Sermon on John 20:1-18
Pastor Jennifer Garcia
It had been a tough week, to put it mildly.
Jesus’ followers had watched him go from the political performance art of Palm Sunday to being arrested, beaten, humiliated, and executed by the Roman Empire.
And after a Sabbath full of mourning and fear, Mary Magdalene went to visit his grave, and—wouldn’t you know it?—someone had rolled the stone away and stolen his body.
After all that, grave robbers? Really, God?!
Did she really need one more thing?
Didn’t she have enough to grieve without someone having disturbed his body?
Did she really need one more thing to deal with?
Hadn’tshe been through enough?
Fortunately, Mary had the wisdom not to face it alone—she ran and got two other disciples. We need community in grief, especially when things go wrong.
And even though all three of them were confounded by the situation, God was at work.
What they thought was adding insult to injury was actually resurrection.
It wasn’t desecration of the dead but evidence ofnew life.
Jesus met Mary by a tomb, a hole in the ground, amid the dirt and decay. But what seemed like rot was more like compost: rich nutritious earth that new life sprung out of.
In the middle of the hardest parts of being human, God brought about something miraculous.
God became human and experienced the worst of humanity and the human condition: betrayal, scorn, agony, and death. And God didn’t turn away. God experienced all of it and still met Mary in her grief.
Jesus rose again and trusted Mary with proclaiming that news to the other disciples.
The story continued. New life won out.
That’s wonderful, and 2,000 years later, we still have to deal with the hard parts of being human.
People still get cancer. Wars are still fought. Disasters still devastate. Dreams are still broken. Our hopes can seem fruitless.
Today we celebrate what happened so long ago, and tomorrow we again have to face all that’s still broken in this world.
Sometimes it seems like our worlds are stuck inHoly Saturday or even Good Friday—the waiting, the pain, the uncertainty, the fear, the confusion.
Sometimes the circumstances of our lives and the world around us feel a lot more like rot than compost.
But every Easter is an affirmation that God is turning our rot into compost, that we continually need the promise of new life, that we need to hear God calling our name, that we need to know that God is still at work in the world.
Easter still has something to say to us today—that promise of new life, of hope.
Author Anne Lamott was once asked how Easter had changed for her over the years, and this was her response:
“When I was 38,
my best friend, Pammy,
died, and we went shopping
about two weeks before she died,
and she was in a wig
and a wheelchair.
I was buying a dress
for this boyfriend I was trying to impress,
and I bought a tighter,
shorter dress than I was used to.
And I said to her,
“Do you think this makes my hips look big?”
and she said to me, so calmly,
“Anne, you don't have that kind of time.”
And I think Easter has been about
the resonance of that simple statement;
and that when I stop,
when I go into contemplation and meditation,
when I breathe again and do the sacred action
of plopping and hanging my head
and being done with my own agenda,
I hear that, ‘You don't have that kind of time,’
you have time only to cultivate presence
and authenticity and service,
praying against all odds
to get your sense of humor back.
That's how it has changed for me.
That was the day my life changed,
when she said that to me.”
In some ways, Easter is a reminder that we “don’t have that kind of time.” We don’t have time to waste on things that don’t matter. We don’t have time to waste doing anything but loving God and each other. We don’t have time to do anything but proclaim along with Mary Magdalene that Jesus is alive and that our gardener God is at work in the world, turning rot into compost.
And in another way, Easter is a reminder that we have all the time that’s needed.
I’ve learned from my own backyard compost pile that it takes a lot of time for things to break down (especially when I forget to take care of it properly).
Moldy vegetable scraps from the back of the fridge and eggshells and fallen leaves and bits of cardboard take a lot longer to turn into that rich, nutritious soil than I would like. The progress is slow. It requires patience and trust in the process.
Once you plant a seed, you can’t dig it up every five minutes, or every hour, or every day, hoping to see growth. It takes the time it takes. And a lot of growth happens underground, in the dark, before a sprout pops its head out into the sun. It’s mysterious and miraculous.
New life takes time. Growth takes time. Healing takes time. But God is at work through all of it, slowly, richly, and abundantly.
And either way—the ways in which we don’t have that kind of time and the ways we can’t rushwhat is being created—hope is our anchor.
Even though the first Easter happened so long ago, it still speaks to us today because it reminds us that God is more powerful than death and that God is lovingly at work in the world now.
We need that hope of new life amid the hard things about being human. We need the anchor of hope to keep us from being tossed about by the storms that are all around us. Easter hope holds us fast.
It helps us remember that “we don’t have that kind of time” and we have the time we need for new life to emerge.
It helps us remember that Jesus conquered death, and even though we still feel its devastating, tragic effects far too often, death is not the end of the story.
We will one day be forever in the arms of our gardener God.
And for now, we have only enough time to love God and our neighbors, creating with God that Beloved Community where all are included, cherished, valued, and loved.
And so, we, along with Mary Magdalene, proclaim:
Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed, Alleluia!