Saugatuck Congregational Church, UCC
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton
Sunday, April 21, 2019 – Easter Sunday
Scripture: Matthew 28:1-10 – New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
Why were they there, so early on a Sunday morning? What exactly got the two Mary’s out of bed before sunrise, and compelled them to walk back to the tomb?
In other versions of these events – the ones recorded in the Gospels of Mark and Luke, it says the women went to anoint Jesus’ body. They carried supplies and discussed how they would manage to move the rock that sealed the cave. But in Matthew’s version, the women were just coming to see…
Which begs the question: to see what? What, exactly, did they expect to find? There were soldiers posted on site; and a massive boulder across the entrance. There was no way they’d be getting inside. Still, they came.
Maybe because they couldn’t bear to stay away. Maybe because they needed to get as close as possible to Jesus, or to his memory, at least. They knew he was dead; they had seen him take his last breath. Two days prior, they’d watched as a friend took his lifeless body, wrapped it in cloth, and set it inside that cave.
So maybe the Mary’s were just trying to get close. But Matthew doesn’t say that they came to the tomb to mourn. He says they came to see.
Which makes me wonder whether they might just have been putting the pieces of the puzzle together. Whether they might have been comparing notes: “Remember that time when Jesus talked about rebuilding the temple in three days? Remember all that chatter about dying and being raised up… What if … What if he meant it?”
So they came – wrung out with grief, terrified that the soldiers might arrest them… They came to see what would happen next…
And what they saw, well, it was like expecting a quiet walk in the park and stumbling onto a flash mob, complete with special effects. (cue the rumbling earth and the Huey Lewis soundtrack – The Power of Love!)
An angel appeared, all shiny with bling, and rolled that rock aside like it was a made of paper maché. Remarkably, the cave was empty. While they were still taking this in, the Mary’s got assigned to the angelic publicity team, given their own twitter handles and sent out to spread the news. “Meet up in Galilee. Lots to see. #HeLives!”
On the road, they ran into the man himself. While the Mary’s where still recovering from that shock, Jesus repeated the angel’s directive: “Tell everyone to head to Galilee. I’ll see you there!”
Turns out, that message went viral. And two thousand years later, here we are. Just like the Mary’s, we showed up this morning – some of us at the beach, before the sun rose. All of us could have stayed in bed, but we didn’t. Which begs the question: Why did WE come? Maybe you came to sing the Hallelujah Chorus, or to catch a whiff of pungent Easter lilies, to eat the chocolate or because mom and dad didn’t give you an option.
But maybe it’s also because we are trying to put the puzzle pieces together. Comparing notes. Because we’ve seen things, haven’t we, that offer glimmers of Easter hope in a Good Friday world: signs of recovery – from addiction, or depression – in the face of overwhelming odds; a friendship rekindled, where we thought there were only irreparable broken shards; a way out, when we thought we were stuck for good … We’ve seen hints, or we’ve heard the stories; and as improbable as it sometimes feels, we long for more of that – peace, healing, hope, newness – in the face of too much human suffering. So we ask each other, in hushed tones,
“What if the Mary’s meant it, about meeting Jesus in Galilee? What if death and destruction really don’t have the last word?” What would that mean, for all of us?
It might mean we’d have to look at the world differently, from a whole new angle. It might mean learning to see – not just what we expect to see – a sealed up tomb, a dead end; but what God invites us to see: a second act, with extra special effects.
Writer Marchaé Grair writes, “The Resurrection gives us permission to challenge the limits of permanence – even the apparent permanence of death.”
Permission to challenge the limits of permanence: in other words, to engage in acts of imagination. To ask, what else could we find here, if not Death?
To be clear, I don’t just mean magical thinking – a wishing away all the bad stuff, as if it might evaporate in a puff of smoke. I mean the kind of bold, expansive, creative thinking that could save us all. Because new life always begins with an act of imagination. We put a seed in the earth, with the outrageous hope that that tiny pip might just grow into a thriving zucchini plant or an eruption of wild flowers.
Every year, I start out a sceptic. I plant the seeds (ok, to be honest: I usually offer moral support to my husband Craig as HE plants the seeds) and I think: “No way. There’s no way those seeds will survive.” The world is a hostile place: they’ll be lost in the dirt, or eaten by birds, or just wither and die… Yet somehow, they do survive. And so I get copious zucchini pancakes on my plate and abundant daisies for my windowsill.
Acts of the imagination help us to see signs of new life before they take root, to picture the alternative to nothing-changing, then to cultivate that vision. To picture the risen Christ, already on the move, and then to follow.
It was a bold act of imagination that allowed a seminary classmate of mine to finally escape her abusive husband, to build a new life, free of terror, for herself and her daughter, and eventually to become an ordained minister. She once told me, “If Christ could walk out of that tomb, then so could I.”
It was a whimsical act of imagination that empowered a city block-full of children and their parents to reclaim an abandoned lot at 158 Affleck Street in Hartford, and to transform it from a blighted trash heap into a flourishing community garden, resplendent with hot peppers and heirloom tomatoes. I was there to see it happen. They literally brought that corner of Affleck Street back to life.
And it was a collective act of imagination that transformed the lives of Syrian refugees Muhammad and Nour, who came to Westport, CT with their two children over three years ago. They arrived with nothing but cultural differences, a language barrier and internalized trauma from the Syrian war. Together, our interfaith community and they imagined … that we could provide the right kind of support, and that they could adapt. This year, Muhammad was hired to serve as the Imam at their mosque in Norwalk, and this month, he and Nour opened a new restaurant, called Al Shami, after a beloved neighborhood in Syria… They have a third child, and a community they love, that loves them back… New life all around.
“Come and see,” the angel said. “There you will see me,” Jesus said. For me, imagining the alternatives to a sealed-up tomb is a kind of spiritual discipline, especially when I am weighed down by the world’s troubles. Because honestly, some days I’d rather sleep in. Some days, the hurt we inflict on each other leaves me numb, the tangled web of ‘isms that trap whole communities of good people leaves me reeling, and the rock in front of that tomb looks like it’s good and stuck.
Then I remember the Mary’s. And I realize that their willingness to see, it didn’t start on Sunday morning, when that angel showed up (although kudos to them for facing the angel head-on, unlike those weak-kneed Roman soldiers). Before that, before Jesus died, when he hung on that cross: All that day, the Mary’s watched, unflinchingly bearing witness to the ruthlessness of an oppressive system and the particular suffering of one innocent man.
This, I believe, is key: That they had seen everything – the brutality, the anguish, the gasping for air, and still they kept looking. As if to say, “Is that it, God? Is that all you’ve got? Because we think we know better. After all that time with Jesus, everything he taught us about love and justice, we figure you can’t be done yet. We don’t know what that means, but we’re going to keep watching, until you show up.”
That’s why they came.
Beloved in Christ, being Easter People means accepting the invitation to come and see – tombs and angels; death and astonishing new life. It means refusing to flinch in the face of very real suffering, and refusing to believe that God is done. It may mean walking all the way to Galilee, searching for signs of the living Christ.
And when what we encounter along the way moves us to tears and temporarily blurs our vision, we rely on others to tell us what they’ve seen – both the pain and the hope. We compare notes. We share the vision. We spread the news – Write it, sing it, tweet it, blog it, dance it, shout it:
That’s why we are here:
To declare that Jesus is on the move.
To imagine all that is yet possible for the one who denied death.
To bear witness to the promise that God is not done with us yet.
So raise your voices in joyful praise! Christ is Risen! Christ is risen indeed!