Rev. Myra led us to the good news of Jesus’ resurrection during our beautiful Easter Celebration. She preached on how Jesus’ unwavering love for us all, brings us from darkness to light, from hopelessness to hope, to being alone and knowing that God was there all the time.
Homily Transcript
Every night when I go to sleep I am covered in a quilt of women. Not just any women but women in the bible. A gift that was given to me by Lori Fromm & parishioner and a group of women in the parish who sewed quilt patches of these women to give me inspiration and strength. One of those women who have a patch on my women’s quilt is Mary Magdalene who is spoken of in this gospel today. Mary happens to be one of my favorite disciples. She is mentioned 14 times in the New Testament. She had come to Jerusalem with Jesus for the Passover celebration, but rather than feasting, she stood near the cross with the other women during the crucifixion and watched Jesus die.
When Joseph of Aramethea took the body of Jesus to the tomb, she stayed outside the tomb with the other women to watch them roll the stone in place. And in the gospel of John she comes to the tomb twice, once alone to find the tomb empty, and a second time to encounter Jesus who she thinks is the Gardner.
Mary is a woman who understood struggle and liberation! When she met Jesus she was struggled with seven demons that possessed her that Jesus cast out. Now I thought to myself that sometimes its enough to go through life struggling with one demon, and here she was consciously aware of her struggle in 7 different areas of her life that needed Jesus help. How many times have we needed Jesus to help us with our inner demons? Our struggles around fear, self worth, addiction, hopelessness, greed, anxiety about the future, where we struggle to see our selves the way God does? Or to see a better future than what we are experiencing in the moment? The second reading speaks about it as clearing out the old yeast, – old mistakes and failures and becoming a fresh batch of dough! I love that! Having the opportunity to write and discover new truths about our lives as we let the old go!
This week, I met a man who told me that he had a time in his life where he struggled with his demon of addiction so badly that his mother couldn’t even allow him in her house because, he would steal her blind so when he would arrive hungry, she would hand him food out the door until he showed up again the next time. He told me that when he finally got arrested from robbing a Jewelry store, he said, “I saw the arrest as a rescue, because he simply couldn’t shake his demons on his own.” He said, “God helped him face his demons in prison.”
Jesus changed Mary’s life, when he helped her face her own demons; he cast them out of her life and so she followed him.
When she is named, she is not identified by her relationship to a man, she is not the daughter of but she is introduced by her city. Magdala. A city known for its fishing industry, that built its wealth on fisheries. Theologians tell us that she is perhaps wealthy and independent enough to travel with Jesus as one of his disciples until his final journey to Jerusalem. Mary loved Jesus! When you love someone like she loved Jesus you understand the pain she and his mother and the disciples must have experienced at his death.
This Friday, I attended the “7 Last Words” performance by our youth group and every year there is one part in the play that pierces me every time, and that is when they take Jesus down from the cross and lay his lifeless body in his mothers arms and she rocks him.
There is no greater pain than for a parent to bury their child or hold their lifeless body in their hands. Those of you who have lost children know and understand that pain!
With her heart full of pain she comes to teach us the meaning of resurrection. The scripture tells us that,
On the first day of the week,
Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning,
while it was still dark, –
Why did she come while it was still dark? Probably, she didn’t even get any sleep. She couldn’t sleep and was simply counting the time, the hours that she could come and be with her friend, teacher, savior Jesus! But when she arrives, she finds something she didn’t expect! The stone had been rolled away from the tomb. Jesus was gone! He was not in there! She has no categories for which to grasp the reality of an empty tomb. Why is the tomb empty? What do you do, when you go looking for Jesus and he is not where you expect him to be? If he doesn’t show up where you expect him to show up? If he is not where you left him the last time you saw him?
Mary and Martha two sisters had to ask that question when Jesus didn’t show up on when their brother Lazarus was sick, and he stayed an extra day showing up only after the funeral and the burial was all over, and had to be taken to the tomb. But, Martha knew that even now you have the power to raise my brother from the dead!
Perhaps you have asked it when you were sick and prayed for healing that was delayed or lost a job or a house that you prayed you would keep. Or if it left you wondering where is Jesus! Jesus where are you?
That is exactly what Mary wonders. Her first thought is that someone must have taken him. So, she goes to Peter and the other disciple who Jesus and reports to them that she found an empty tomb where Jesus should have been. She assumes someone took his body somewhere! Missing the symbolism and message of the empty tomb!
A tomb is a place of darkness, isolation, finality, and hopelessness.
They have taken the Lord from the tomb,
and we don’t know where they put him.”
So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb.
They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter
and arrived at the tomb first;
They arrive there and they still have to ask themselves the question. What does it mean to have an empty tomb? To go from darkness to light, from hopelessness to hope, to being alone to knowing that God was they’re all the time?
The world cannot make sense of an empty tomb except for an explanation of grave robbing. On the basis of Mary’s words, Peter and the other disciple came running. They were being called to bear witness to an empty tomb! We are called to bear witness to all the empty tombs of our lives too! All the times of hopelessness, despair, isolation, darkness, that seems to be the end! To know that God has the power to roll the stone away! To free us from our tombs! That is the message of Resurrection! That he is risen! This is the message of Easter!
To call us to bear witness to the light, to new life, to new beginnings. To leave it all behind, to remember that God will never leave us or forsake us.
This is exactly what God did for me when I experience the tombs of the loss of life in my life of my parents, my grandmother and my husband. It was Jesus who walked with me and freed me from that tomb. Who called on me to bear witness to the power of his light, his life and a new beginning in him!
And so Peter and the other disciple, they come and they see these burial cloths there inside and the head wrap in a separate place. The disciple with Peter needs to go inside the tomb to believe that it had lost its power to hold Jesus. Sometimes we have to experience a thing to understand the power of God to bring us out! And if it couldn’t hold him, if death couldn’t hold Jesus! If death is not the final answer, then it can’t hold us either! Telling us then there is something more than the darkness and the struggles we experience.
So, when the struggles of life come, we don’t have to worry that they will come to bury us in a tomb. The miracle of the Easter story is that after darkness there is light, after death there is life!
I was sitting after the Holy Thursday service, and I began to think about the disturbing story of Jesus impending a crucifixion and the powerful story of the resurrection we would celebrate! I was comforted by God’s words, as I sat there that said,
Remember sometimes things fall apart before they get better!
Sometimes we will be called to let go before we are able to receive something else.
And in moments of surrender you will always find me God, with you!
We know that Mary eventually stays at this empty tomb and encounters Jesus a second time, but she mistakes for a Gardner, until he calls her by name, and sends her to tell the others of his resurrection, of his ascension, his new life he has and new life he has given for all of us!
So, Mary becomes the first Easter witness to this reality, at this tomb, she leaves behind, her tomb of tears, and despair and finds hope and comfort in Jesus, as we do. She understands the truth is, that God has reversed the power of death and darkness. The disciples left their tomb of disillusionment, of fear and disbelief! They found a deeper faith, through Jesus as they saw and believed in the miracle of the empty tomb! We too are called to leave our tombs, to leave our mistakes, to leave our past behind us. Mary, she is the first Easter witness to this reality, she is also the first to see the risen Jesus, she is the first to tell others what she has seen, and she is the first disciple of the risen Lord.
She is the first to remind us that we will rise too! So, whatever you need to rise from today.
Know that beneath the surface there is a shaking; a shifting that is taking place. A rising from the ashes of life just waiting! A leading toward a resurrection, a rebirth, a new birth, and a new beginning! Where we can let it all go and welcome the new life that Jesus comes to give us!
Happy Easter!
0 Comments