, hope for how we can join hands and make peace. The Hope of Easter is an invitation heard in the despair of homelessness and poverty in our city — a call for all people to band together to care for the ones among us in greatest need; to share of our resources, our church buildings, our food, our love to support in all people fully claiming their humanity and lifting the bonds of oppression.

The hope of Easter reverberates out in the testimony of that morning, the words spoken by a small group of women who had their whole frame of reference turned upside down. And it invites our lives to be turned upside down too, shaken free from despair, given meaning and purpose in the loving way of Jesus Christ, for the life of the world.