John 20:1-18
Meeting Your Death by Rosemary Wahtola Trommer
Because there are no clear instructions,
I follow what rises up in me to do.
I fall deeper into love with you.
I look at old pictures.
I don’t look at old pictures.
I talk about you. I say nothing.
I walk. I sit. I lie in the grass
and let the earth hold me.
I lie on the sidewalk, dissolve
into the sky. I cry. I don’t cry.
I ask the world to help me stay open.
ask again, please, let me feel it all.
fall deeper in love with the people
still living. I fall deeper in love
with the world that is left –
this world with its spring
and its war and its mornings,
this world with its fruits
that ripen and rot and reseed,
this world that insists
we keep our eyes wide,
this world that opens
when our eyes are closed.
Because there are no clear instructions,
I learn to turn toward the love that is here,
Though sometimes what is here is what’s not.
There are infinite ways to do this right.
That is the only way.
We are here today to celebrate Easter. What a wonderful thing to do. Across the world today there will be loud brass and clashing cymbals. There will be banks of lilies and children hunting pretty eggs. There will be singing and feasting among all those who believe Jesus is risen. And there will be singing and feasting among those who hardly know who Jesus is. And chocolate. Mounds of chocolate, food of the angels. You don’t have to believe in Jesus to love chocolate. So before we move on with this celebration, I want us to take a deep breath and sit, just for a minute, with the realities of the first Easter. The one before the celebration.
Easter morning begins in grief. Those who knew and loved Jesus were in the deep shock of mourning. They were huddled together in hiding, fearing what Rome had done to Jesus and wondering if they were next. It was the women who left that hiding place to do their work, women’s work, unwrapping the broken body of their friend so they could clean it and rewrap it, packed with spices. They were the ones who discovered the body was missing. In John’s version they run fast to report this further loss. This insult to their grief. Someone has taken him!
Some of the disciples run with them back to the grave. They see the evidence - open tomb, folded cloths - but they don’t know what it’s evidence of. They go home, confused, demoralized, even sadder and more afraid than before. Mary stays by the stone, weeping. She sees two angels, who ask her, “Why are you weeping?” Why indeed.
Let’s stop there a minute, because Easter doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It happens at the end of Jesus’ life, and we’re told that life was worth mourning. Mary weeps. Mary weeps because of what she thinks is lost. Because of what for a short time she had. That’s the part of the story celebrations take for granted, but let’s not. Let’s remember this Jesus who lived. He said, “God is love.” And then he showed people what that meant. God loves and values every person – rich and poor, old and young, kind and cruel, those with their act together and those falling apart. Jesus treated every one with respect and compassion. He believed the world should be just, as God is just. He believed the world should be generous, as God is generous. He called people into community, to care for each other, in opposition to Empire, which destroyed community for the benefit of the powerful. He changed lives. Knowing Jesus was so amazing that people left everything they had built in their lives just to be with him, to live like him.
That’s why today’s word is vision. Jesus brought the world a God-sized vision of what life could be. When he died, people thought they had lost more than a friend. They thought they had lost that vision, and God along with it. No wonder Mary weeps.
Mary turns, and sees Jesus. But not the crucified, broken Jesus. A Jesus she mistakes for the gardener. “Tell me where you have taken him!” That’s the only logical explanation. Someone has taken him to a place of disrespect. It’s then that Jesus speaks her name. Mary! He names her – seeing her for who she is, right to the heart. Mary knows him as her beloved friend because he knows her as his beloved friend. She sees him because he sees her. The way God sees her, beloved friend. And in that moment, she begins to believe that he isn’t gone and neither is all he stood for, all he taught them, all he invited them to believe is possible.
We say Easter is the celebration of the fact that Jesus gives us new life. We say that because Jesus gave his followers a new way of living, a God way of living. We miss the profound miracle of Easter when we don’t stop long enough to see the ways Jesus makes our lives new. We miss the ongoing miracle of Resurrection when we don’t stop to name the ways our lives are shaped by Jesus every day. We have been invited into living the vision of love and community that is God’s vision, that remakes the world.
Mary and the disciples didn’t stop grieving Jesus’ death that Easter morning. They didn’t stop fearing Rome or missing their friend at the table. But over time they became certain that he was not dead, but alive and with them. They learned to tell people of his vision, God’s vision, for what life in this world can be. They came to know what people have come to know across the millennia, that Jesus is alive among us. His vision of love for the world is powerful because it is true. He loves us profoundly and completely. He knows our names, and he invites us to know each other and to love each other.
Rosemary Wahtola Trommer reminds us that when we lose someone precious, there are no instructions. Surely Jesus’ friends felt his loss the rest of their lives, just as we feel the many losses we have known. Since there are no instructions, the best we can do is to fall more deeply in love. To fall completely, profoundly in love with God, and with Jesus who shows us God. Easter is a celebration of life. Let it be for us a celebration of love. And let us resolve to do all we can to be in love with the world and its peoples as God is in love with us all. Let Easter be a vision of what can be, and let’s hold it not just today, but always.