RVCC Pastor's Sermon

Sermon - March 23, 2008

“Take Two Aspirin and Go Home to Bed”

By Rev. Nancy Foran
John 20:1-18

It began for Mary Magdalene at first light, when a single ray of sun inched its way above the horizon. Not really – it actually began for her the previous year when he somehow banished those seven demons that had been plaguing her for what had seemed like forever.

Or maybe it began at the precise moment his message made sense, that “ah ha” time when it all fell together and she understood clearly that the Kingdom he spoke of was in fact nothing like the Roman imperialism that had oppressed them, particularly the peasants and small time farmers for, well, as far back as she could remember.

Even through her tears, she recalled those moments of hope – of really deep down inside believing that in spite of whatever Caesar said to the contrary, might did not make right. There was more to life than affluence and military fire power.

Right was nurtured in gentle compassion, and life – real life – happened when you lived in love and not in fear – no matter what your economic status was. That is what he had told them – over and over - in all those stories and sermons – oh, those were the good times, she thought painfully to herself.

But wherever it began, it had all ended just before the Sabbath. Mary Magdalene had stood as close as she could bear to the cross and had seen him die, had listened to him die when he cried out to the God who had forsaken him in the loneliest and most agonized voice she had ever heard.

Perhaps that was part of the reason that she came to the garden tomb at dawn – because no one should die the way he had died with none of the love and companionship he had given to others being offered to him when he had needed it most.

O Mary, bearer of myrrh and aloe and ointments for the dead, come and do your womanly work this morning – do what you can to give this courageous and admirable man the burial he deserves.

And so she made her way on the darkened dirt road, past the hill where the cross stood empty now, ready for the next execution, and into the garden alone to the limestone cave that held his corpse.

But you know the story. You know that it was then that she was startled into realizing that something was dreadfully wrong. Eying the tomb, she saw that it had obviously been disturbed. Putting it all together in her grief-stricken mind, she could only conclude that someone had stolen the body.

How could they, she screamed to herself. How could they? How could they? How could they? Her feet beat out the frantic rhythm as she hurried back to find the disciples, the friends who had abandoned him.

“They have taken the Lord, right out of the tomb.” That is how they woke up – with Mary banging on the back door and then her persistent kicks at their backs as they slumbered, and her distraught whispers. And Peter, fancying himself a bit of a leader now – and John too – sleep still in their eyes, managed to throw on a clock and a pair of sandals and hustled back to the garden in Mary’s wake, trying to take in all that she was prattling on about – the tomb disturbed, the body gone.

And they arrived with much huffing and puffing – John first, of course, being the younger one and all. He took a look around. Huh! No evidence of tampering – other than the stone being rolled away. He ran his fingers over it but could find no clue.

He sniffed the air, surely expecting the odor of the dead, but all he smelled were spring flowers. Huh! He peeked inside the tomb but could not see much in the dark. And when he realized that actually entering the tomb was the only recourse, Peter arrived (thank goodness) and did exactly that.

Huh! Grave clothes all folded up neatly in the corner. If someone had stolen the body, why did they unwrap it first – and leave the linens in such a neat pile? John scratched his head, and Peter stroked his beard thoughtfully. They lingered – an ersatz Sherlock Holmes and Watson team - hoping that a plausible explanation would surface somewhere in the dank coolness of the cave.

They poked around a bit more to no avail and eventually shrugged in a manly sort of way. John thought maybe something important was going on but he was not sure what, so the two of them emerged from the tomb, speaking to one another in hushed and important sounding whispers.

They looked at Mary, who was still crying. Somewhat embarrassed by her emotional display and not wanting to admit that they had not the foggiest notion what was going on, they looked down at their sandaled feet and mumbled something about in their estimation there was nothing to be done. Take two aspirin, and go home to bed. You will feel better in the morning. And Peter and John went home and did exactly that. Big help they were!

But Mary stayed – alone time, she decided, not two aspirin and a good night’s sleep - was what she needed. She breathed deeply of the early morning air, wiped her eyes, and, out of curiosity more than anything, she peeked into the tomb.

And through her tears and beyond the flickering sunlight that now played at the entrance of the tomb, she saw the two figures inside and heard their muffled voices echo off the limestone walls. “Woman? Why are you weeping?’

“Why am I weeping? What kind of a question is that? I have no clue what is going on here. I come to the tomb this morning knowing what happened on Friday, and nothing right now makes any sense to me. The stone is rolled away, the tomb was empty but now is filled with a couple of people, and the one I expected to find is nowhere to be seen.

