“A Present Presence”

“A Present Presence”

Easter Sunday, Year C, April 20, 2025

Isaiah 65:17-25    John 20:1-18

First Presbyterian Church of Sandpoint, Idaho

Andy Kennaly, Pastor

Last week we called the Triumphal Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem “Palm Sunday” even though Luke’s gospel makes no mention of palm branches.  “Cloak Sunday” doesn’t have the same appeal, although that’s what the people laid on the road in front of Jesus riding a colt. Cloaks. Multiple details vary, depending on which gospel you read, Mathew, Mark, Luke, or John.

Easter Sunday is not much different as scriptures ebb and flow with details and elaborations. We wonder if it was one Mary or three women who went to the tomb early in the morning. Was it dark or the light of dawn, were there two men in white clothing, or one angel? Did the Risen Christ appear and speak directly, or is it mentioned by others that Christ would go ahead of them to Galilee? And a big question, was there a body in the tomb, as Jesus the man died but Christ the second person of the Trinity arose, or was the body not there and the grave clothes lay empty? For these types of questions, maybe the answers are elusive. Either way, even if we claim certainty, it depends on which manuscript you read and when those were written. The earlier biblical manuscripts often lack details that the newer ones include.

Each gospel varies on the details to the point where the mechanics of how that first Easter happened don’t match up, sometimes even within the same Gospel. So, we do our best. We can pick which one we like better and go with that, which is why I picked John 20:1-18. I like that one. There’s only one footnote about Mary bending over “to look” into the tomb. Seems simple enough. The Greek language used in earlier writing lacks “to look” but in this English translation we have it. Otherwise, it’s pretty straightforward and Mary is alone, comes in the dark, and apparently can run in the dark to get Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and they all went back to check out the Easter scene.

Easter Sunday has less to do with chronology and sequence and detail than it does with quality and Kairos, an opportune time for critical action. Easter is about life that death cannot overcome or understand, life that is relentlessly eternal with qualities of trust, presence, and love. These never die because they are held in Divine glory, which is always ongoing, centered in the Living Christ, and shall always be.

The Resurrection on Easter morning is not dependent on details even though many are mentioned, because, in their own way, these various reports all point to the same thing: something happened, something amazing, something that is a pivot-point in life that is transformational, and somehow everything is now defined by these deep truths, even when it seems like these truths are not always noticed by the larger world.

I talked with someone this week and mentioned something about Maundy Thursday during Holy Week and they didn’t know what Maundy Thursday was. They had a vague understanding that Jesus was a person who had been killed on a cross, but they hadn’t connected that Jesus had been arrested. They didn’t know Jesus met in an upper room and washed his disciples feet in a sign of humble love, then was betrayed, arrested, put through a rushed trial with false witnesses in the middle of the night before the cock crowed three times. They didn’t know all that.

I also went to a shop on Friday and as I was leaving one of the employees told me to have a Happy Easter. I said, “Thanks, you too.” But then I mumbled to myself under my breath on the way to the car, “Kind of jumping right past Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. Happy Easter? It’s only Good Friday.” We don’t have to look very far to see Easter’s confusion and notice layers upon layers of cultural and religious assumptions and thoughts that have built up around it. But why should this surprise us?

Easter is probably the most important anchor point of Christian faith, yet even the biblical accounts cannot reconcile a basic storyline. Easter details get muddled and we wonder what is Easter really about? (And what does a bunny have to do with it? And eggs? And chocolate? Well actually, let’s not question chocolate).

One of the reasons I like John’s version with Mary Magdalene at the tomb is because after the two disciples who run to the tomb leave, Mary stays. She lingers in the garden, weeping. She gives us an emotional reality check that often matches our own when someone we love dies and the bodily presence, their physical proximity comes to an end. We also learn that Easter joy is not defined by these limitations, that there are other ways to be present, but these can be hard to recognize.

Mary converses with someone she assumes was the gardener. It’s amazing how often the Risen Christ appears and is not recognized, even by his disciples. Something about this new appearance must have been different than that of Jesus before he was killed.

That’s another thing about Mary and the gardener in those early hours by the tomb of confusion: most of the world didn’t care about this scene as it unfolds. Most of the world is sleeping.

But Mary goes to the tomb early, and after those disciples come and go with limited understanding, Mary stays, and her cultural limitations are overcome. She does not recognize the gardener likely because she doesn’t make eye contact with this man because she is a woman and in that culture it was forbidden to make eye contact. But these gender boundaries are permeable as the Living Christ says her name and she recognizes him. He becomes not only present to her, but a Presence. The Living Christ Presence is seen.

But we also know that to see something you need to be something. To see God, it is the divine Presence within us that enables us to see. To see the Living Christ, it is through the Living Christ in us. And since everything is made in and through Christ, then everything carries this sacredness.

But we also learn that for Mary “to see” Christ, she first needed “to see” the tomb. The tomb was empty, but in Christ the fullness of life is revealed, life that does not stop at death but is connected to it. As Christian mystics may suggest, death is not a problem, but a mystery. If it were a problem that would imply that it is external to us, an “it” that we could observe independently. But death is a mystery, alongside many other mysteries, because it includes part of us.

Remember that little footnote about the Greek language not having “to look” in this scene? When Mary bent over into the tomb, if we include the words “to look” or don’t include those words, this messes with perspective and whether we objectify that which is around us as if we’re separate, or unify our understanding because we recognize part of ourselves in everything else as it is God’s Presence, the Christ in all things and all things in Christ, that we see.

“Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over into the tomb.” This is a very different image than Mary “bent over ‘to look’ into the tomb” because it signals a different consciousness. One is immersed, the other is detached. Both involve tears and weeping, but one leads to assumptions that keep us on the surface of things and the other invites an awareness of Presence in new ways to notice what would have been overlooked. We live in a time when philosophy has reached limits and cannot go where intuitive experience and deep, relational faith can.

After Mary lingers in the garden with the Risen Christ in the light of Easter joy, she returns to the others and declares, “I have seen the Lord.” Her vision is complete, her mystical bond and spiritual connection is anchored in Divine Presence, and she becomes archetypal to show the world that everything is a new creation in Christ, Jesus the Lord.

Thanks be to God that Easter is more than detail, beyond the confusions of logistics or mechanics, not hindered by ignorance or the world’s misunderstandings, but a reality that transforms and continues to transform because it’s an inside job and our hearts are forever enriched as divine life unfolds and the boundless nature of love has no end. A very sincere Happy Easter for us all, both now and forever. Amen.