Saugatuck Congregational Church, UCC
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton
April 4, 2015
Scripture: Mark 16:1-8
Once upon a time there was an empty cave. Empty. Early morning sun crept in through an opening in the rock, spilling narrow bands of light across the cave floor. The air was musty, stone walls cool to the touch, the corners of the cave dark as velvet, and just as oppressive. Lying on the floor was a crumpled up sheet, abandoned, as by an early-rising child who tosses aside the bedcovers and jumps out of bed, eager to greet the day. Whoever had been wrapped in those sheets was gone. No life stirred there.
Outside, approaching whispers of anxious women broke the dawn silence. The voices stopped just outside the cave. Their whispers turned to murmured questions, then the light at the cave entrance was blocked by the figure of a women leaning into the cave. It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the dark, but then she saw the sheets. That’s when the young man spoke. The young man –an angel? – dressed all in white, white like the sheets, white like the morning light. He sat in a corner of the cave and spoke to the woman: “He is not here.”
He is not here. He is risen. Go and tell the others. Go to Galilee. He will meet you there. You need to go there, because he is not here.
Once upon a time there was an empty cave – which is precisely what the women did not expect. They expected a body. A dead body. The body of Jesus. They had come, not to meet an angel, but to take care of the body, cover it with sweet- smelling oils and with myrrh (Do you remember the myrrh – as in the gold, frankincense and myrrh, given to the baby Jesus by three traveling magi? – Myrrh smells earthy, tangy, like pickled mushrooms – so it’s good for masking the stench of death. )
They’d expected to find a tomb sealed up behind a massive rock. In fact, in their grief, they had forgotten to bring a crow bar, or more people, or something to help roll away the massive rock. In any case, assuming they could sort that out, they had expected to spend their morning in the tomb.
Ironic, a bit, that the cemetery didn’t seem to scare them, or the body, or the stench. It was the emptiness that terrified them. All of Jesus’ promises notwithstanding, they had not seen this coming, and they were utterly unprepared.
It turns out, it can be hard to know what to do with an empty tomb. Hard – practically impossible – to believe that new life waits just outside the entrance, when we’ve been told over and over that the opposite is true; that death has the last word. We’ve been conditioned to expect death – Not just Death with a capitol ‘D’, the kind that comes at the end of life, but also the everyday kinds of death that chip away at a person’s spirit and undermine hope. That kind of dying can start early.
There’s the first time we are told we are no good. The first time someone laughs at our best idea. The first time someone on the playground calls us fatty, fag, slut, sissy or smarty-pants… How many times do our hearts break, over a lifetime? How much of us dies, pieces broken off a little bit at a time? If we were raised in a church, someone once put water on our foreheads or dunked us in a pool and declared us precious, beloved of God. But then someone begged to differ and we never forgot the hurt. Maybe we even came to expect it.
In his poem, ‘for the bullied and the beautiful,’ Shane Koychzan tells it this way:
“In grade five, they taped a sign to the front of her desk that read ‘beware of dog.’ To this day, despite a loving husband, she doesn’t think that she’s beautiful because of a birth mark that takes up a little less than half her face. Kids used to say she looks like a wrong answer that someone tried to erase but couldn’t quite get the job done. And they’ll never understand that she’s raising two kids whose definition of beauty begins with the word mom, because they see her heart before they see her skin…”[1]
Hear it often enough, and we may come to believe that some things do not belong to us: beauty, wholeness, new life. Hear it often enough, and we may just retreat into tombs of our own, curling up in the dark and pulling the sheets up over our heads. And once inside, it can be awfully hard to find our way back out…
Jonathan Gonzalez won a full scholarship to college during his senior year in high school. When he opened the letter, his first response was fear. “For myself I just didn’t see college. I saw myself as just not a homeless guy…I didn’t feel like I was worthy, and when I got to school, it showed.” Jonathan couldn’t afford the school books, not even close, and he didn’t know that he could borrow them from the college library. (There hadn’t been any library at his high school). So he didn’t do his homework. He was the only black kid in many of his classes, which made it worse. “Now I’m the only black guy and the one who doesn’t do the work; I fulfill that stereotype. So I didn’t go to class.” Too embarrassed to explain or to ask for help, and convinced he didn’t belong there anyway, Jonathan eventually failed out of college and returned to his home in the Bronx, and got a job in shop. [2]
When you’re trapped in a tomb long enough, it gets hard to believe that you could ever belong anywhere else.
