Who's Afraid of Easter?

David Orendorff · Mark 16:1-8 · April 16, 2006

It is Easter. Second only to Christmas Eve, this is the largest gathering of believers for the year. We come to celebrate that Jesus is raised from the dead. The preceding week has told the story of our faith. We began with Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem and we quickly moved to the last meal, the betrayal of Judas and the arrest in the garden, Jesus' trial and the denials of Peter, and finally the crucifixion on Friday. On Saturday, Jesus is deep in the grave and our fears are high while our hopes are low. Together, as the family of God, we watch and suffer a dark week of confusion and grief, of lost love and dark tomorrows.

Today, Easter Sunday, we come together and discover that those times are over; that the tomb that held our lives captive is empty; that Jesus has been raised from death; that we have been forgiven and promised resurrection from our wounds, illnesses, and even deaths. It is the first Sunday of all the Sundays and we proclaim our faith in God.

But resurrection frightened the first ones to Jesus' tomb. You remember in today's lesson how Mary, the mother of James and Salome, and Mary Magdalene "fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid."

Mary and Mary are rightly afraid, for the only way to Easter Sunday is Friday's death. Jesus had to die and be placed in the grave before he could be raised. And if Jesus way is our way, then we, like Mary and Mary, are also afraid of the empty tomb. Simply put, we don't want to die, especially for some vague, strange, unnatural promise of resurrection. Easter is frightening because in its glory we are confronted with the fact that we don't have control of our deaths or our lives. Easter would have us let go of the control we so desperately want to maintain on our dying and living. Easter demands that we radically and totally trust God, even and maybe most faithfully, when we don't understand and the guarantees are vague and supernatural.

Fear of resurrection was certainly common with Jesus' mother and his earliest followers. Mother Mary must let go of her child Jesus, must trust him and his mission to the love of God, even though she knows he must die.

Mother Mary by Krys Holmes

For me, his death began when he left my house. My son, the light of the world, born in the world's most dark and holy hour. Of course I knew he would go. Jeshua was made of God, and light and knowledge beyond knowing. I was there when he was made, and it was under my heart that he grew, thanks be to God.

(pause)

When I was young, all the girls prayed that we would be chosen to be the mother of the Messiah. I told God in no uncertain terms, "I am ready to do this. Choose me."

(Smiles with the memory)

And I knew the other half of the prophecy, too. That the Messiah would be as a lamb to the slaughter. Like Isaac, led up the mountain by Abraham to be sacrificed by his own beloved father . . . but. . . worse. . . .

And so, when Jeshua's time was at hand, I prayed only for one more day. "Just let him stay here one more day, with the people who love him and need him ...Please . . . Just one more day..."

Meanwhile, my country was filled with despair. The migrant farm workers, the landless tenants run out of their homes by the bankers, the single mothers, the outsiders, the ill - people boiled in their suffering. The rumors spread like wildfire that the Messiah was on his way. Everyone was waiting. And yet Jeshua stayed put, preaching to the neighbors and telling his stories.

Finally, I asked him: "Why aren't you doing anything? All the people are suffering while they wait for exactly what you have. Have you no compassion? Why do you not go now?"

He turned to me, so gently, and said, "I am waiting for you."

(Pause)

I went out into the field that night and threw myself against the wet grass. I cried out to God, "I can't stand to see people suffer, but you can't ask me to let him go! To give up my child, my love, my meaning. How dare you put this on me!

"I am his mother. He is my boy, and I will cling to him to my last drop of blood."

Finally, in the deep purple hours of dawn, I heard what Jeshua was trying to tell me. That he could not do what he was to do until it happened inside of me first.

He would go, and lay down everything he had. But he could not do it until I did it in my heart, first.

(smile) In my heart is where it began.

Before the sun came up that morning, I had packed him a food bag for the journey. And I leavened every morsel with my new understanding: That the world becomes new by feeding and growing on what we give it. The world grows and transforms according to the greatness of what we are able to give away.

I thought I was giving up my motherhood. Now everyone calls me Mother.

In the final days, I let go of everything.

And I discovered eternity.

It is in Mother Mary's letting go of her baby Jesus that Jesus becomes teacher, healer and savior of the world. It is relinquishing control of the life most precious to her that life is given to all creation.

And Mary Magdalene, long time and faithful disciple, is told by Jesus that she must not hold on to him, but must let him go to his and her Abba, his and her God.

Mary Magdalene by Krys Holmes

No one ever gets my story right, so just listen, and don't say anything. That's what I did. I listened. I watched. I hardly said a word. Not that they would believe me. That part about fleeing in terror? They still don't get it. Who cares? Most of what's true about the world you can't really say anyway.

So I stayed quiet. And I watched. And I listened.

I listened when he said, "If you try to hold tight to your own life, you're going to lose it. But if you spend your light out every day, spend it all, you'll be filled up with eternity."

