We Have Seen The Lord! Easter March 23, 2008

(First, read the text for this sermon: John 20:1-18)

Early on the first day of the week, while it is still dark, Mary Magdalene is about to be shaken to the core. She’s been horrified and agitated over the past three days. Those feeling will now be multiplied! And she will share that stress with Jesus’ other followers – those who are in hiding.

Here’s what we read in the story: Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him."

This is a terrible, terrible thing! And it comes on top of the frightful events of the past three days: Jesus’ arrest; his being tortured; his execution on a cross as a political prisoner. Mary Magdalene and Jesus’ other followers have reached the end of their post-traumatic stress disorder rope. Mary Magdalene runs to tell Jesus’ followers in hiding. Peter and another disciple run to the tomb. They then believe Mary’s report that the tomb is empty. But they do not yet understand the scripture, that [Jesus] must rise from the dead. And so, in bewilderment and confusion and distress, they simply return to their homes.

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. This is a very moving story. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white….They said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." When she had said this, Mary, blinded by grief turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?" Supposing him to be the gardener, (I love that!) she said to him, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away." Jesus said to her, "Mary!" And then Mary knows that it is Jesus, in some sort of a risen bodily form – when he calls her by name. And so Mary is off again, running, to find Jesus’ followers who are in hiding. "I have seen the Lord!" she says to them, as she tires to catch her breath.

Does the news of the resurrection shake you, as it does Mary and Peter and the other disciple? Does it change you? Does it transform the way you live?

For many of us, instead, life will go on as it has before, when we leave this place. Many of us have domesticated the resurrection! Many of us limit the resurrection to what it means for us as individuals, and we limit its significance to an afterlife. The news of Easter becomes: “Jesus is raised! Now I’ll be able to go to heaven!”

But notice: that is not the way it is in the story! For Jesus followers, their Lord’s resurrection has significance for this world, for this life! And so, when Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord"; it is a nearly-unbelievable message of joy and hope because God has taken action to contradict this world’s powers who think that the way to solve problems is to kill people. The resurrection is God’s vindication of human life according to Jesus’ model. The resurrection is God’s condemnation of those who try to dominate through violence.

“I have seen the Lord!” is the witness of the first apostle – Mary Magdalene. And it is the beginning of the Christian community, because the message immediately becomes, “We have seen the Lord!”

We have seen the Lord alive, not dead! God’s hope for new life is alive on earth! That’s the good news of Easter. It is the fundamental message, still, proclaimed by those in the Christian community. We have seen the Lord!

Of course, this gospel message is foolishness to many! (Indeed, it is foolishness to many who are sitting in worship spaces on this day.) In First Corinthians, St. Paul calls it “the foolishness of our proclamation.” Paul writes that “the message about the cross is foolishness” to those who do not see or who cannot see or who refuse to see the Lord!

Certainly, there is much that causes blindness. There is our idolatry of self-sufficiency. That derails us from even opening ourselves to the risen Jesus who comes to us in those who want to help us through rough patches. There are the idolatries of celebrity and self-promotion that deform us to be selfish and competitive, rather than humble and interdependent. These days, dire economic anxieties – some real, most imagined – threaten to deform us to be fearful, believing that there is scarcity.

But, if we are formed instead in God’s truth (in a resurrection community of resistance to these lies), then we know that life is not about hunkering down and submitting to limits. Instead, we are called to the life of resurrection. And that means living according to the peculiar model of our resurrected Lord – that model that God has vindicated.

For instance, Jesus, an observant Jew, modeled the daily life of prayer and worship. And so, people of the resurrection consider what we are doing right now to be the most important thing we can do each week. Of course, that is foolishness, according to what the culture values, because the time we spend in worship does not produce anything! We are not accomplishing anything! According to the criteria of production and efficiency, what we are doing now is a waste of time! But people of the resurrection are very strange. We are drawn here, in resistance to all of that, to be fed in word and water and bread and wine. This is not an option. It’s essential. In the word and water and bread and wine we see the Lord! All of our other peculiar and foolish resurrection behaviors grow out of this that we are doing, as we are formed to follow the model of Jesus the Christ.

We have seen the Lord! And so, according to the model of Jesus the Christ, we know that we receive life only by drowning our self-centered selves. We know that we become rich only by giving away our selves and our money! According to Jesus’ model, we become ourselves authentically only in humility. We become strong only when we reveal our weaknesses and ask for help. We become strong only when we are interconnected. We become free only when we let go of self-righteousness and anger; when we receive forgiveness and when we pray for our enemies.

We have seen the Lord! Here’s the possibility that God holds out, in that good news: utter transformation. We Jesus people are transformed in resurrection hope, and that causes us to live in a way that other value systems brand as foolish and peculiar – but which is the only way to life and freedom and joy!

And here’s something else you know. When you and I live in these odd, counter-cultural ways, as people of the resurrection, then others see the Lord, the risen Jesus. Where? In us!

In the name of God who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pastor Andy Ballentine
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Williamsburg, Virginia