Expecting a Body

Death, Death, Death

Disease surrounds us

Hospitals are overwhelmed

You cannot leave your home

The market has collapsed

Sports are canceled, including my beloved Masters

I should be watching Rory McIlroy win his first Masters today, you know.

There are not enough medical supplies

If you do get out for essentials, you must cover your face — smiles concealed

But while you’re out, you may notice, the shelves are bare.

Household supplies are found wanting.

Especially the ones we all need the most.

You cannot visit family

You cannot visit friends

There is talk of mass graves, field hospitals, and second and third waves of quarantine

No big Easter gathering today

In fact, this entire church is basically empty.

I have preached this church down to 5 measly people and all but one of them are paid to be here.

Your pastor teased you with some semblance of an Easter gathering, then whipped it away, like a thief in the night.

Let’s check in on the latest Coronavirus death count.

I looked just before we began Easter service so we would all know exactly how many people are sick and how many people have died.

There have been 110,029 Coronavirus deaths worldwide

and 20,595 deaths in the United States.

Death, Death, Death.

How’s that for an opening to an Easter Sermon?

You can’t throw tomatoes at me, sitting at home on your couch.

The truth is, it has been a rough month.

And we all may have gotten accustomed to hearing bad news.

In our Scripture this morning, Mary comes to the tomb accustomed to hearing bad news.

She came to the tomb expecting a body. A dead body

She had just gone through a season not unlike the one that we’ve been through

Death, death, death

Arrest, crucifixion, burial

She watched as Jesus was unfairly tried and executed.

She watched as the crowds chose to release a proven criminal, rather than the Son of God

She watched as the disciples betrayed and denied, and quickly abandoned the one they had devoted their lives to

And so she came to the tomb expecting bad news, expecting a dead body.

But even that didn’t seem to go right.

The body is gone. Even burial can’t go right.

What have they done with the body?

The world, her circumstances, reality had conditioned her to expect a body. To expect bad news.

And so when Mary Magdalene arrived at the tomb and Jesus’ body was not there, her first thought was not “He lives” or “He is risen.” But rather, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”

This was a man who had been her teacher, she was willing to give her life for. She called him Lord. She believed in him.

But still, she expected a body.

Sometimes, no matter what we earnestly believe in — it gets overcome by the waters we swim around in.

Reality can trump even our deepest held beliefs.

And in this case, Mary saw more bad news when, in fact, her deepest convictions had just been validated beyond imagination.

And so she runs, not out of excitement, but probably out of outrage. Can you believe what has happened now? And she tells Simon Peter and the Beloved disciple — not just the facts that she has observed — which is that the body was gone, but her interpretation of the facts. And it was that interpretation of those facts that moved what was an observation pregnant with both miraculous possibilities and grim realities that turned her experience into bad news.

Now, I don’t want to make Mary Magdalene out to be the faithless character here. On the whole, she comes out of the resurrection narrative looking far better than almost any other character. She simply reacted the way any of us would have — had we just witnessed the death of someone we loved dearly and then attending to that person’s burial found their body to be gone. She did not say, nor would we have, “the body is gone, but let’s not jump to conclusions. Perhaps this person has come back to life.” I have been to many funerals and have not one time witnessed the bereaved act surprised that the deceased body is there and still deceased. I’ve certainly heard people say things like, “I can’t believe he or she is gone.” Or even, “this doesn’t feel real.” But that is, at least in part, what a funeral or memorial service is designed to do — to help the beloved ones of the deceased come to terms with the reality of their death. And the presence of ashes or a body helps to do that. It helps with saying goodbye. It helps nudge us towards closure. It helps us begin life anew without this person. And so, I believe, even the most faithful among us would have done no better that Mary here — coming to process her grief, attend to the body of Jesus — still she came to the tomb expecting a body.

It was the same for Simon Peter and the beloved disciple. They raced to the tomb not because they expected to greet Jesus alive in the flesh. They too were shocked at the news. For they expected a body as well. They just weren’t the first ones to the funeral visitation, like Mary was. Mary was the first one to sign the condolence book. Simon Peter and the Beloved disciple were going to come right at the end of the visitation before the funeral began, until confronted with this strange and seemingly bad news. There were body snatchers.

Even though they had all been through a series of unfortunate events, that Jesus’s body had been taken was over the top. That too was hard to believe, yet possible enough for Simon Peter and the Beloved disciple to trust, but verify. And upon verification, they believed Mary. Verse 8 says the beloved disciple believed — and here it isn’t talking about belief in the resurrection as the very next verse says, “For as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.”

They believed. They believed Mary and her bad news. It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Simon Peter and the Beloved disciple did not launch a search party. Enough was enough. Well, whaddaya gonna do? They just went home.

But Mary remained. She was not done with her grieving. And something happens in that moment, in verse 11. It is very subtle, but I think its theological and spiritual importance cannot be over stated. Having come to the tomb expecting a body, siting their weeping and grieving — something deep within her emerged. It was just a small passing impulse. Yet it ran contrary to the whole story she had been telling herself and others. There’s no indication that she had a clear vision of a resurrected Jesus, just an unformed intuition, a nudge of hope, something that was rebelling against “death, death, death” and the expectation of a body. And it was an impulse that she let surface and she did not resist. In the second half of verse 11, it says, “As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb.”

