Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
April 1, 2018
Easter
When I was a child, Easter meant two things-lots of
chocolate and a scratchy white dress. My
sister and I would race downstairs on Easter morning, knowing that if we did
not get to the Easter baskets before our little brother did, all the good
chocolate would be gone. Because my
sister and I were the only granddaughters on both sides of the family, our
grandmothers always made sure my sister and I had new white dresses for Easter,
and the frillier the better in their eyes.
While we were not thrilled about the dresses, even at a young age we
knew that the dresses were gifts of love and we adored our grandmothers. Easter began and ended with chocolate, and we
tolerated the dresses and soaked up the love in the middle.
The problem with Easter in our eyes was that when Easter
was over, the party was really over.
Unlike Christmas, where there were new toys to play with the next day
and for weeks and even months to come, on Easter, once the chocolate was gone, which
was always by bedtime if not before, there was nothing left but the dress, and
we were plenty happy to put the dress away for a while. Easter was wonderful, but the celebration was
completely over the very next day.
This morning, we hear an Easter story that almost seems to
be over before the story begins. Mary Magdalene,
Mary the mother of James, and Salome are on their way to the tomb with the sad
duty of anointing Jesus’ body for burial.
They are heading to the tomb even though they know full well that Jesus’
body is behind a stone they cannot move.
So, why are they going? They are
neither the first nor the last grieving people to do something that makes no
sense!
When they arrive at the tomb, much to their surprise, the
stone has been moved. Either someone
else has come to anoint the body ahead of them, or someone with malicious
intent has rolled the stone away. The
women are clearly alarmed when they enter the tomb, where they find a young man
dressed in a white robe who gives them this message: “Do not be alarmed. You
are looking for Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. He has been raised. He is not here….But go, tell his disciples
and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see him as he
told you.”
Jesus is not here.
He has been raised. We come to
church on Easter expecting to see the empty tomb and hear those very
words. We celebrate with festive music,
alleluias, and gorgeous flowers. But the
women were taken by complete surprise and have a most different reaction. The women fled the tomb, for terror and
amazement seized them, and they said nothing to anyone for they were
afraid. And those are the final words in
Mark’s gospel.
The women have been criticized relentlessly in the
commentaries over the years, having their faith and their discipleship called
into question. Despite the direction of
the young man in the tomb to go tell the disciples and Peter, the women fled
and said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. What kind of faithful response is that to the
good news that Jesus has been raised from the dead?
In the interest of full disclosure, I have to tell you that
this is my absolute favorite Easter story. If the women really understand that Jesus has
been raised from the dead, that the bonds of death have been broken and the
power of death has been overcome, then they understand that the world has been
turned upside down. Now they live in a world where anything is possible and
death no longer has the final word. If resurrection can happen, what else is
possible? All of the rules are changed now. How do we live in a world like
that? Terror and amazement seem to me a perfectly appropriate immediate
response to this brand new reality. The women actually understand the
far-reaching implications of resurrection.
We know that the women did not keep their silence forever, because we
are here. The shock value of resurrection may be lost on us all these years
later, but the women understood that nothing, nothing, will ever be the same. I
think Mary, Mary and Salome are the ones who actually understand the impact of
the Easter message.
How
do we live in a world in which Jesus is risen from the dead? We have the gift
of hindsight, which the women did not have. The women kept walking to the tomb
even though they had no idea how they would move the stone from the entrance to
the tomb. Easter happens every time we
keep walking toward challenges that seem impossible, knowing that there is no
stone we must move by ourselves. The women were alarmed by the empty tomb. We
are blessed with the knowledge that the tomb is empty, but Easter happens every
time we join the women in beholding the magnitude of what God has done for us
in raising Jesus from the dead. The women fled from the tomb in terror and
amazement at the news that Jesus was now in Galilee. Easter happens every time we go out to meet
Jesus in the Galilee of our own lives, the very ordinary places where we live
and work day in and day out. Easter is
not just a day with lots of chocolate and scratchy new dresses, or lots of
chocolate, wonderful music, beautiful flowers, and the return of the
Alleluias. Easter is a way of life, in
which we find Jesus, not sealed in a tomb, but meeting us where ever we go,
what ever challenges we face, and promising that there is no stone we must roll
away alone.
Amen.
