Easter Vigil
March 27, 2005
The Rev. Wray MacKay
He is not here. He is risen.
This is a true story -- so I am told.
A man was looking for God in a small town in Canada.
He found an Anglican Church, went in but immediately walked out. Why? Over the Altar, on the Rerados, it read, He is not here.
The dynamic of our Gospel story this morning the story of the stone
begins earlier.
The public execution of Jesus had taken place two days earlier.
The disciples were scattered, nowhere to be scene.
Still the officials worried,
and on Saturday morning they decide to worry Pilate.
They ask Pilate to command that the tomb be made secure.
A strange request,
tombs being what they are, death being what it is.
They ask:
Make it more final, more finished, more secure than even a tomb.
Pilate had reached the end of his patience.
On Friday he had washed his hands; he was through with this matter
At least he thought so.
But now these officials were back again.
Pilate did not like these officials.
He did not understand their culture, customs, religion.
He did not like the simple rustics from Galilee, like Jesus.
He did not like the scheming, sophisticated Jerusalem elite.
He says to the officials, You have a guard or soldiers;
go, make it as secure as you know how.
These days we know something about security,
about how vulnerable even the most secure situation is.
9/11 changed everything.
The crucifixion changed everything.
So the officials caused a great stone
to be rolled over the entrance of the borrowed tomb of Jesus.
This morning, our Gospel takes us to that graveyard,
to that graveyard early in the morning while it is still dark.
We discover women there, huddled together in the chill of pre-dawn,
wondering how they can get into the tomb
to anoint the dead body, and to wrap it again in linen,
and so complete the burial of Jesus’ body.
But it seems that
the Easter tomb lies along the fault line of the Resurrection --
for while they are still wondering
the tectonic plates of God’s truth
irrupts through everything that seemed so fixed & immovable,
the ground shakes,
an angel drops from the inky sky,
rolls back the huge stone which the security guards
had thought had made the tomb secure,
and then sits on it --
with face and clothing dazzling white in the gray dawn.
The security guard falls to the ground
and in the words of scripture shook and became as dead men
You gotta’ feel sorry for them.
The comedian Jon Steward,
returning to his television show about ten days after 9/11, said,
They said to get back to work.
But there were no jobs for a man in the fetal position
under his desk crying.
Yes, the security guard was absolutely terrified.
The women, however, huddle more closely together.
Yes, they were fearful, even traumatized, but not paralyzed.
Don‘t be afraid, the Angel says,
I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified,
as if angels always dropped in
for an early coffee and chat before sunrise.
[Be careful when you go to Ladroes.]
He is not here. He is risen.
Resurrection is like that.
Or rather,
Resurrection is like that when we really perceive Resurrection;
when Resurrection really grabs our heart, our bones;
when the utter finality and reality of death is so real that we
cannot even breathe
can only think of the burial decencies,
and even there, in the midst of death, the finger of life
somehow touches our weeping hearts.
When the touch, the terrifying reality of an empty tomb
open not so Jesus can get out but that we get in --
grabs our hearts.
When this Resurrection is even hinted at in our brain and soul,
why, yes, Resurrection it is like that.
Earth shattering; soul shattering;
shaking up our normal lives so they are never the same again.
Fearful with the dread that comes
when we truly sense the living God is near enough to touch.
And always containing in it the seed of God’s word of life,
which almost always is not what we are expecting.
Yes, when we really perceive Resurrection, Resurrection is like that.
The trouble is we get stuck.
We get stuck in the graveyards of this world,
and our expectations are trapped.
Our usual hope in the face of all of the world’s death-dealing,
stretches no further than rolling away a stone
and being able to care for a dead body.
Having a requiem with the proper hymns and incense.
Scattering the ashes of our hearts.
It takes an earthquake to jolt us
into the new, the unfamiliar, the terrifying territory
of resurrection reality: He is not here. He is risen.
Risen? Risen? What is that?
What is resurrection for us?
Well I suggest that Resurrection
it is the final mending of all that was ripped apart in Eden.
Of all that was ripped apart in Eden.
Since Eden,
layers of death have been pushing their way into our lives,
since before we were born!
each layer a gap of painful separation.
We find ourselves separated from our deepest soul and self.
We find ourselves separated from each other,
strangers to the community of creation
We find ourselves hiding and separated from God,
fearful of our nakedness.
Then, trembling and full of dread,
we are dragged by our aging and dying bodies
towards the final separation
which looms before us when our spirit leaves the body.
With the life breath gone, our bodies die.
Such is the nature of this multi-layered tearing.
Self-hatred, self-destructive behavior,
suspicion and aggression against others,
wars against terrorists and acts of terror against others,
abuse and rape of the earth which sustains us.
These are all symptoms
of the terminal illness of separation and death.
Yes, graveyards are a final testimony to the gap we live and die in.
Just so, Resurrection is God’s final wisdom,
Resurrection is God’s final way of mending the split
and bringing each layer back to touch
to live in harmony with the others,
until finally the body is also brought back to house the spirit.
