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The First
First-Responder
by the Rev. Rich Smith
March 23, 2008
John 20:1-18
A seasoned Sunday school teacher told
me once about the time when, tired of the commercialism surrounding
Easter -- the bunnies, and eggs, the fancy dresses – she decided to
make sure that her class knew the TRUE meaning of Easter. She
began by asking them if anyone knew what day it was. A chorus of
voices responded, "Easter!"
"What do we celebrate on Easter?" she
asked. One little girl was waving her arm frantically, so the
teacher called on her. "Easter was when Jesus was born and we give each
other presents." In disappointment the teacher said, "No, dear,
that's Christmas." With a sigh, she tried again. Now there was
little boy on the other side of the room waving his arm. "Bobby, do you
know what Easter is?"
"Yes, teacher, I sure do," Bobby responded.
"Easter is when we all dress up in costumes and go to people's houses
and they give us candy." The teacher was deflated. Deciding to
give it one last shot, she asked again, "Can anyone tell me what Easter
is?" Little Susie, who always knew the right answers, finally
said, "It's O.K. teacher I know what Easter is! Easter is when
Jesus died on the cross and was put in the tomb." The
teacher was getting excited now: "And what happened then, Susie?"
"Well, after three days the angel came and rolled the stone away from
the tomb, and, and,..."
"Yes, Susie, that's right, tell us what next!" "And
Jesus came out of the tomb, and if he sees his shadow there's only six
more weeks of winter!"
One of my colleagues confesses that when she was a
little girl, her image of Easter was of Jesus getting rescued from a
huge bowl of gravy. It didn't have anything to do with Easter
dinner, but with the fact that she always mis-heard that old
hymn: "Low in the gravy lay Jesus my Savior....."
Having been preaching about Easter for nearly a
third of a century, I've had to counter a lot of mis-conceptions about
Easter. I've heard a lot of explanations for what happened, and
I've offered quite a few myself. I have wondered if, after all
these years, there is anything new I can say. But I have
concluded: explaining Easter isn't really the point.
Understanding what happened isn't the most important thing.
Because Easter is not so much about explanation as it is
experience. It is not what happened, but what happens.
Easter is what happens in the midst of life, and in
the midst of death, and in the midst of our beautiful and beleaguered
world.
Speaking of “beleaguered.....” It has been quite a
month for our United Church of Christ! First there came word that
because of a certain presidential candidate’s address to our General
Synod last summer, our tax-exempt status is being looked into by the
Internal Revenue Service. This caused one local church to put a
new message on their sign: “The IRS is investigating us. Why
aren’t you?” You see, we should jump at every opportunity to tell
our story. Then in the past week our largest congregation,
Trinity UCC in Chicago has been all over the news – at least showing
that Barack Obama isn’t a Muslim!
But there are larger issues to be concerned
with. Our UCC President, John Thomas, issued a Holy Week message
to our churches in which he said, “As we mark the fifth anniversary of
the beginning of the war in Iraq we seek words to sustain those who
have grown weary... We listen for words that can call us beyond our
weary lament to action, wakening us to commitment, rousing us from
resignation, calling us to hope... (Yet) Amid our weariness....
may we be confronted once again with a messenger telling us "Do not be
afraid!" May we turn from our vigil over the dead... to a courageous
witness to life and peace in the Risen Christ. May our lights,
reflecting the light of Christ, dispel the shadows, that morning by
morning our voices may sing and our deeds proclaim, "The powers of
death have done their worst, but Christ their legions has dispersed;
let shouts of holy joy outburst. Alleluia!"
An appropriate and needed message, which raises us
to a higher plane. But, because Thomas’ message was posted on the
UCC’s website, it is set up for responses also to be posted, of which
there were many. The first one said, simply, “Good grief, Thomas.
Can't you refrain from grinding your political ax even during Holy
Week?” But that was quickly followed by a rejoinder which led to
a debate over the meaning of Easter itself.
For the next responder observed, “Y'all do realize
that Jesus was executed, right? By the state? For essentially political
reasons? It saddens me to see so many people miss the point of Good
Friday and Holy Week and Easter and wanting something fluffy and
friendly instead. Jesus died on the cross. And Jesus (is) risen from
the dead. If you don't think those are political statements, then
you're missing the point of the Gospel.” (Our favorite
Jesus scholars, Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, would agree, as
they wrote in their book The Last Week, “God has vindicated Jesus. God
has said 'yes' to Jesus and 'no' to the powers who killed him... Jesus'
passion got him killed. But God has vindicated Jesus. This is the
political meaning of Good Friday and Easter.")
But then another person jumped into the fray: “Jesus
did not die to make a political statement. God incarnate put on flesh
and went to the cross to redeem our sinful flesh and reconcile us to
himself. He rose again from the dead because he had won victory over
sin, death, and the grave. And he will come again to set things right.
Through Christ we have forgiveness of sin and eternal life. Behold the
lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. That my friend is the
message of Holy Week.” (It wasn’t John McCain, though he
certainly knows a thing or two about rising from the dead!)
