Sermon for Hinde Street Methodist Church
Sunday 16th April 2017 10am communion service
Colossians 3:1-4
John 20.1-18
The majority of British people waking up today, if they think about it, will not understand what we’re doing in church. Children will be looking forward to Easter eggs. Adults will be thankful for the third day of a Bank holiday weekend. And even those who do understand why Christians are here today, are likely to be sceptical. How is it possible to believe in the resurrection? It isn’t logical and there isn’t any scientific proof. So why spend even half an hour in church? Well, we haven’t come to receive proof. The only proof the Gospels offer, is that the tomb is empty, and the linen cloths that Jesus was wrapped in when they laid him in the tomb are still there. The rest is experience, trust, witness! The first disciples believed that Jesus has been raised from the dead, because that was their experience, and it should be ours too. ‘Though looking at today’s world, it’s not surprising that many people find it hard to believe that resurrection is possible, let alone their experience. It’s questioned by the chemical attack on children and adults by President Assad in Syria. By so-called Islamic State’s, use of innocent people as shields, as Iraqi troops try to retake Mosul. By the dangerous posturingof North Korea and the US. By the increasing impoverishment of the poorest in our country. By the deaths caused by mud-slides in Columbia. By illnesses and disabilities that take away people’s capacity to act for themselves. By… I’ll stop there. I think you get the picture. How is it possible to believe in resurrection in the face of such loss, grief and devastation? Today’s Gospel doesn’t tell us how. But it does tell a story of how Mary’s mourning was turned into dancing.
Today’s Gospel begins with Mary’s distress and confusion. When she arrives at the tomb, seeing that the stone has been rolled away, she runs to tell Simon Peter and the beloved disciple. We can hear the distress in her voice. “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him."What follows are seven verses, which tell of a race between the two men, explains what they see, that the beloved disciple believed, and that they returned home. That’s it. There is no rejoicing. No celebrating. “For as yet they did not understand… that he must rise from the dead.” Mary disappears from these verses, and it’s only when we get to the 11th verse, that we realise she’s still there. Weeping. The first part of this story, presents us with three different responses to the empty tomb, and each is designed to invite us to decide how we respond to the empty tomb. Are we like Simon Peter who looks but does not understand? Are we like the beloved disciple who believed without even going into the tomb? Or are we like Mary who went to the tomb expecting to find a corpse? For us, centuries after the resurrection, that might sound like unbelief. Yet I suspect that unbelief looks more like, coming to celebrate resurrection today, without having shared in the emotional rollercoaster of Holy Week. And that if we’re to experience resurrection now, we need to face death in the face, with Mary. Mary’s emotions include grief, loss, confusion, devastation, mourning, distress and more… All the emotions we know from times of loss … The emotions we feel when we see news of people suffering from war, natural disasters, poverty and illnesses… Simone Weil, the French philosopher and mystic, understood this. She calls these feelings “affliction.” And she was convinced, that “Affliction contains the truth about our condition.” In other words, it’s no good living in a long and happy state of illusion (or leaping from Palm Sunday to Easter day), as if death isn’t real, or bad things don’t happen. It’s only when we face the truth of our feelings, only when we acknowledge the reality of death, and only when we have the courage to face a corpse, that we’re likely to experience resurrection. But I’m getting ahead of myself! Let’s go back to the story.
Mary expected to find a corpse, she wasn’t afraid of her feelings, and she’s willing to stay with them in the face of death. But we only realise she’s still there after the other disciples have gone. She’s weeping. And now, if we’re attentive, we begin to see clues about what Mary is about to discover. Last time we hear of weeping, outside a tomb, it was Lazarus’. The Jews, Mary and Jesus himself, wept because Lazarus had died. And Mary’s weeping brings all that happened there into the present. Lazarus’s resurrection led many to believe in Jesus and so the religious authorities plotted against him. But Lazarus was alive! When Jesus appears and Mary mistakes him for the gardener we might remember the story of another woman, who like Mary, was ignorant of who she was talking to by a well, but ran back into the village and says to her friends and neighbours, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”Later, Mary will make a similar journey back to the disciples. But there will be no question this time. There will be shots of joy! “I have seen the Lord…” But I’m getting ahead of myself again. In between, comes the poignant moment of when Jesus, the good shepherd who knows his sheep by name, says to her, “Mary!” And turning, she responds, “Rabbouni! (which means teacher).” It does indeed, but the version of the word she uses, is a lovely form of endearment. No wonder she tried to hold him. It’s what a close friend would do to express grief or joy, but one commentator suggests that by trying to hold onto Jesus, she was trying to return to the way things were before Jesus’ death. And that if she had clung to the Jesus she once knew, she might not have been able to proclaim the Jesus she now recognized, as her Lord and God. This is significant, because it points us to something really important about the experience of resurrection, and it’s that it alters our perception of who we are and what God is calling us to do and be. All of a sudden we start to trust that who God says we are might actually be true. That God might have something in mind for us that we’ve not allowed ourselves to believe. And we see it as Mary sets off as a witness, a confident witness, to the resurrection.
This week, 13 and a half years after the massacre of 385 people in Beslan school, the Human Rights court in Strasbourg concluded that Russia had sufficient information to stop the attack by Chechen rebels who killed them. A group of mothers has been pushing for a full investigation in the Russian courts for several years, they’ve been rejected time and time again, but now they hope that they might get one. One of them says, “Having felt this pain, I can't let anyone else suffer the same way. We have to make sure something like this is never repeated.” Yesterday, was the 28th anniversary of the Hillsborough Disaster when 96 men, women and children died in a crush at the Sheffield football stadium. Afterwards, Liverpool fans were painted as the hooligans, responsible for the disaster. It took 27 years of campaigning by family and friends for their names to be cleared, giving justice not only to them, but to the wider community as well. The same happened for those who participated in the truth and reconciliation process in South Africa.
In each of these situations, there have been people – like Mary – willing to face the reality of their loss, and at the same time to hold onto the conviction that justice and resurrection are possible. I think they are connected. Those who are willing to face death, the tomb, loss, (with care and support of course), discover that something in them changes for the good, that hope is a possibility, and they can speak as if it is real. This is resurrection. It is a change in perspective. And we need to talk about it, because people need to hear “I have seen the Lord” when they only see violence, pain, suffering, despair and fear… They need to hear it in the midst of all that which seems to be the opposite of the resurrected life. Of course, this won’t provide the proof, that some people will want. But living out of the conviction, that resurrection is possible, that we have seen it is convincing. And when our lives witness toit too, it enables others to hope that they might experience resurrection, and so take the risk of opening up what they have confined to the tomb. What I’m suggesting is that resurrection is a way of life rather than something to be proved. It changes what we choose to do with our lives. It changes how we see the world we live in. And it allows us to weep and to witness with hope all at the same time. Amen!
Sue Keegan von Allmen
15th April 2017