Calvary Episcopal Church
Memphis, Tennessee
April 11, 2004
Easter Sunday

Experience With a Risen Savior
The Rev. Dr. Andrew MacBeth

Gospel: John 20:1-18
(A copy of this sermon is also available in audio.)

Alleluia! Christ is risen! (The Lord is risen indeed!)

One thing I cannot do today is give a full account of what the Church of Jesus Christ has meant by singing, “He is risen, the Lord is risen indeed.” Even in the early centuries of our life as a people, it took the whole fifty days from Easter to Pentecost to put flesh on this phrase. While it may fall easily from our mouths, it points to a whole complex of experiences shared by the friends of Jesus in the days and weeks after his death. Beware of anyone who can explain to you too quickly and easily what it means that Jesus has died and is now alive in a whole new way. Here is what we can say with some certainty.

There are two parts to today’s gospel reading. In the first, Peter and the Beloved Disciple race to the Tomb at Mary Magdalene’s urging. What they find there is very disturbing and confusing. Not only is the Tomb empty, but the grave clothes are there, carefully folded, not at all the way in which grave robbers might have been expected to leave them. The two disciples are simply not prepared to make sense of this. There were no valuables in this tomb and there is no reason why anyone would have taken the body and left the grave clothes behind. John’s gospel gives a funny, diffident priority to Peter, so, even though the Beloved Disciple gets there first, he waits for Peter to go into the tomb. Then, the Beloved Disciple goes in too and sees that Jesus’ body is gone. We read that the Beloved Disciple “saw and believed,” even though, “as yet they did not understand the Scripture that he must rise from the dead.” Put simply, he becomes convinced that something is up, something beyond his comprehension, and the two comrades stumble out of the tomb and head back to their homes reeling with questions. What is going on?

Next, we see Mary Magdalene outside the tomb. She was the first one to notice that the Tomb had been disturbed, and now she stands outside the Tomb, reeling with the impact on this new blow, how, on top of everything else she and Jesus’ other friends have had to bear, now his grave has been disturbed. And as she stands there shaking her head, Jesus walks up and says: “Woman, why are you weeping?”

She cannot quite comprehend that this is Jesus speaking to her. So she starts to explain what she is doing there: “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him!”

After yet another exchange between Mary and this strange man, he speaks her name: “Mary!” and she knows who he is. Her first instinct is to run and throw her arms around him. But Jesus says, “Wait!” and Mary, not even stopping to think about how strange this will sound to everyone else, starts running to tell the rest of the disciples: “I have seen the Lord!”

These two different scenes are paradigms for two different parts of Christian experience. The first is the insistent, inexplicable knowledge that something extraordinary is under way here--that something is up! The second is the personal encounter with Jesus that, while it does not bring full understanding, does bring an experiential certainty that Jesus is alive in a whole new way, and that because of this, we are alive too.

Many of us here today have at least shared the first of these experiences. If Jesus did not at least have our attention, our curiosity, then we could have found better things to do this morning than come to church. But SOMETHING happened in this man’s life and death that is important and extraordinary. We know that. But what this is and what it means to us we may be not so sure.

How have you come to know that the tomb is empty?

For me, a big part of this, since my youth, has been life in the church, where despite all the silly, ridiculous things we get caught up in, people have loved and cared about me in ways far beyond the human. Where did this love come from? I have often sensed that there is something extraordinary going on here.

In seminary, I thought those who claimed to have seen the risen Jesus were just a little crazy – or dishonest. However, I began to meet people who were Christian social activists and smart theologians but also claimed to live in relationship with a living Jesus!

My experience of a RISEN SAVIOUR has come not from my active effort to understand but from my effort to be quiet enough long enough that Jesus could make himself present to me. During my senior year in seminary, I began the journey of contemplative prayer, and discovered a few years later that it no longer felt odd to say, “I KNOW Christ is alive.” It may be that I was not ready for this until I was in my twenties, but I wonder what would have happened if someone had tried to teach me contemplative prayer, the art of quiet, earlier in my life.

If we look at the resurrection experiences of the first Christians, we will find that, like us, they did not always understand what was happening to them. But, one by one, they became convinced that their relationship with this Jesus, who they loved and who had loved them, this relationship had somehow not ended but been translated into a whole new key. I invite you to share in this journey. Because their experience is not limited to the “long ago.” Rather, Christians are still discovering that Christ is alive; and finding that this reality brings new life to them too.

We Christians have this ancient way of acknowledging that something extraordinary is going on in our lives and in our world: Alleluia, Christ is risen. (The Lord is risen indeed.)

Copyright 2004 Calvary Episcopal Church

Gospel: 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. NRSV

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