Easter Morning

Easter Morning MIRACLE AND WONDER 3/27/05

Paul Simon, of Simon and Garfunkel fame, suggested in one of his songs that we live in a time “of miracle and wonder.” Yes, these are the days “of miracle and wonder,” especially as we gather in worship on this Easter morn. “Miracle and wonder” is why we are here this morning, decked out in our Easter clothes in a space “ripe” with the sight and fragrance of Easter lilies and the Holy Supper prepared and shared. A quick glance at the calendar says that it’s Easter, but a review of my daily appointment book reads more like Good Friday. In these days “of miracle and wonder,” we are a people in pain:

-a family dealing with the sudden death of their 51 year old spouse and father

-a family attending the court trial of their middle son on charges of murder

-students and colleagues facing the first Easter after the death of their school principal

-marriages fractured, jobs eliminated, health compromised, faith faultering, parents

concerned about troubled children, children torn between parents no longer together,

middle aged adults caring for loved ones in preceding and succeeding generations,

grieving widows and widowers struggling with the reality of loneliness…

The calendar says Easter, but many arrive at the tomb with tears in their eyes.

Tears, though, are appropriate at Easter. We read in John 20:11, “Mary stood weeping outside the tomb.” In John 20: 13, two angels in white, sitting in the tomb where Jesus’ body had been, ask Mary, “Woman, why are you crying?” Two verses later Jesus, whom Mary mistakes to be the gardener, asks her, “Woman, why are you crying?” But, it is Jesus who then asks Mary---a question He addresses to all of us each morning ever since that first Easter morning---“Who is it you are looking for?” Now, in vs. 15, for the third time Mary reports that someone has taken the dead body of Jesus from the grave. It is obvious, now, that Mary is looking for Jesus…the physical, now lifeless, form of Jesus she had come to love and follow. She is not interested in graveside conversation, as she has come in the darkness before the dawn expecting to see her dead Jesus, with Luke recording in 15:3 Mary’s simple concern: “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?”

Those of us, and that is most of us, who have lost a loved one know something of what Mary is feeling as our days now bring what we don’t expect to see. We come around the corner of the room and expect to see our loved one sitting in her favorite chair, but the chair is empty. We know the pain of expecting to hear the voice of that loved one again, but that voice is now rendered silent. That is why what happens next makes Easter all the more a day “of miracle and wonder!” Suddenly Mary comes face to face with the Risen Christ, only she does not recognize Him. Presumably something about His resurrected appearance is different. This man with whom she is speaking doesn’t look like anything nor anyone she had expected to see in the cemetery in the early hours of that Easter dawn.

Morgan Roberts served as Pastor of a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania parish (say that 3 times fast!) and that congregation broadcast their Sunday services over the radio each week. One Wednesday Pastor Roberts was speaking in person to a women’s group at a nearby congregation. Prior to his introduction, one woman leaned over to her friend and inquired “Which of the men at the head table is Pastor Morgan Roberts?” Her friend pointed to a skinny man with thinning gray hair, wearing a rather boring, dark gray suit. The inquiring woman then said, “I’ve heard this man speak over the radio hundreds of times…but, oh my, he doesn’t look anything like he is supposed to look!” Once Pastor Morgan began to speak, the befuddled woman, upon hearing that familiar voice, nearly shouted to her friend, “Oh! That really is him!” She didn’t see what she had expected!

This was Mary’s experience on that first Easter morning. She came to the cemetery expecting to see the motionless body of Jesus---hurriedly prepared by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus with some 75 pounds of “a mixture of myrrh and aloes” and “strips of linen” in the remaining hours of daylight the previous Friday. But, it was the sound of Jesus’ voice, the familiar voice when He called Mary by name, that transformed her Good Friday grief into the “miracle and wonder” of Easter! This familiar voice announced that everything, now, had changed. Jesus, Mary, and the disciples would not simply “pick up” where they had “left off.” The teacher from Nazareth is, now, the Risen Savior who calls us all to let go of the past and follow Him into an entirely new day, an entirely new way of living. This same Jesus continues to call out to us today---call people by name ---calling us into a fuller, faith-full, though unfamiliar, life. Christ is risen, that is the miracle. We need never be the same, that’s the wonder! Christ is alive and, though we die, we shall live also! Such is the miracle and wonder of Easter! AMEN.