As Flora Slossen Wuellner writes:
our body is our friend,
a friend who will be returned in a transformed way
to be with us forever.
Like Mary Magdalene in another Gospel story,
we may need time for resurrection.
Magdalene thought the risen Christ was the gardener,
and addressed him so.
The shift from looking for Jesus
within the small and familiar realm of our own understanding,
to being met by Jesus
in the realm of the resurrection and kingdom
is not a journey we have ultimate control over.
We cannot command it now.
Mary Magdalene had the privilege of waiting at the empty tomb,
even while she was looking for Jesus as he had been.
The emptiness is like that; we expect more of the same.
But thanks be to God,
God comes crashing through the darkness of our unbelief,
rolls away the stones which imprison our limited thinking,
and says simply:
Don’t be afraid. I know who you are looking for.
He is not here. He is risen.
And then it is as we go to tell others this puzzling news,
that we are met by the very One we are looking for.
It is always on our way that we meet Jesus.
Or rather, it is always on our way that Jesus meets us.
Resurrection becomes real for us as we are on the move.
Jesus meets us, and we discover that now we can see him;
the eyes of our soul catch sight of the kingdom.
The earthquake is happening within us, among us.
However, resurrection is not just about living beyond the grave
and being reunited with our bodies in eternity.
Resurrection is the ultimate mending.
All the other layers are also healed:
We learn that not only is creation God’s, but it is good -- very good.
We learn that God is against and frustrated by our persistent sin,
but is also and forever giving us new starts,
and gives us a rainbow as a reminder always of that agreement.
We learn that the only sacrifice God requires of us is our soul;
that no amount of wealth is required,
even the wealth of the fruit of our bodies; only that soul.
We learn that though we are slaves, God parts the waters to new life.
We learn that God wants a heart of flesh in us, not a heart of stone.
We learn that though our journey may seem dry and dusty,
the very bones of our lives are raised and given new life.
We learn the wisdom that leads to new life.
We learn to sing aloud for we are renewed by God’s love,
our shame is turned into praise -- before our very eyes.
We learn that at the merest hint of thirst,
we all are seated at a banquet of abundance.
Ho, everyone that thirsts. Come to the waters.
You that have no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
Ho -- everyone!
And we learn that through the experience
of lost hope, defeat, death of spirit,
we are buried with the only one who conquers that death,
and that we ourselves are dead to sin
and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
And so we learn to love ourselves
and to see and embrace ourselves as God sees and embraces us.
And we learn in the magic of loving ourselves,
to love and see others, friend and foe,
as God loves and sees them and to do good,
just as Jesus went about doing good,
and just as God is good to all.
We learn to serve those
who are weak, needy, lonely, poor, sick, and dying.
They are our sisters and brothers -- here;
as we are on the move, walking across the gap, Jesus meets us,
and we see him in the faces and lives of those we encounter.
And we learn one more thing.
The Gospel says: And the women came to him,
took hold of his feet and worshiped him.
We can almost miss that bit.
They worshiped him.
It seems so commonplace.
They worshiped him.
It seems so ordinary in this Easter Vigil,
filled with extraordinary happenings like earthquakes,
not to speak of creation and all the rest.
They worshiped him.
It seems so straightforward
compared with the subtle maneuvers of the chief priests
and their security concerns.
They worshiped him.
We almost miss it because it seems so predictable.
What else do we do on Easter morning?
We come to worship.
Beyond all our fear and in spite of our denials,
the only proper response to the angel’s message
He is not here; He is risen,
the only proper response is…..worship.
And what is worship?
Our own Archbishop William Temple wrote once:
Worship is the submission of our nature to God.
It is the quickening of conscience by God’s holiness;
the nourishment of the mind with God’s truth;
the purifying of the imagination by God’s beauty;
the opening of the heart to God’s love;
the surrender of the will to God’s purpose;
and all of this gathered up in adoration,
the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable
and therefore the chief remedy
of that self-centeredness
which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin.
And the women came to him,
took hold of his feet and worshiped him.
Make it as secure as you are able, Pilate demands,
which is precisely what worship does not do, cannot do,
has no desire to do.
Worship surrenders that impulse to create security
to the One in whom we find our real security.
The one who shakes the earth with the truth of Resurrection.
Only one who has suffered and died
can be trusted with the lives of God’s children -- with us.
And so the angel says
He is going ahead of you to Galilee;
there you will see him.
This is the ultimate good news of Easter.
Don’t look back at the empty tomb.
The angels says he is not there.
Don’t even look back into the pages of the Bible
except for directions on the road forward.
He is not there.
He has been raised and goes ahead of us.
Christ goes ahead of us.
The future belongs to Christ.
And we belong to Christ.
And Christ belongs to God.
In our fears and in great joy alike,
on the way, on the journeys of our lives,
as we follow this Christ, we will recognize him.
Even better, he will recognize us.
ALLELUIA! CHRIST IS RISEN!
