A Major Holiday

“A Major Holiday”
Acts 10:34-43      John 20:1-18
Easter Sunday, Year B, April 4, 2021
First Presbyterian Church, Sandpoint, Idaho
Andy Kennaly, Pastor

          This sermon is titled, A Major Holiday, for several reasons.  Easter is the glorious conclusion to the Season of Lent.  Church traditions have developed over the years, some more intense than others.  For example, using the word, Alleluia, is generally avoided during Lent, so then on Easter when we start singing it again, there’s an extra level of festivity.  The same goes for keys, the tone of songs.  Musically, during Lent, minor keys are used as composers help provide inspiration for introspection.  The themes of fasting, repentance, and suffering have a heavy sound to them, almost gloomy.  Come Easter, and it is A Major Holiday because the key changes.  Major chords, the fullness of sound, resolution as Alleluia’s and songs sound like sunshine filling churches and our hearts.

Another reason I call this A Major Holiday is to acknowledge the irony.  In our culture, Easter is not a major holiday.  Christmas is much larger and more involved.  Even the Fourth of July gets parades.  Thanksgiving involves the most travel.  When it comes to Easter, it can come across as a bit “churchy.”  According to a recent compiling of surveys, for the first time, most people in America do not participate in the life of a church, synagogue, or mosque.  Religious adults are not losing their faith, but younger people are less likely to participate.  Organized religion only resonates with 30 percent of Millennials.  70 percent of people between 21 and 39 years old are either nones, having no church experience, or done’s, having walked away from the church for whatever reason.

Culturally speaking, it’s the Easter bunny, Easter egg hunts, and chocolates that are the main, popular expressions of this holiday.  Schools that used to take Easter break don’t call it that anymore.  For quite some time now, it’s been called spring break.  Spring is a time of fertility as life regenerates after winter frost dissipates.  Eggs are a holdover from the pagan fertility festivals which honored the gods of the ancient Greeks.  Rabbits are prolific in their reproduction capacities.  And chocolates just taste good, but can also be shaped into rabbits and eggs.

If you are here today sitting in the pews, or participating online, maybe you need congratulations.  In a culture based on individual choice, you have decided to participate in the life of a church community.  In joining a traditional, religious celebration of the Resurrection, you are part of a minority movement.  In following Jesus to proclaim that Christ is risen, Christ is risen indeed, your actions give voice to something unseen, deep within your heart.

For young people, just because most of them don’t actively participate in religion does not mean they aren’t spiritual.  Human beings are spiritual, whether we acknowledge it or not.  That eternal quality of your soul, God’s very Presence at the core of your being, Christ living in and through you as your life; these are spiritual truths that echo through the ages.

Reading scripture we hear the gospel story from John about that first Easter morning as Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb while it is still, while it is dark, and in John’s account, she goes alone.  Most of the world is unaware of Easter glory as Mary tries to faithfully do what’s expected by taking care of Jesus’ body.  Yet the stone cover to the entrance was opened and she runs to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and tells them.  This initiates a response and they get up, run to the tomb, take turns going inside, and something within them trusts a deep mystery even though they don’t understand in their minds what is going on.  They return to their homes.

It’s Mary Magdalene who remains, alone, weeping, unsure of what’s going on.  She has a vision of angels and a conversation.  When Jesus appears she doesn’t recognize him and she assumes he is the gardener.

Everything up to this point involves a sort of pre-resurrection lack of vision, or clouded understanding, or limited perceptions.  Once Jesus says her name, Mary, everything changes.  Someone who was considered a stranger is now the one who knows you most intimately.  A tragedy of death and destruction is now overcome by new life and an invitation to enter a higher level of consciousness.  But there’s even more than that!

This passage is kind of like a waltz.  That traditional dance that uses the count, 1-2-3, 1-2-3 as partners move around the dance floor in rhythmic turning.  With 1, Mary comes to the tomb while it’s still dark; at 2, she runs to get those two disciples; with 3, she announces her assumptions based on an early level of perspective, one that is shrouded in shadow but it’s all she has at the time, saying, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”

The next move comes with 1, the two disciples run together toward the tomb to see what Mary discovered.  As the waltz continues with beat 2, the other disciple whom Jesus loved outran Peter and reaches the tomb first.  With beat 3, he bends down to look in and sees linen wrappings lying there, but he doesn’t go in.