Emerging from that unformed, unknown impulse — her vision did indeed grow in clarity. She saw two angels sitting where Jesus had been confront her “expectations of a body.” Even after giving herself over to this impulse and seeing two angels, the story she still told herself was that Jesus was dead. His body had been taken.

We too are like Mary in this moment. The way we see the world can be stubbornly persistent, even in the face of countervailing evidence. It is not easy to let go of the way we see the world. Particularly negative ways of seeing the world — death, death, death.

She even turns and sees Jesus Christ himself in the flesh — after having just seen two angels — and assumes he is the gardener. And she still persists in holding on to the reality of death, death, death and the expectation of a body. She says to Jesus — probably in an exasperated tone — “Sir, if you have carried him away, for the love of God, will you just tell me where you have laid him and I will take him away.”

Friends, we simply don’t let go of our strongly held expectations of a body on our own. It seems only God does that. It was God who was working through prevenient grace that nudged Mary to look one more time into the tomb. And that was the nudge that prepared her for what came next. Jesus calls her by name. “Mary.”

And finally, that is what changed Mary from “expecting a body” to “experiencing the resurrection.” She went from faithfully grieving the grim realities that seemed to surround her life to being the very first of Easter people. Now she could see. Death does not have the final word. There is hope — even present joy and celebration. For all things are being made new. And this is first among them.

God called Mary by name. And Mary, in turn, called God by the personal name that she knew him by — Rabbouni! God is more personal than we can ever imagine. Good news does not really take shape in our lives until it becomes truly and deeply personal. God knows our name and we know that God knows our name. And we too name God and I suspect God takes deep joy in that naming as well. God wept with joy when Mary exclaimed, “Rabbouni!”

Ultimately, we cannot learn the depth of God’s love in an abstract way. You won’t get it if you just read the theology textbook. It is personal. God calls your name too. And Easter people return the call.

But wait, there’s more…

Jesus tells Mary (verse 17), “Do not hold on to me.” Not because the Coronavirus is going around and he is practicing safe social distancing. But I would like to point out that if you think it is an outrage that we cannot come together and hug each other on Easter morning — even Jesus Christ — after his resurrection refrains from embracing Mary.

Jesus says, “Do not hold on to me” because I belong to God. All that I am is held in God. And indeed God is in all things. Even death, death, death. I believe that Jesus was preparing Mary and us to begin to see him in a new way. With resurrection eyes. He was preparing her and through her, the disciples and us, not just for the post resurrection appearances, but also to see him everywhere. In everything. Death does not have the final word. Resurrection and new life does.

Jesus once said, “Split a piece of wood, I am there. Lift up a rock, you will find me there.”

Because Jesus has ascended to be with God — a God who is in and above all things, wherever we look — Jesus is there. And there is resurrection possibilities. There’s one more thing that a funeral in the Christian tradition is designed to to — to proclaim the resurrection of the dead. This is what it means to be an Easter people.

As disease surrounds us, let us take precaution

As hospitals are overwhelmed, let us care

You are not stuck at home, you are safe at home

The market has collapsed, but new innovations are being born that we cannot yet see

Sports are cancelled, let us cheer anyway

There are not enough medical supplies, let us sew masks

Smiles are covered by masks, let us see every mask as smile — they do after all mean the same thing — I care for you

The shelves are bare, because people have been able to get what they need. And still there is some leftover.

Household supplies are found wanting. But I heard a preacher say this week, “almost anything can be toilet paper, if you just believe.”

You cannot visit family or friends. But absence makes the heart grow fonder.

There is talk of mass graves. We’ve seen what God can do with graves this morning

Talk of field hospitals. Not too long ago, it was churches that started hospitals. Now churches are becoming field hospitals — at St. JOHN the Divine in NYC, even uniting the liberal Episcopal church and the conservative Samaritan’s Purse. Things have come full circle, praise be to God.

There is talk of 2nd and 3rd waves of quarantine. Well, now we have experience. We’ll be old pros by then.

There’s no big Easter gathering today. But I can’t help but wonder if in this strange situation that more people are hearing the Good News of Jesus Christ today than on any single day in human history.

This entire church is empty. But it is pushing us to do ministry in new ways — ways that will be needed in the years and decades to come.

Our Holy Week and Easter celebration has gone from Plan A to Plan B to Plan C. But I think plan C has turned out quite nicely.

1.7 million people have the Coronavirus around the world and 110,029 have died. Those are precious people, deeply loved by God and many others. And our grief over their suffering is a sign that we all care.

That is after all — what the “Passion” literally means. To suffer.

And to suffer for something or for someone — shows passion.

That’s why the events of Holy Week are called the Passion.

And so as suffering has been widespread in ways big and small.

Let us not only proclaim, “death, death, death.” But see in suffering — passion — care for the sake of others.

This is not a call to a pollyanna way of seeing the world. Real, present, deep, and even pointless suffering really exists.

And so much of it is beyond our control. But we can control this — into those places may we have the faith, the persistence, the creativity and resolve to see possibilities for new life. To listen to the subtle unformed nudge, to assume that somewhere in this thing, God must be there, already at work to bring new life.

May this gift of all gifts transform you the way it did Mary.

May it move you from “expecting a body” to “experiencing a resurrection.”

May we no hear, “Death, death, death.” But see “life, life, life” even amidst difficult circumstances.

May you truly be an Easter people — able to have faith in new life before the sprout even sees daylight.

For God has called you by name. Rejoice and return the favor. For God is in all things.

Even now.