The Story Is Unfolding Now
This has to be the strangest Easter most of us can remember. Here at the church, we had started planning this day weeks ago, as churches do, before social distancing. Each year, the celebration of the resurrection brings hundreds of people through the doors of Christ Church, from the Great Vigil of Easter on Saturday night to the Great Paschal Vespers on Sunday evening. We were planning our customary services and, of course, our customary feast, with outrageously joyful music and prayers and the festive reception afterward. I think it’s safe to say that we are all missing the way we usually celebrate Easter. On the scale of what’s important these days, this is a very small thing, but I will miss all the deviled eggs at the reception, and the kindness of parishioners who secretly stash some away for the clergy to make sure we get to enjoy them, too. Sweet memories like that are poignant this year. All of us were ready to have our hearts lifted with the celebration of the most extraordinary news in human history, of Christ’s resurrection from the dead, the forgiveness of our sins, and the mysterious triumph of life over death. The church knows well how to pull out all the stops for that. But this year it is quieter, smaller, less familiar. I would imagine that your preparations at home have been quieter, too. There was no need this morning to wrestle kids into their uncomfortable Easter clothes or to put on the prefect Easter feast after church. By necessity, Easter egg hunts will be smaller this year, too. Thank goodness that at least the Easter Bunny was deemed essential personnel during quarantine. But with all that is different this year, if you happen to be missing the usual grandeur of this holiday, you are not alone. I miss it, too.
Obviously, the joy of Easter can feel harder to come by during a global pandemic. Our celebrations are smaller, quieter, and taking place in the midst of isolation, uncertainty, and fear. Which means, my friends, that we are closer than we’ve ever been to what the first Easter was really like. In John’s telling of the story, the news of Easter broke to a small group of scared individuals. The only people present were two fearful disciples who rushed around in confusion, a weeping Mary Magdalene, a couple of angels sitting in the empty tomb, and the risen Jesus himself, mistaken for a gardener. I’ll come back to the gardener in a moment, but for now let’s notice that celebrating Easter this year in our own isolation and fear is remarkably similar to the disciples’ experience in the biblical account. This year resurrection comes to us in our own confusion and uncertainty, much closer to what it was like when Christ first rose from the dead.
Which got me to thinking. If it’s true that we find ourselves closer to the experience of that first Easter morning, what if we also find ourselves closer to the whole gospel story, not just to the joyful ending but to the entire story of Jesus? What if we could understand the good news of Christ in a new way, given our present circumstances? It seems to me that if we look around right now, the ancient Christian story is unfolding right before our very eyes, here and now, in real time. And we are all included in it.
Consider, for example, the the early days of Jesus’ ministry, when he called the first disciples to follow him. He called fishermen, tax collectors, and revolutionaries, a somewhat surprising mix of everyday people. They were not exceptionally faithful or skilled at discipleship, but Jesus could use them in his story. Today he is calling the same types of people, just with an updated list occupations. He is calling Kroger employees, factory workers, Amazon delivery drivers, processors of unemployment claims and small business loan officers, people trying to work from home, people sewing masks, and public servants, to name a few. Christ is calling all of us to follow him and to reveal Christ to one another in this time of great need. We do not have to be extraordinary, just faithful. Jesus once gave a sermon in which he included all kinds of people like us in the kingdom of God. “Blessed are the meek,” he once said, “for they will inherit the earth.”
Consider, too, the people Jesus hung out with. He was always found hanging around the wrong sort, with people who needed healing - the sinners, those with infectious diseases, prisoners, the unemployed, the shameful, the chronically outcast. He broke through people’s isolation whenever he saw it, on the principle that the Kingdom of God belonged to them too. No one was excluded from his love and concern. Today, he breaks through our isolation, whether coronavirus related or not, to remind us that the kingdom of God is for us, too. “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you. Rejoice and be glad,” he once said, “for your reward is great in heaven.”
Consider also those whom Jesus fed during his ministry - the physically hungry and the spiritually starving. It is abundantly clear that his feeding work is alive and well all around us. You can see it in people making sure students have meals while the schools are out, in those checking on older neighbors and those who live alone, in the prayers of those who wonder where God is in a pandemic, and most surely in the exhausted medical workers who need a word of encouragement. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” Jesus once said, “for they will be filled.”
And finally, consider those whom Jesus healed. The widowed, the orphaned, those who weep, the dying, and the dead. Easter has always been God’s insistence that such loss and sorrow do not have the final word. Like every Easter, this one is for the living, for the sick, for the dying, especially for those dying alone and their loved ones who cannot be with them now, and for the dead. All of them are included in the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are those who mourn,” Jesus once said, “for they will be comforted.”
Do you see the pattern here? Jesus has called each one of us into his story. Whoever you are, whatever role you play, whichever character you are in this shared human story of ours, the kingdom of God is yours. You are included in the list of those whom Jesus calls, feeds, heals, comforts, blesses, and sends out in his name. That’s the grace of the gospel, that we are all included. A time like this helps us to see that kind of grace up close. No one is excluded because the kingdom of heaven is for all of us. When we get up closer to Christian story because circumstances throw us there, we find that we all have a place in it. The story of Christ might be cosmic in scale, big enough to hold heaven and earth and life and death, but it is found at the local level, personal for each one of us.
Which brings me back to the gardener, and what looks like a case of mistaken identity in John’s telling of the Easter story. Mary Magdalene is weeping at the empty tomb, for she does not yet understand that Jesus has been raised from the dead. She turns around and sees him, but does not recognize him. She supposes Jesus to the gardener, and in her confusion asks him where he has put the body. It is not until he speaks her name - Mary - that she recognizes Jesus. In that moment, the good news of the resurrection triumph of God’s love and grace becomes personal for Mary, a joy that is meant for her in particular. That same joy is meant for each one of us, by name.
As it turns out, this was not a case of mistaken identity after all. The one who speaks our name is, in fact, the Gardener (Rob Bell). Remember that this big story began in the garden, and today we are at the empty tomb in the garden. What a poetic setting for this grand story of ours. Things have been going a bit haywire in the garden since the beginning, including, but not limited to, our own mistakes and global pandemics. But we are being called here just the same, and our souls lovingly tended to by the gardener. Easter is God’s definitive proclamation that we belong here, and that nothing, not even death, can separate us from the Gardener who calls us by name.