Debra’s husband lost his patience easily and took his anger out on her. She wore dark glasses and long sleeves to hide the bruises, and did her best to stay out of his way and to protect her daughter. She felt overwhelmed by his controlling and unpredictable behavior but she didn’t dare leave. She had no job, and she worried that she and her young daughter would end up homeless. She couldn’t imagine how they would survive.
When you are trapped inside a tomb, it can be nearly impossible to roll away the stone.
How many stories could we add to these? Stories of whole communities thrown into darkness and despair; countries at war. People living half-lives, trapped in dark corners by addiction or bigotry or violence. Maybe you have your own story…
Some days, it surely is easier to believe in death than to trust in the possibility of new life. Easier to believe that oppression will continue; that no resolution will be reached; that the gridlock will hold; that promises will be broken; that enemies will behave badly; that violence will erupt; that our own resolve will falter; that others will break our hearts… Some days, it’s easier to gather up the spices, and just take care of the body, because what else can we do?
And yet…
The tomb was empty. And that empty tomb, that one empty tomb tells a different story – one entirely unexpected but desperately desired: about a way out, a way forward, a way back to beauty, healing and wholeness.
This is no Pollyanna promise. Not just sunshine and lilies. This, this is what makes the resurrection so staggering, so powerful: that Jesus went all the way through: suffered on the cross and died, his body wrapped in white sheets and laid in that dark, musty tomb. How could we have heard him, otherwise? How could we have trusted one who just showed up and said: “tombs? Get over it. You’ll be fine. Just leave.”
But that’s NOT what happened. Before he vacated that cave, Jesus lay trapped in the darkness. Which means he knows what it’s like…and he found a way out. “He is not here. He has been raised!”
On the back cover of the bulletin is a photo of an empty chrysalis. I chose it, inspired by the angel’s words, to illustrate that announcement that Jesus had vacated the premises. To show what ‘empty’ looks like. But it occurs to me that the image works even better for us than for Jesus. After all: we are the ones Jesus comes to transform. We’re the ones called to exit the tomb, to leave the cacoon, to take the risk to confront the new life that waits for us just outside.
“Go to Galilee.” The angel told those women. “He wants to meet you there.” He wants to meet you. And you, and you, and all of us. Even if you are utterly convinced that new life is beyond your reach Even, (in the words of the Rev. Mary Luti) “if every mortal fragment of you shrinks from rebirth. Jesus wants you to go to Galilee.”[3]
True, the women were terrified. According to the gospel of Mark, they ran away and never told the disciples. For them, it seems, the pain of losing Jesus was easier to bear than the life-upending possibility that he lived. So they clammed up. But we know they recovered. We know they found the courage to step out, to tell the story, and maybe even to go to Galilee. How do we know? Because we’re here. Which means, of course, that word DID get out. And the news DID spread: About the one who could not be contained in any tomb. The one who leapt from the grave like a child eager to greet the new day. The one determined to empty out every tomb, including ours. Now, somehow, amazingly, mysteriously he IS here and there, and over there – and anywhere that death threatens to encroach or diminish or overwhelm. This is Christ’s role, now, not just to cover up the stench of death (we have lots of ways to do that) but to transform it completely – to restore for us, beauty, and hope and wholeness.
Once upon a time, there was one empty tomb. As for the rest of the world? It was full to overflowing with the light and love of the risen son. This was a love that could not be contained, a love that rolled away every stone, reached into every oppressive place, illuminated every dark corner and flooded every broken heart. Sisters and Brothers in Christ: Come out, come and see: This Good News may not be expected, may seem almost impossible, but it CAN be trusted: Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed!
Scripture:
Mark 16:1-8 – NRSV Translation
16When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. 2And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. 3They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” 4When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. 5As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. 6But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. 7But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” 8So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/shane_koyczan_to_this_day_for_the_bullied_and_beautiful
[2] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/550/three-miles?act=2#play
[3] Easter reflection in Relent, A Lenten Devotional by the Still Speaking Writers Group, p. 56.