Well, this went on, back and forth, for several more
rounds. As great a gift as the Internet is, as an egalitarian
public forum where even shy people can be heard as loudly as the
boisterous, I do wonder about people who seem to have nothing to do but
respond to blogs.
Finally one writer summed it up: “Consider the
reality that both views are true, just as Jesus is both fully human and
fully God. We must not allow the sacrificial portion of Jesus death to
stand in the way of (doing) social justice....”
So, as I said, Easter is endlessly debated, but in
the end, it’s not about a debate, or an explanation, but
experience. And so I go back to the story itself, and discover
that if there is one person in that story who represents what Easter is
all about for me, it would have to be Mary Magdalene. There has
been a renewed interest in her in recent years, both by historians and
in the popular imagination. She obviously didn't really
understand what had happened. First she mistakes Jesus for the
gardener. Then she tries to cling to him, to keep him there with
her physically. But it was Mary who perhaps more than any other
of Jesus' followers really experienced what Easter is about. She
experienced transformation, and new life, and because of her, the story
continues and it is lived out today in all its personal and communal
and even political meanings.
Her story is often misunderstood. Legend has
it that she was a harlot, perhaps the one Jesus saved from
stoning. The image has persisted throughout history, and even
today there are things like the Mary Magdalene Project in Orange
County, California, which is dedicated to getting prostitutes off the
streets and helping them turn their lives around. I don't fault
that ministry, nor the new life and transformation -- even resurrection
-- that comes from this, only the name.
For there is absolutely no biblical evidence that
Mary Magdalene ever was a harlot. All we really know is that she
was a business woman from the town of Magdala, and evidently very
successful. She met Jesus and began traveling with him and the
disciples early on, and her wealth allowed her to finance their
journeys. She was with them in Jerusalem at the time of the
crucifixion, and when all the male disciples fled, she stayed.
She was with the other women at the foot of the cross. And later,
it was she who went to the tomb at dawn on the first day of the
week. The evidence is: she was a faithful follower of Jesus, even
more so than the chosen twelve.
But there is no evidence that she was a wanton
woman. We are only told that she was healed, by Jesus, of "seven
demons." Whether this was a physical or emotional or even a
spiritual sickness, we are not told. All we know, is that when
she encountered Jesus, she was freed of them. She had no theology to
explain it, but she simply knew that after meeting Jesus, her life was
changed, transformed. She followed him. She remained
faithful to the cross, and the tomb, and beyond.
Some traditions have speculated that Mary may have
been more than a disciple of Jesus, some have suggested they were
married, and the novel The Da Vinci Code even proposed they had a child
together, with descendants living to this day. It makes for
a good story, but again, there is no historical evidence for that. What
is clear is that Jesus and Mary had a very special bond. And it
may well have been that because of the emotional and spiritual
closeness that Mary felt with Jesus, she was the one who had the most
powerful experience of his presence after his death. It may well
be that Mary was the one who knew in her heart of hearts that somehow,
even after all that had happened, that he was still alive, still a
living presence that even death could not destroy, that somehow he was
still with them. And so she was the one who went to the other
disciples, saying, "I have seen the Lord," and she didn't just announce
the good news, she lived it, she embodied it, and somehow they, too,
became convinced and began to live it as well. Her transformation
became their transformation, and Christ's followers were raised up to
become his new body. She became known as the “apostle to the
apostles,” or, as I like to call her, the first
“first-responder.” For as we have learned, when tragedy strikes,
it is often the first responders who make the difference between life
and death. And that she did!
All this is not so much to explain Easter, but
rather to give us a handle so that we can live Easter. If we are
Christ's followers, then Christ is alive in us, and we are his
body. And like Mary, we are called to be first responders – to
arrive at the tombs early, to respond to suffering, to hate, to war and
injustice with compassion, love, peacemaking and deeds of
justice. If we are transformed by the risen Christ, then we in
turn will work with God to transform the world. As Borg and
Crossan write, "Easter means God's Great Cleanup of the world has
begun – but it will not happen without us." We may feel very close to
Jesus when we imagine ourselves in the garden, where “he walks with me
and he talks with me and tells me I am his own...” But following Jesus
after that encounter, they write, means caring about "what he was
passionate about…the kingdom of God, what life would be like on earth
if God were king, (“King of kings and Lord of lords,” as we shall
singn) and the rulers, domination systems, and empires of this world
were not. It is the world the prophets dreamed of – a world of
distributive justice in which everyone has enough and systems are fair.”
And so being a first responder means there is more
for us to do than merely take good news back to the others: it's a call
for our whole lives. The world should be able to see in our lives our
own passion for the truth that Jesus is risen and that God has begun
the "Great Clean-up," the one that won't happen without us. For if we
go back to our lives tomorrow as if nothing has changed, what then have
we really experienced? Like Mary, we are transformed, and
we are invited to be part of the transformation of the world.
Or, more simply put, do you want to explain Easter,
or does Easter explain you?
.
Last updated Wednesday, Februrary 29, 2008
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