Simple Ending
1 Corinthians 15:1-11; John 20:1-18

April 20, 2003

The novelist Reynolds Price spent the time to translate the Gospels into his own modern English. A few years ago he read the Gospel according to Mark in one hour and a half reading before a university audience. To hear the Story read in such a simple, quiet but powerfully eloquent way, overwhelmed the listeners. When the reading concluded with the event on the Third Day, they applauded vigorously.

On the way out, a student asked the university chaplain, “Did they ever get the point?” “Who?” “Those disciples. Did they ever finally figure out who Jesus was and what he was up to?”

You have to admit that those twelve disciples were pretty thick, never seeming to understand what Jesus is all about right up to the bitter end. In fact, on Easter they are still confused, afraid, disoriented.

The man we simply call Paul wrote a bunch of letters to the church in Corinth, Greece, which never seemed to get the point. Word had been circulating around how bad things had gotten, how the Corinthians were a thoroughly messed up group of people. Corruption, greediness, adultery, prejudice and discrimination against the poorer members - all were cited by the disappointed Paul.

Moreover, the world of 54 A.D. as Paul knew it was in a mess: Jerusalem was occupied by Westerners who spoke a non-Semitic language, had superior technology, a religion that was a not-too-subtle mask for justifying the ideology of a totalitarian government that assumed all others were barbarians. These guys were everywhere and ruled the Greek provinces where Corinth was situated and they called their era “Pax Romana.” What kind of Pax are we having now?

After many admonishments regarding their lack of understanding and all too frequent indiscretions of moral behaviour, Paul offers a concise summary of the good news, the Gospel. This is important stuff, he reminds them, of first importance.

Yet he had told them all of this before, taught them all this important stuff in the first place when he convinced them to become Christians. Isn't once enough? Apparently not for the Corinthians, and not for us either. We have to keep hearing it until it sinks into the marrow of our bones, approximately a lifetime for the average person. We need to hear the story again many times, and practice the ancient and difficult art of listening as if for the first time.

All four Gospels agree on what happened after the worst had happened: the person who kept the hopeless hoping was Mary Magdalene. In John’s Gospel, she is the only one who ventured out into the early darkness of Sunday morning to keep the memory alive.

What about Mary Magdalene: a woman of old-fashioned ill-repute? The other disciples were always looking at her cross-eyed, wondering what she was trying to do with their teacher Jesus. Yet he was fond of her, saw something deeper in her right to the end. We are here belting out the triumphal Easter hymns because a former prostitute had the courage to go where everyone else had fled from.

Groping on her way to the tomb, on the lookout for Roman soldiers making sure people like her wouldn’t steal the body and manufacture a fraud, the thought must have occurred to her that moving the stone from the tomb would almost impossible, like moving a grand piano yourself up a flight of stairs.

The stone had been rolled away and that was frightening. Somebody else had stolen the body, but for who knows why. She didn’t go into the cave, but ran to Simon Peter and the Beloved Disciple - at best this was 6:00 a.m. - and told them of the theft. They ran together back to the tomb, but the Beloved Disciple was in better shape and got there first.

He could see the empty linen wrappings usually wound about a corpse and he froze on the threshold. Peter just blew by him right into the tomb and saw the neatly rolled up head cloths tucked away into a corner. This was no body-snatching: the unwrapping was intentional. They suddenly got the point, remembered all the scriptures about resurrection, and then turned around and simply went home.

Mary had by this time stumbled her way back in better light to the tomb, but still stood paralyzed on the outside. Peeking inside once the men had gone home, she saw two angels sitting there. Did Peter and the Beloved Disciple miss this important detail? Is this another case of men who can’t see dirt or angels?

Mary Magdalene does not appear to have gotten the point yet either. In a state of shock she asks where they have taken the body. Turning around she runs right into Jesus and thinks he’s the gardener, certainly one of the all-time great cases of mistaken identity. Mary is on the verge of hysteria, asking the gardener where the body has been taken.

Then he simply calls her by name, “Mary,” and she knows, “My teacher.” It’s not all in place yet, but go tell the others. She does exactly that, “I have seen the Lord,” and one can only imagine in what tone of voice. That’s the simple ending. That’s the point.

The most educated world in all of history is still struggling to get the point. With all of our perspective on what has happened, the tendency is to continue to act like country rubes, as if anything that happens to us is original and catastrophic. September 11th, the war in Iraq, the SARS outbreak are all urgently described by our media as world-changing and epic. “The world will never be the same.” From the most astute and perceptive of observers, despair is in vogue. Deadly power flourishes. The sky is falling.

Have you not heard? Have you not seen? The world did change that morning because death was finally defeated. Not just physical death, but all the deadly manipulations of power that the Romans and religious leaders utilized to crush this revolution of the spirit. They assumed that power and might and violence would rule, but they did not get the point.

The Roman Empire in the interest of Pax Romana would persecute and brutally murder thousands of Christians, but they never got the point.

Rome was finally sacked and burned by barbarians in 411 and the civilized world was assumed to have ended, the World Trade Towers had collapsed, but those who despaired had not gotten the point.

There isn’t a lot of history and literature issuing out of the late 13th century because the Black Death, bubonic plague, wiped out populations and cultures. No war or genocide has been as effective. Many thought Armageddon had arrived not with a bang, but the whimper of disease. They had not gotten the point.

No matter which generation, we each have our anti-christ who is bringing about the end of our world through violence and the obscenity of the Big Lie: Genghis Khan, Napoleon for some, Bismarck, Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao Zedong, Krushchev, Jim Crow, Ayatollah Khomeini, Ceaucescu, Milosevic, Saddam Hussein. They never got the point and no one who believes they are the ones with real power gets the point either.

The point is that power and might and violence only bring about death and death only wins in the short run. The third day has rolled around again and from the dead new life has been raised up. There is only one real truth that we proclaim: in spite of death, there is life, there is God’s resurrection.

There is no denying that this is a difficult point to comprehend, for every day our most sophisticated media declare that death once again has won, that the world is changing irrevocably, that the world won’t be as nice a place to live. Mary couldn’t see that those were angels sitting in the tomb and she thought Jesus was the gardener. We misunderstand the byword, “Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and tomorrow,” and want to freeze Jesus into the mold we have chosen. But Jesus is different at each time, refusing to take on our pet causes doomed to death, awakening you to a resurrected life.

So we must keeping repeating the point to one another, each year and every day. Sometimes we read the story, sometimes we paraphrase the story to our neighbour, sometimes we will sing it, as in the final hymn today.

“Thine is the glory, risen, conquering Son;

endless is the victory thou o’er death has won.

Angels in bright raiment rolled the stone away,

kept the folded grave-clothes where the body lay.”

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan