Easter Transportation
Sermon
Sermons On The Gospel Readings
Series I, Cycle B
The eyes of our nation have, in recent time, twice been riveted on Antarctica and the need to rescue medical personnel from a weather station there. Happily both rescues were successful, but they were conducted in weather conditions that were exceptionally hazardous for flight. Aircrews had to wait for precisely the right time to make each rescue attempt. The rescuers knew they wanted and needed to get to the weather station, but it was all but impossible.
I am wondering whether a similar predicament obtains with regard to Easter. We see it off in the distance and desperately want to get there, but often we can't seem to quite make it. We are like Mary, as described by John, and on this text we focus this Easter sermon: "When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus" (John 20:14). So caught up was Mary in an assumed loss, that she could see nothing more. She hadn't yet gotten to Easter. Is that you? Is that me?
Maybe the transportation we have selected isn't equal to the task.
Some actually don't sense the need for any transportation to Easter. For them, Easter isn't an event that connects with them personally in any way; a trip isn't called for. It is an event that is saluted and acknowledged, but from a distance. It's rather like President's Day; we know it has to do with Washington and Lincoln, but more than anything else it's a day when our favorite department store has a whopping sale. There is a disconnect between the day as announced and the day as lived. We have nothing against old George or Abe; it's just that they were then, and we are now, and there is no wedding of then and now.
A young seminarian once received back his paper on systematic theology, and his professor had written this stinging comment: "I would call this 'notes for a paper in systematic theology'; you have all kinds of material, but you don't do anything with it." Sometimes Easter is just "out there" -- we don't do anything with it, or let it do anything with us.
Of course, there are other times when we wish to ride the vehicle of reason to Easter. We do our best to become theological engineers, asking "how questions"; we endeavor to analyze our way to the resurrection. But if we could analyze and dissect Easter until it fit nicely into the contours of our minds, what would we in fact have?
Imagine going to a world-class art museum and finding a particular painting that captures your attention. If you wished, you could spend considerable time researching that painting -- its history, purpose, the nature of the paints the artist used, its many characters, the culture that gave rise to it, the artist as a person and more. You could then write all of this up in formal fashion and present it to others for their consumption. But with all that done, what would we have? We would have some insights, but certainly not all that the painting encompasses. We would have facts and figures, but facts and figures are not exhaustive. Every set of eyes encountering that painting brings to it, and takes from it, something unique to those eyes and not shared by other eyes. There is what can be known by the mind, but there is also what is known only to the heart; there is the rational, but also the non-rational. As Pascal put it, "The heart has its reasons of which reason knows not, as we feel in a thousand instances."1
Similarly, if we knew all about the mechanics of Jesus' resurrection and could reconcile the varying accounts of where and to whom Jesus revealed himself, what would we really have? We would have the outsides, but not the insides; the shell but not the core; what is ephemeral, not what is essential. Halford Luccock said it well: "No doctrine can live in the intellect which does not renew itself in experience."2
Then again, we sometimes head toward Easter on the shoulders of other people's faith. We want to get there, but believe we can't on our own steam. And that's okay. In matters of faith, we sometimes carry each other.
It reminds me of the two characters in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. George and Lenny are rootless men who till the soil, and George takes special care of Lennie, whom we would describe today as being significantly challenged. George is the keeper of Lennie's hope.
Early in the novel George says to Lennie: "Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place."
Lennie is delighted with what George says and responds: "That's it -- that's it. Now tell how it is with us."
So George continues: "With us it ain't like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us."
Lennie breaks in: "But not us! An' why? Because -- because I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's why." Lennie then asks George to go on and George responds: "You got it by heart. You can do it yourself."
But Lennie, wanting to ride on the shoulders of George's hope, says, "No, you. I forget some a' the things. Tell about how it's gonna be."
Back and forth it goes, with George telling Lennie he knows the full story, too. But Lennie always saying, "No ... you tell it. It ain't the same if I tell it. Go on ... George. How I get to tend the rabbits."3
This is something we do for each other all the time. The young teacher gets discouraged, and the seasoned teacher paints the larger picture; the young medical student gets lost in the maelstrom of unending deadlines and exams, and the seasoned physician points to the ultimate destination. We regularly give blood transfusions to the hopes of others.
Transportation to Easter. We all want it. But there is a further angle on this and the news is good indeed. Here it is: We don't need any transportation to Easter; we don't have to get to Easter. Why? Because Easter finds its way to us.
Go back to Mary, standing by the tomb weeping. "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." Mary is clueless. Transportation doesn't even enter the picture, because she has no idea where she would even go to find Jesus' body. At this point, Jesus enters the picture, but she doesn't even know that. "When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know it was Jesus." She takes him to be the gardener.
Transportation to Easter. We all want it. But do you suppose we are on the right track in doing that? I'm not sure we are; in fact, I've come to the conclusion that we are way off track in talking about ways to get to Easter. Here in John's account of the primal Easter is Easter -- the risen Jesus -- coming to Mary. She didn't have to seek; instead she was found! Jesus utters an emphatic "Mary" -- and then Mary knows.
So here we all sit, doing our level best to find our way to Easter, when Easter is going to -- maybe already has -- find us.
The eyeglass wearers in the house will identify with this. You can't find your glasses; you had them just a bit ago, but now you have them not. So you race from room to room in search of them. You're sure they are lost, until that ridiculous moment when you discover that they have been on your face all along -- it's just that you weren't aware of it.
I'm as sure as I can be that Easter has, or soon will, come to you. If it doesn't seem so, it may be that you, like Mary, are seeing, yet not seeing. "Supposing him to be the gardener," our text says of Mary.
Remember that time when you were in deep despair and it felt all the time like it was three o'clock in the morning? Then the despair lifted -- and it was more than the St. John's Wort that did it. Help came, and to speak figuratively, you thought it was the gardener. It wasn't the gardener!
Do you recall that time when your vocation degenerated into a job and you could hardly stand to get up and do what you do any longer? But one day several things came together and again you were caught up in the rhythm of a vocation that speaks to your soul. Help came and you thought it was the gardener. It wasn't the gardener!
And how about that occasion when you all but gave up on that son or daughter of yours, so impudent and recalcitrant had that son or daughter become. Your parental agony wasn't a matter of months, but several years. Then one day that would-be adult became an adult and walked across that stage, or wrote you that letter of rapprochement, or simply stopped fighting. Help came and you thought it was the gardener. It wasn't the gardener!
In these and a trillion other circumstances, it was the spirit of God in the risen Christ creating those resurrections. Marilyn Oden put it beautifully:
As we stumble though the cobwebs in the midnight mist, filled with loneliness and despair and bent double by our burdens, the whisper of God's love can penetrate the mist -- even from the underside of the soul. We know the outcome of the Story. We do not have to remain entombed in the dark night. We do not have to wrap ourselves in the graveclothes of self-pity, blame, bitterness, cynicism, suspicion, vengeance. We do not have to become like the sea creatures of the deep who make bizarre adaptions to survive severe cold, pressure, and lightlessness. We are the Easter people, called "out of darkness into his marvelous light" (1 Peter 2:9).4
There are times when we rightly strain to achieve what we want. Easter is not one of those times. God, in and through Christ, is the achiever. We are the beneficiaries. There is no transportation to Easter because it isn't required. God, at this very moment, is rolling away stones and calling into tombs: Come out! Come out! Alleluia and alleluia!
____________
1. Margaret Pepper, ed., The Harper Religious & Inspirational Quotation Companion (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1989), p. 228.
2. Halford Luccock, Marching Off The Map (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1952), p. 88.
3. John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men (New York: Bantam Books, 1963), pp. 15, 16.
4. Marilyn Brown Oden, Wilderness Wanderings (Nashville: The Upper Room, 1995), pp. 105-106.
I am wondering whether a similar predicament obtains with regard to Easter. We see it off in the distance and desperately want to get there, but often we can't seem to quite make it. We are like Mary, as described by John, and on this text we focus this Easter sermon: "When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus" (John 20:14). So caught up was Mary in an assumed loss, that she could see nothing more. She hadn't yet gotten to Easter. Is that you? Is that me?
Maybe the transportation we have selected isn't equal to the task.
Some actually don't sense the need for any transportation to Easter. For them, Easter isn't an event that connects with them personally in any way; a trip isn't called for. It is an event that is saluted and acknowledged, but from a distance. It's rather like President's Day; we know it has to do with Washington and Lincoln, but more than anything else it's a day when our favorite department store has a whopping sale. There is a disconnect between the day as announced and the day as lived. We have nothing against old George or Abe; it's just that they were then, and we are now, and there is no wedding of then and now.
A young seminarian once received back his paper on systematic theology, and his professor had written this stinging comment: "I would call this 'notes for a paper in systematic theology'; you have all kinds of material, but you don't do anything with it." Sometimes Easter is just "out there" -- we don't do anything with it, or let it do anything with us.
Of course, there are other times when we wish to ride the vehicle of reason to Easter. We do our best to become theological engineers, asking "how questions"; we endeavor to analyze our way to the resurrection. But if we could analyze and dissect Easter until it fit nicely into the contours of our minds, what would we in fact have?
Imagine going to a world-class art museum and finding a particular painting that captures your attention. If you wished, you could spend considerable time researching that painting -- its history, purpose, the nature of the paints the artist used, its many characters, the culture that gave rise to it, the artist as a person and more. You could then write all of this up in formal fashion and present it to others for their consumption. But with all that done, what would we have? We would have some insights, but certainly not all that the painting encompasses. We would have facts and figures, but facts and figures are not exhaustive. Every set of eyes encountering that painting brings to it, and takes from it, something unique to those eyes and not shared by other eyes. There is what can be known by the mind, but there is also what is known only to the heart; there is the rational, but also the non-rational. As Pascal put it, "The heart has its reasons of which reason knows not, as we feel in a thousand instances."1
Similarly, if we knew all about the mechanics of Jesus' resurrection and could reconcile the varying accounts of where and to whom Jesus revealed himself, what would we really have? We would have the outsides, but not the insides; the shell but not the core; what is ephemeral, not what is essential. Halford Luccock said it well: "No doctrine can live in the intellect which does not renew itself in experience."2
Then again, we sometimes head toward Easter on the shoulders of other people's faith. We want to get there, but believe we can't on our own steam. And that's okay. In matters of faith, we sometimes carry each other.
It reminds me of the two characters in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. George and Lenny are rootless men who till the soil, and George takes special care of Lennie, whom we would describe today as being significantly challenged. George is the keeper of Lennie's hope.
Early in the novel George says to Lennie: "Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place."
Lennie is delighted with what George says and responds: "That's it -- that's it. Now tell how it is with us."
So George continues: "With us it ain't like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us."
Lennie breaks in: "But not us! An' why? Because -- because I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's why." Lennie then asks George to go on and George responds: "You got it by heart. You can do it yourself."
But Lennie, wanting to ride on the shoulders of George's hope, says, "No, you. I forget some a' the things. Tell about how it's gonna be."
Back and forth it goes, with George telling Lennie he knows the full story, too. But Lennie always saying, "No ... you tell it. It ain't the same if I tell it. Go on ... George. How I get to tend the rabbits."3
This is something we do for each other all the time. The young teacher gets discouraged, and the seasoned teacher paints the larger picture; the young medical student gets lost in the maelstrom of unending deadlines and exams, and the seasoned physician points to the ultimate destination. We regularly give blood transfusions to the hopes of others.
Transportation to Easter. We all want it. But there is a further angle on this and the news is good indeed. Here it is: We don't need any transportation to Easter; we don't have to get to Easter. Why? Because Easter finds its way to us.
Go back to Mary, standing by the tomb weeping. "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." Mary is clueless. Transportation doesn't even enter the picture, because she has no idea where she would even go to find Jesus' body. At this point, Jesus enters the picture, but she doesn't even know that. "When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know it was Jesus." She takes him to be the gardener.
Transportation to Easter. We all want it. But do you suppose we are on the right track in doing that? I'm not sure we are; in fact, I've come to the conclusion that we are way off track in talking about ways to get to Easter. Here in John's account of the primal Easter is Easter -- the risen Jesus -- coming to Mary. She didn't have to seek; instead she was found! Jesus utters an emphatic "Mary" -- and then Mary knows.
So here we all sit, doing our level best to find our way to Easter, when Easter is going to -- maybe already has -- find us.
The eyeglass wearers in the house will identify with this. You can't find your glasses; you had them just a bit ago, but now you have them not. So you race from room to room in search of them. You're sure they are lost, until that ridiculous moment when you discover that they have been on your face all along -- it's just that you weren't aware of it.
I'm as sure as I can be that Easter has, or soon will, come to you. If it doesn't seem so, it may be that you, like Mary, are seeing, yet not seeing. "Supposing him to be the gardener," our text says of Mary.
Remember that time when you were in deep despair and it felt all the time like it was three o'clock in the morning? Then the despair lifted -- and it was more than the St. John's Wort that did it. Help came, and to speak figuratively, you thought it was the gardener. It wasn't the gardener!
Do you recall that time when your vocation degenerated into a job and you could hardly stand to get up and do what you do any longer? But one day several things came together and again you were caught up in the rhythm of a vocation that speaks to your soul. Help came and you thought it was the gardener. It wasn't the gardener!
And how about that occasion when you all but gave up on that son or daughter of yours, so impudent and recalcitrant had that son or daughter become. Your parental agony wasn't a matter of months, but several years. Then one day that would-be adult became an adult and walked across that stage, or wrote you that letter of rapprochement, or simply stopped fighting. Help came and you thought it was the gardener. It wasn't the gardener!
In these and a trillion other circumstances, it was the spirit of God in the risen Christ creating those resurrections. Marilyn Oden put it beautifully:
As we stumble though the cobwebs in the midnight mist, filled with loneliness and despair and bent double by our burdens, the whisper of God's love can penetrate the mist -- even from the underside of the soul. We know the outcome of the Story. We do not have to remain entombed in the dark night. We do not have to wrap ourselves in the graveclothes of self-pity, blame, bitterness, cynicism, suspicion, vengeance. We do not have to become like the sea creatures of the deep who make bizarre adaptions to survive severe cold, pressure, and lightlessness. We are the Easter people, called "out of darkness into his marvelous light" (1 Peter 2:9).4
There are times when we rightly strain to achieve what we want. Easter is not one of those times. God, in and through Christ, is the achiever. We are the beneficiaries. There is no transportation to Easter because it isn't required. God, at this very moment, is rolling away stones and calling into tombs: Come out! Come out! Alleluia and alleluia!
____________
1. Margaret Pepper, ed., The Harper Religious & Inspirational Quotation Companion (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1989), p. 228.
2. Halford Luccock, Marching Off The Map (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1952), p. 88.
3. John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men (New York: Bantam Books, 1963), pp. 15, 16.
4. Marilyn Brown Oden, Wilderness Wanderings (Nashville: The Upper Room, 1995), pp. 105-106.