The next waltz movement has beat 1 with Peter who shows up and goes in, and notices the burial cloth from Jesus’ head.  This is another step in the gradual broadening of perspective, from Mary in the dark, to the first disciple only seeing linens, to what’s now seen by Peter.  This broadening continues.  Beat 2 invites the other disciple into the tomb, and “he saw and believed.”  With beat 3, these disciples go back to their homes, with a sense of trust but limited understanding, their soul resonates at a trust level, but perspectives of the mind and limitations of experience are still hesitant.

The waltz continues, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3.  Mary stands outside the tomb, weeping.  She bends over and looks in.  She sees two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying.  1-2-3, 1-2-3.  With 1, they ask, “Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are are you looking for?”  Notice they call her “woman.”  This is more than a gender thing.  “Woman” is a title, an archetypal acknowledgement.

Easter is also called creations eighth day.  As we look back to the Genesis accounts of God creating the Earth, creating plants, and making from the clay of the Earth, Adam, A-DAM, the human one, we also see God makes companions.  God makes the animals, and one after another the human one provides names.  After this, God takes a rib and creates another human, two people to live as equals.

But don’t take my word for it.  The New Interpreter’s Study Bible puts it like this: “The word man (‘adam [in Hebrew]) should be translated as its general sense, ‘humanity,’ so that the first person is understood to be a human being without gender […].  Then ‘woman’ (ishshah) and ‘man’ (ish) are created simultaneously and with equal status.”  (NRSV Study Bible, Abingdon, 2003, page 10).

Jesus the Christ is the new Adam, and Mary Magdalene, woman, both changed simultaneously in the Resurrection, brought to a new structure of reality as participation and perceptions broaden through the deeper unity of Living Presence and the creative power of God.  Easter is Creation’s eighth day and the Word has become flesh and dwells among us.  The light comes into the darkness of that garden in the early, still morning.  In Christ, we are new creations.

With 1, the angels ask her, with 2, she answers from her limited assumptions, and with 3, she turns and sees Jesus standing there but doesn’t recognize him, and assumes he’s the gardener.

Another step in the waltz, with 1, Jesus uses that term again, affirming her primordial dignity as a participant in God’s new creation, saying “Woman, why are you weeping?  For whom are you looking for?”  With 2, she calls him “Sir,” a vestige of old wine skins, the social construct of hierarchy, a formality in a society based on honor and shame.  That she didn’t recognize him is another way of saying she didn’t look at him; women were not allowed to look at men.  With 3, the Risen Christ says her name.  That is the pivotal movement in this dance, this waltz of new creations.

In saying her name, her vision changes, not so much what her eyes take in, but what her heart perceives.  In saying her name, she turns again.  She likely hadn’t made eye contact with the gardener, in many cultures, women don’t make eye contact with men, especially if they speak to them.  In saying her name, she turns and is now fully engaged, connected, no more barriers, no more social constructs, no more limitations to Presence.

Death is transformed, mourning becomes rejoicing, and Mary experiences unmediated Love.  She is then sent in the final steps of this movement to announce not only what Jesus the Risen Christ had said, but that these things were said to her.  “I have seen the Lord” is a gift of restoration, of fullness, through Mary, through this woman, to the entirety of humanity.

Thank God for Easter joy, and for the fulfillment of grace-filled promises.  Thank God for Mary Magdalene and the Risen Christ who invite us to share in their unity and equality.  Thank God that no matter how that stone rolled away,  the power of God’s new creation not only shined forth through the darkness of that morning, but perceptions were broadened, vision deepened, and completion experienced through the gift of love’s mystery.  May we too, trust, respond, and live this gift, expressing the joy of Resurrection faith by living into the announcement, I have seen the Lord.  This is a major holiday, for the world is forever changed.  Thanks be to God for the humble, vulnerable, and unifying love of Jesus, the Christ who is risen, who is risen indeed.  Amen.