I listened when he said "Look, I am always with you. Lift up a stone, you'll find me there; split wood, I'm there"

I loved him with all my being. I believed in him. He taught me how to surrender everything that stood in the way of Love. He taught me to bow down to no man, but to give myself only to the God within me, the Creator of the world.

It's no wonder they said such dreadful things about me when I was gone.

But as long as I had his understanding, I was free - I was whole.

We both knew the dark days would come. He invented a ritual to remind us that even when we felt split apart, with the juice of our lives running out of us, that we would still be surrounded by love.

"How will we know this love?" I asked him. "When everything hurts so much, how will we know that we are loved?"

He said: "When you let go of everything else, your whole life will fill up with love."

Well, you know what happened. They arrested him, they tortured him, and they crucified him. They made him into something he wasn't - it was so ugly -

The whole next day, the Sabbath, I lit no lamps but prayed alone in the dark. I couldn't feel him anywhere. I thought the emptiness had come to punish me for my joy. I was terrified that they might come for me.

At first light, his mother and I went to the tomb with oils. If I could not have the light within me any more I was going to claim the rituals of death.

I got there, and - his body was gone! I couldn't believe it! Even this one meager death ritual, the only thing I had left, had been taken away from me. I flew out of that tomb, I ran over to the first person I saw, this - gardener - and started shouting at him "Give me back the body of this good man!"

I... can't explain what happened then....

I saw him, drawing me nearer. I heard him laugh and say, "Trip on a stone, there I am!" My heart broke open. I saw love that had somehow survived everything. Not a grasping, grieving love, but love that is bigger ... than everything....

I felt myself dying and being born at the same time. I ran toward him, to throw myself at him, and I heard him say: Do not hold onto me.

Do not hold onto me.

He wasn't there any more. He wasn't even HIM any more. He was life itself, he was light, he was knowledge. To let go of the HIM of him ... was the hardest thing I've ever done. But that's how life happens. Everything breaks open. And amazing life springs forth from it.

"When you let go of everything else, your whole life will fill up with love."

And so Mary of Magdala lets go of her friend. It is in Mary of Magdala's letting go that Jesus becomes not just her friend, but the friend and Christ of all the people and all the ages. In his going Jesus transcends one friendship to become the cosmic Jesus, the living lover of us all.

Mother Mary and Mary of Magdala choose to see beyond the threat of death, to hope beyond their fears of what might be, to live toward the promise of resurrection.

By resurrection, by the celebration of Easter, we are challenged to let go, to not hang on to our children, our friends, our partners, our preferences, our dreams or even our lives. We are challenged to not let our expectations and our needs be the tombs that hold our love. By resurrection we are challenged to trust that God will bring new life, greater life, a loving life beyond whatever death we or those we love may suffer. Easter asks us to see life as a continual letting go, a regular dying, that new life might become.

In the mid 70s a family was camping near Manhattan, Montana and their six year old daughter was kidnapped and then murdered. The mother, Marietta Jagger, had lost her child in a most cruel way. The murder was cruel and it would be understandable if she with acidic anger would call for the death of David Meirerhoffer when he was finally captured. But David Meirerhoffer could not even give this satisfaction since he committed suicide while in jail waiting trial.

Marietta admitted later that her grief and anger could have consumed her, that her pain and need for revenge could have become her life. But like the Mary's before her, she found a way to let go her anger and her fear. She found the mother of her child's murderer, sought to understand, made a friend, and together found a meaning and purpose greater than their own suffering. Today they campaign together against capital punishment and on behalf of the mentally ill. Beyond the threat of resurrection they found the promise of new life and made the promise of resurrection into life for many.

In a world where wisdom is measured in power, sophistication, intellectual athleticism and complexity, our Mary's are fools. In a world in which suffering is all too common and horrible, where misery accompanies everyone, our Mary's are naive optimists. This world challenges their simplicity with all kinds of diversions that promise "realistic" salvation and scoffs at the dreams of simple lovers, but only resurrection could end their suffering and sustain the love they hold for their children and for every child.

The Marys and Mariettas of the world teach me to be a simple man, and the longer I study their faith and the faith of Jesus, the more simple I become. In my simplicity I believe in the God of love who raises the dead. When I am not blind in fear, I know that God will take care of me and all I love, bringing us to life whenever we die.

Truthfully, it is sometimes only in desperate grief in the face of some dying that I let go my fears, expectations and desires to believe in resurrection. But like the Marys and Marietta, the God of resurrection has always raised me. And when my eyes open from the tomb, resurrection is all around, all the time; it is in the flowers and in our babies, if we will only see it and trust it. Resurrection and not death is the truth and end of life. Easter is not to be feared for it is our next beginning, the final truth of life.

Amen and Shalom.