 |
||||||||
| ||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|||
 |
|||
Named by the Compassionate CompanionApril 12, 2009 Easter Sunday As the story is told, we don’t know what Mary Magdalene expected when she went to the tomb that first Easter morning, or just what she was going to do there. Two of the other gospels say that several women had prepared spices to anoint the body. Mark has them wondering who will help roll the stone away that blocks the tomb’s entrance. But the story we read today says that Mary went to the cemetery by herself. That it was still dark might suggest she hadn’t slept well during the night, or that she was afraid, afraid of being seen. Why does anyone visit a cemetery? Grief brings people initially. Grief, loss, a longing to fill the empty hole that’s opened up within the heart. After the funeral, no one expects to return to find the grave disturbed. Cemeteries are all about finality. Endings. Things that have been and never will be again. Mary’s visit came too soon for solace and self-reflection. She came freighted with all of the oppressive events of Jesus’ last days haunting, agitating, disturbing her mind, her heart, her soul – her whole being. She was raw with the rapid and violent devolution of Jesus’ campaign. Is that what it was? Was he on some sort of campaign? And if so, to what end exactly? Surely not this end. Not this End, capital “E”. Not here. Not now. But he had been placed in a grave. Dead. Gone. Finished. And when Mary discovered the tomb had been tampered with, she came to the conclusion that his body had been stolen. The way John writes it, Mary runs to the disciples to tell them breathlessly, “They have taken the Lord…” We aren’t told who “they” are, but we could surmise that Mary fears those who put him to death in the first place were not finished desecrating his remains, perhaps moving him to a pauper’s grave, or throwing him on the city’s garbage heap. She drew a logical conclusion based on life as she had known it. The ruthless and the arrogant inherited the earth, not the meek and the poor in spirit. The dissemblers, manipulators, and takers of the world were filled, not those who hungered for righteousness. The merciful rarely received mercy and Mary never heard peacemakers called children of God, except from Jesus. But he was dead. And now his body was stolen. And she wept from grief. Now friends, this is the lynch-pin of the Christian faith. We’re right at the heart of the mystery and the way the story is told what we have is an empty tomb, a somewhat ignorant and terrified group of would-be followers and – taking all the gospel stories together – a convoluted hodge-podge of confusing facts and story-telling. Man-oh-man, I often have wished we had more to go on here. The reported evidence appears so thin. But then, from a higher vantage point that very thinness seems to inform the essence of faith. Here’s how John says it goes down for Mary. After Peter and another disciple come to see the tomb for themselves Mary is once again left by herself in her grief, weeping. Still believing that someone has taken Jesus’ body she turns and sees a man she thinks is a gardener and asks him if he’s the grave-robber. Jesus looks at her and simply says her name – “Mary!” And with this she sees him for who he is, the first witness to resurrection. When Jesus calls her name all the doors and windows of Mary’s soul are flung wide. No barrier prevents the profoundest intimate connection. She is known and held even without touching. Jesus is fully present to her and she to him. Nothing is hidden. And in this astonished state she learns that things are not always as they appear. There are layers to reality that she had sensed but never really understood. It’s as though scales fall from her eyes and she’s able to see reality from a multi-dimensional perspective for the first time in her life. The closest material approximation I can make to this is when someone who loves me says my name in a moment of acute awareness. Has this ever happened to you? Your authentic friend or spouse or partner, or family member, even a child who knows you very well, who loves you, during a moment of honest engagement says your name while looking into your face and it hits you that you are truly known to this person and they offer a love that is larger than you perceive you deserve. Not that there is any judgment involved or critique, in fact, in that moment they are devoid of judgment. You are simply known and loved, period. Now if you’ve ever come close to sharing a fleeting experience like this you know that it changes you. The naming changes you. Your insides become larger. Things clarify. You sense this love makes you a better person somehow. Yet you would be very hard pressed to describe the facts of the experience in any meaningful way – we were out to dinner sharing a bowl of pasta; we were on our way to a meeting and the car broke down; we were walking down the sidewalk when it started to rain. The external circumstances for the most part are inconsequential to the acuteness of the experience. This is but a shadow-box portrayal of the love released in resurrection. Resurrection is a work of love. An astonishing, awesome, heartrending, courage-enabling, hope-inducing, life-transforming love. Again, the reported details of the story have a limited range because describing the essence of something the size and scope of resurrection love is nearly impossible, our words and descriptors inevitably fail. They are not large enough and we wind up talking in metaphors and analogies and poetry or creating buildings like this filled with sparkling mosaics like we have up there or writing music and wringing as much passion out of it as we can because the love is so large, so awesome, so overwhelming. The other day I was having a conversation with someone who crossed the threshold here several years ago because of a nagging experience of God’s intimate presence in his life. He grew up in a household in which no religious conviction was expressed. But from early in his life, he had this sense of a holy, Compassionate Companion. As a result he started looking for ways to deepen the connection. And though he has not said he heard a mystical voice call out his name, everything he reports suggests that he knows he is understood, held, loved in a way that defies description and continually transforms the way he lives, how he thinks, and the nature of his commitments. Honestly, as he told his story I felt I was hearing a variation of my own. I, too, knew the presence of the Compassionate Companion from as early as I can recall. Oh, I went through my agnostic stage about this, but eventually the church, the scriptures gave me a language and a pathway to understanding this experience which led me to help introduce others to the One who knows their authentic name. I know for certain – as certain as faith determines – that this One has set the ground beneath our feet, knit us together in our mother’s wombs and inflated our lungs with breath. To add nuance to my point here, consider what we do when we mean to harm, demean, or disrespect others. We abuse their names. We make new names for them. Consider how this functions with every sort of prejudice between races and classes and sexual identities and religions and enemies of every kind. Derogatory names are assigned, hateful names, names meant to put up barriers, names intended to strip dignity and humanity of those on the receiving end of our ugliness. In Auschwitz and Treblinka and other gruesome destinies names were exchanged for numbers tattooed onto the skin so as to obliterate prisoners’ humanity. As if in direct rebuke to this sort of diminishment of an individual the resurrected Jesus called out “Mary!” and she was known in her innermost being – known, claimed and loved. In the naming she realizes there is nothing that separates her from him. Nothing. No prior condition, no fault, failing or weakness. No limitation. Indeed, the world is actually far stranger than she could have imagined and a power is loosed that has only to be claimed. Remember that just a few days ago the disciples had majored in cowardice and betrayal of their best friend. They let him die alone, bereft. Lied about their associations with him. Nevertheless, the Compassionate Companion made himself known to them, calling them by their authentic name. Honestly, their transformation is a far better proof of the resurrection than the written reports of the supposed events – if proof is what you’re after. William Sloane Coffin died exactly three years ago today on April 12; former minister at Riverside Church, tireless advocate for civil rights and peace, and known for a sharp, penetrating analysis of Christian responsibility said this while reflecting on the Easter gospel: “Not only Peter, but all the apostles after Jesus’ death were ten times the people they were before: that’s irrefutable.… Convinced by his appearance that Jesus was their living Lord, the disciples really had only one category in which to articulate this conviction, and that was…resurrection. …In Paul’s writings the living Christ and the Holy Spirit are never clearly differentiated, so that when he says, ‘Not I, but Christ who dwells within me,’ he is talking about the same Holy Spirit that you and I can experience in our own lives. I myself believe passionately in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, because in my own life I have experienced Christ not as a memory, but as a presence. So today on Easter we gather not, as it were, to close the show with ‘Thanks for the Memory,’ but rather to reopen the show with the hymn, ‘Jesus Christ Is Risen Today.’” [1] Today, friends!! An astonishing gift of love, by love, for love’s sake. Did you possibly come to receive that gift today!? I’m beginning to believe that love is the only authentic positive change-agent there is. If someone is changing for the better, love is somehow at work. If authentic justice occurs, a broken relationship is restored, authentic peace prevails, children are held and cared for, forgiveness happens, the lost, abandoned, oppressed and abused receive the dignity of being called by their name in a spirit of compassionate regard, resurrection is being practiced, and I tell you, Jesus lives for certain. Hallelujah! __________________ Previous sermon: Fire • Next sermon: Loved Into Freedom All past sermons |
| ||
|
|