Someone must have taken the body away without telling us. Do you know where he is? That’s why I am weeping. That and the fact that I just want to have a bit of peace and quiet here – even if his body is gone. Alone time, that is what I need – and do not tell me to take two aspirin and go home to bed.

And as if that was not enough, she turned away – only to find the gardener just standing behind her, the morning sun backlighting his face and shining through his hair. Now he was the last person she wanted to see – some unknown groundskeeper, especially a nosy one asking the same inane question as whoever was in the tomb. “Woman, why are you weeping?” “Can’t one come to the garden alone any more?” she wondered to herself.

But as she looked at the gardener, for some mysterious reason she could not explain, she realized that being alone was not what she needed, just as two aspirin and a good night’s sleep would not really make her feel better in the morning either, and so she reached out to the gardener and spoke to him of her greatest fear and greatest need. “Where is he? I need to still be with him.”

“Mary,” he whispered. Just her name – spoken gently and with such love - but what a powerful word of grace, and she answered in great relief. “Rabboni.” You are here – and all is well!

That is the Easter proclamation, you know. You are here – and all is well. As Frederick Buechner writes, “Love is the victor. Death is not the end. The end is life. His life and our lives through him, in him.”

And so, when you come right down to it – it is not really about the empty tomb at all. After all, Peter and John were the first ones to walk into the cave – and they saw only absence and nothingness and so went back to bed.

Today is not about the empty tomb. However, as Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “that is where so many of us continue to focus our energy: on that tomb, on that morning, on what did or did not happen there and how to explain it to anyone who does not happen to believe it too. Resurrection does not square with anything else we know about physical human life on earth. No one has ever seen it happen, which is why it helps to remember that no one saw it happen on Easter morning either.

The resurrection is the one and only event in Jesus’ life that was entirely between him and God. There were no witnesses whatsoever. No one on earth can say what happened inside that tomb, because no one was there. They all arrived after the fact. Two of them saw clothes. One of them saw angels. Most of them saw nothing at all because they were still in bed that morning, but as it turned out that did not matter because the empty tomb was not the point.”

You see, the resurrection does not become real until Mary makes that critical choice of hers – that choice not to be alone in her despair, not to take two aspirin and go home to bed, but rather to be with the gardener. The resurrection becomes real when she chooses not to focus on death in the tomb but rather on life in the garden.

The real miracle of Easter begins when the gardener speaks Mary’s name – and she recognizes him. And that is where the miracle continues to happen – time and time again for each one of us. We hear our name. We feel Christ’s living presence filling us up with courage and power and great high hope that this time, this time the world will hear us when we proclaim his Gospel message, this time the world will see us living in a different way – and take notice.

The power of the resurrection lies not in what happened in the garden so long ago but in what continues to happen to us, we who call ourselves Christian: the way we believe that programs to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless are paramount even when budgets are too tight, the way we continue to speak out for peace in a world that is riddled by war, the way we cast aside old grudges so that we can recreate our family communities again, the way we never quite stop believing that even when all evidence points to the contrary, as Frederick Buechner writes, we sense “this nourishing current of hope and new life that still flows in spite of everything.”

Buechner goes on to write that “Martin Luther said once, ‘If I were God, I'd kick the world to pieces.’ But Martin Luther wasn't God, God is God, and God has never kicked the world to pieces. God keeps reentering the world, keeps offering a sacred presence in the world – and for some reason we will never fully fathom graciously keeps blessing the world, continually making possible the kind of life which we all, in our deepest being, hunger for.”

I do not know what happened in the tomb that morning. But what I do know is that whatever it was it rocked and shocked the world enough that people down through the ages still proclaim, still pin their very lives on Jesus’ simple yet profound commandment to love not only God, but to love one’s neighbor as well.

And when I think about that, I trust that beneath the madness and horror of a broken world and shattered lives is a life-giving, healing, beautiful mystery. Do I believe in resurrection? Absolutely – and I believe that the results of resurrection continue still. That is the miracle, and that is the mystery. Having once begun, the God who raises up just will not stop.

I believe in the power of love and the mystery of life. I believe in renewal, in transformation, in our capacity to become God’s beloved sons and daughters even as we become beloved brothers and sisters to each other. And, most of all, I believe that it is better to talk with the gardener than to take two aspirin and go home to bed.

Sermon - March 23, 2008

“Take Two Aspirin and Go Home to Bed”

By Rev. Nancy Foran John 20:1-18

By Rev. Nancy Foran
John 20:1-18