Risen to New Life

John 20: 1-18

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark,  Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”  

Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb.  The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.  He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in.  Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself.  Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.  Then the disciples returned to their homes.

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb.  As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”  When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus.  Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?  Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away,  tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”  Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher).  Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” 

Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

SERMON     Risen to New Life

We hear this story, and we know the punch line. We know how it ends up.  Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

But Mary and the disciples had no clue, as they woke up that Easter morning. And what’s more, they had no clue what life was going to be like from the moment of the crucifixion. No doubt they had spent the past three days hiding, weeping, grieving, and hardly able to imagine what they should do next. All they had was what was right in front of them – that Jesus was dead and gone.

And so when Mary finds the tomb empty, she assumes the worst based on whatever logic there was to go on – someone must have taken the body. She runs to find Simon Peter and the other disciple with this news.

And they run back with her to see.

What they find offers a bit more evidence, but still very little in explanation. With the gravecloths left inside, it does not seem reasonable to conclude that the body was taken. They know that he is gone. The gospel says that one of them sees and believes – but believes what? It also tells us they still don’t understand the words Jesus had told them, that he must die and rise again. And so, wordless, they back away from the tomb and head for home.

Mary stays. Mary weeps. And Mary bends over to look in the tomb for herself. And she finds something more – besides the gravecloths, there are angels in the tomb, asking why she weeps. When she turns around, she encounters someone there in the garden whom she does not recognize – at first. Assuming it’s the gardener – who else would be there at this hour of the morning? – she again speaks to him on the assumption that the body has been taken away some where. And then, when he speaks her name, she knows. Her ears are opened, and she recognizes him – her rabbouni, her teacher. Jesus, her Lord.

But as she moves toward him, he tells her she can not cling to him – that he is ascending – to his Father and hers, to his God and hers.

Craig Barnes, who is currently the President of Princeton Seminary, once wrote this about Jesus’ words to Mary:

“This is not my favorite part of the Easter story. If I were writing this drama, I would have included a long tearful hug, followed by Jesus saying, "Find the others and tell them I’m back. We’re getting out of here and going home." But Jesus doesn’t say that. He says, "Don’t cling to me." 

Following Jesus is a never-ending process of losing him the moment we have him captured, only to discover him anew in an even more unmanageable form. Every expectation of Jesus is only another futile effort to get him back in the tomb. But Jesus just won’t stay there.  [And so] we get the feeling that Mary was never the same after Easter. Neither is anyone who has learned that what matters is not that we be confident in our hold of Jesus, but [rather that we be] confident in his hold of us. Seeing that, we are ready for anything.”

 And so, as Mary goes to tell the others who she has seen, what he has said, somehow she knows that everything has changed, because Jesus has risen to new life, and has brought them all to new life.

What does it mean to us here today, that New Life has come to the world this Easter morning?

 Well, first, this New Life is unpredictable. None of them had any idea what to expect. There are no game plans to follow. Jesus reveals New Life to them, and to us, one step at a time. The only game plan we have is love, and to trust, to be confident in Christ having hold of us.

Also, this New Life is not going back to the way things were. Just as Jesus tells Mary not to cling to him, we cannot cling to the way things used to be. Jesus is not the same after the resurrection, and his relationships would never be the same as before. The Holy Spirit would come to be the connecting force from this time on. We must be always looking forward, listening through prayer and scripture for the Word of God to reveal to us, step by step, the plans God has in store for each of us, and for all of us together. We cannot rely on the way we’ve always done things to be the way we should keep going. New Life is resurrection life, not recycled life.

New Life is “out there”. The tomb is empty. Jesus is on the move. His followers encounter him all over the place in the days to come. So we, too, must recognize that Jesus is out there, spreading the seeds of New Life across the neighborhood, across the community, across the world. And Jesus calls us to come and see, to follow, to move out of our comfort zones into the places where New Life is happening. People who are hungry for New Life, who are seeking and experiencing glimpses of the kingdom, are not coming to us; we are called, individually and as the body of Christ, to go to them.

And most importantly, New Life is grace-filled life, redeemed life, a life as forgiven people. We have not, could not, do anything sufficient to earn this.  God has taken our sinfulness all the way to the cross, and has emerged victorious over death. Death will never have the final word, and we all are invited to live the New Life here and now, because –

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

Early this morning I received the final devotion for Lent that have been sent to me daily by a Chicago pastor, Rev. Jan Richardson, and it contained this poem I would like to share with you in closing. It is called The Magdalene's Blessing.

 -------

 You hardly imagined

standing here,

everything you ever loved

suddenly returned to you

looking you in the eye

and calling your name.

And now

you do not know

how to abide this ache

in the center

of your chest

where a door

slams shut

and swings open

at the same time,

turning on the hinge

of your aching

and hopeful heart.

I tell you

this is not a banishment

from the garden.

This is an invitation,

a choice,

a threshold,

a gate.

This is your life

calling to you

from a place

you could never

have dreamed

but now that you

have glimpsed its edge

you cannot imagine

choosing any other way.

So let the tears come

as anointing,

as consecration,

and then

let them go.

Let this blessing

gather itself around you.

Let it give you

what you will need

for this journey.

You will not remember

the words --

they do not matter.

All you need to remember

is how it sounded

when you stood

in the place of death

and heard the living

call your name.

References / citations: Savior At Large, Craig Barnes: Christian Century March 13-20, 2002 p. 16. Beloved: An Online Journey Into Lent and Easter, Jan Richardson: Week 7 Day 7 of Easter.

Ezekiel, Jesus, and Lazarus: From Death to New Life

Scripture: Ezekiel 37: 1-14 (NRSV), John 11: 1- 46 (CEB)

I found myself feeling tearful as I reread these stories of Jesus from John’s gospel this past week. I think it’s the back story that is starting to get to me. As Jesus encounters all these people: using mud to open the eyes of the blind man so he could see the world in a new way, awakening the woman at the well to the abundance of living water that is hers to share, leaving Nicodemus with a new teaching to ponder about being born again – the back story to all these is that Jesus is heading most certainly to death, to crucifixion. And the event described in today’s gospel story is the catalyst that sets those plans in motion – the plans to crucify him. Raymond Brown has written a wonderful commentary on the Gospel according to John, and he writes the headline for the Lazarus story we are about to hear in this way, using powerful, though dated, words: Jesus Gives Men Life; Men Condemn Jesus to Death.

I am reading from the Common English Bible translation, and I will be adding one verse beyond what is on the slides or printed in your bulletin.

Listen for the Word of God to you.

John 11: 1-46 CEB

Both this gospel story and the Old Testament passage from the book of the prophet Ezekiel cause us to consider death and life. The timing for this is appropriate, since the events of the coming stretch of the church calendar that we recognize as Holy Week – Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, the Passover Supper he shares with his disciples, his arrest, trial, and crucifixion, and the glory of his resurrection – these events and our worship during Holy Week take us on the journey with Jesus to the cross.

So let’s talk about Ezekiel and the dry bones first.

God gives Ezekiel the vision of the dry bones first laying in the field, then standing and knitting together, then the flesh coming onto them all, and then finally the spirit coming into them. And then God also gives Ezekiel the interpretation of this vision. God tells Ezekiel, "Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, 'Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” So God hears the lament of the people of Israel who are in exile in Babylon, and knows that their hope is gone. They believe as a people they are doomed; the Jews will be no more.

And then God replies to their cries, also through this vision:

I will bring you up from your graves, and bring you back to the land of Israel. I will bring you from death to life. Even though you are so far removed from life that it’s like your bones are dried up and lying in a field, I will restore your spirit, and you shall live.

This is the promise of God: that the Spirit of God is able to go through boundaries including the great boundary of death, and cause new life, new creation to spring forth from something so dead as to be a heap of dry bones.

In the gospel, much of the story is about conversations with Jesus leading up to Lazarus’ resurrection – conversations with the disciples, and with Lazarus’ sisters, Mary and Martha.

The disciples want to avoid going back to Judea, because they know the danger to Jesus’ life, and they want to protect him (and themselves) from death. But off they go, and they arrive four days after Lazarus’ death. Now, four days dead is very dead. Lazarus’ body is in the tomb. Family and friends have gathered together to mourn and to comfort one another.

Martha meets Jesus as he draws near, and proclaims her belief in the resurrectionat the last day. And Jesus says to her, I am the resurrection AND the life. He goes to the tomb, has it opened against everyone’s objections. He calls Lazarus, and Lazarus obeys Christ’s call and comes out of the tomb, alive again, still wearing his grave cloths. Jesus tells the community gathered around him to unbind him and let him go. And this scandalous act of bringing to life that which was clearly dead, gets told to the Pharisees. And so the plot to crucify Jesus is set in motion, the motive being this act of raising Lazarus. When Jesus said at the beginning, God’s son will be glorified by Lazarus’ illness, the way Jesus is glorified is by being raised up on the cross, as a direct result of the events of this day.

Death and new life.

There is no new life without there having been death.

We have experienced it here, too, haven’t we? PC Utica is no more. Peace Presbyterian is no more. We are New Life.

But are we living as New Life? Or are we doing our best in both campuses to keep what we knew from our former lives, who we were before?

From everything I have learned since coming here in December, it seems clear that both churches were struggling, sick like Lazarus, sick enough to fear death was drawing near.

And so, from this merger a new congregation emerges, a new life.

God has called us from death to new life, just as Christ called to Lazarus, COME OUT! And when Lazarus emerged, still bound by the gravecloths, it was the task of the community to unbind him, and to let him go.

We must let ourselves and one another be freed of the things that bind us, that keep us tied up in our gravecloths, keep us standing up as bones with flesh but without a new spirit, caught between past and future, in order to fully live the New Life that God has given us.

In order for churches today to grow and thrive, they must show the love of Christ in ways that today’s communities can recognize. Those ways are not the ways we’ve always done things. If we truly intend to move beyond survival, we must move beyond who we have been and we must truly become a new life. This is not simply about new programming, new clothes; this is about focusing everything we have and everything we do on sharing the love of Christ in word and deed. We must throw aside, let go of anything that distracts us or binds us from Christ’s mission for the church. We must commit ourselves by giving God everything we have to offer, our personal and collective resources, everything we have, all of our gifts from God, to bring forth God’s kingdom. We must come together so we can go out into the world together, with the energy and enthusiasm that comes from new life.

Dry bones can live.

Jesus calls us from death to new life.

Jesus died so we would live.

Jesus is the resurrection, and Jesus is the life – here and now.

Are we ready to step from the former things, from death, into the new life that Christ has offered to us?

Are we ready?