March 27, 2005 - Easter

Do You See What I See?

by Julianne Stokstad

This day has dawned truly a day full of glories, a day for singing and rejoicing. I've been so looking forward to Easter. The excitement is palpable here today. Can you feel it?

Can you see the joy in the faces of families and friends and so many children? Look around and catch a smile. Everyone is dressed in Easter best. The children can't hide their excitement, and truth be, neither can we grown ups either.

Can you hear the joy? Easter is beyond words, which is why our Easter music is so important. Our lovely enlarged choir has filled our hearts. Byron's wonderful solos have graced our spirits. I hope you felt with me great pleasure singing the old Easter hymn once again triumphantly like the first time: "Christ the Lord is Risen Today!"

Can you smell the sweet fragrant flowers? Our tradition of covering the cross with flowers from our own gardens is a breath-taking symbol of our communal faith and hope in on-going transformation in this place. It continues even though Bob DeHaan couldn't be here.

Easter is spoken here.

But we don't have to look very far to see contradictions to our shouts of joy hidden in the shadows of our hearts. We know from our own experience, life can be painful, with great suffering, violence and brokenness.

Dare we imagine that death can be defeated?

Dare we imagine that this is the day when the lonely and the hurt, the weak and the ill of body or mind, the grieving can see new hope and have faith renewed?

In one word, YES!!!!! That is what Easter is all about, saying YES to hope, to love, to new life.

Some might have wondered if our first anthem, Within the Shadow of the Cross, wasn't a bit late, meant for last Friday? Not at all. In order to get to the true joy of Easter resurrection, we must start in the silent horror of the cross, wherever that is in our lives.

We know the story. After just a few short years of ministry, Jesus entered Jerusalem on what has come to be called Palm Sunday. The very people who, later in that same week, called for his death hailed him as Prophet and King. He was tried before Pontius Pilate and crucified on a cross about two thousand years ago. His body was hastily taken to a tomb and very early Sunday morning, the women came to the tomb, and find his body missing. In all the gospels, resurrection happens off stage so to speak.

I've been wondering who is the resurrection is really for, Jesus or the disciples? I'd always thought it was about Jesus and what happened to him. But maybe, just maybe, I was looking at it the wrong way. Jesus died and I know that he is with God. Maybe it was all about the disciples seeing with new eyes and becoming transformed out of their paralysis and grief into action and new life? Maybe Easter is really all about our resurrection.

What do we see when we hear the story from John's gospel? What stands out most clearly for me, far beyond everything else, is the immense and powerful love Mary Magdalene had for Jesus. We all know that those who love deeply open themselves to the great grief, which comes with the loss of love. She had seen him die, gruesomely. She came seeking a small consolation to take care of his corpse. Can you imagine her anxiety when she found the stone rolled away and the tomb empty? "Woman, why are you weeping?" she was asked twice. It seems like a dumb question. She expected to find the tomb closed, the dead body inside.

Expectations are very important and powerful ideas. They direct us to our future goals, but they also have a dark side of limiting our possibilities. For example, expectations of whom you think you might become, blind you from you from the reality of who you are right now; expectations of whom you think you will love might blind you from the love at close at hand; parental expectations of a child might paralyze and prevent the child from following a path of what makes the child most alive.

Expectations do more than set us on a course in our lives; they actually affect what we see. I loved to teach my biology students about search images. A search image is a mental picture of what you are looking for. In the natural world, animals are mostly hidden, camouflaged for protection or better hunting. If you don't know what to look for, often when you go out looking, it is unlikely you'll see much. As an example, I would teach students to look for swallowtail caterpillars on common anise plants all around the school. When they had seen what it was they were looking for, they were always surprised to find caterpillars all around. The caterpillars had been there all the time, but the students hadn't noticed or known what to look for. I believe that all things are all around us all the time, but our search images limit and restrict us to seeing what we expect.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said "To understand reality is not the same as to know outward events. It is to perceive the essential nature of things." I remember a parishioner Hal who was dying of emphysema. I'd often visit him in the hospital and report to the church folk how he was doing. What I saw was an incredible peace and light increasing in him each week, even as his physical body was failing him. One week someone stood up in the Joys and Concerns time and said" I visited Hal this week and he looks awful, gray and frail." Both were true, what we see depends on what we are looking for.

Mary was looking for a dead Jesus in the tomb. He wasn't there and the scripture says "she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus." Now how could that be, how could she not recognize He whom she loved so much? I think she was blind-sided by her expectations. Mary thought the man was a gardener. When she heard him call her name, that voice transmitted so much love to Mary she knew it was of Jesus. Her awareness changed and she recognized the risen Christ.

Why didn't Mary recognize him at first? I think she, like us, wanted things the way they were in the past. She wanted back Jesus alive, as she had known him. When we cling to how things were, we get stuck in our memories and are closed to seeing new possibilities. If we're not stuck in the past, we can get stuck in the "If, only, this or that had happened..." and again we are unable to see the new life right close at hand in our lives. We can be so deeply consumed by our grief or so stuck in our own regret or fear or anger that as much as we would like to believe the promise of new life, we cannot.

Some years ago, I came to the Easter Service, in such a state. That year for me, the preacher's voice was shrill and the joy seemed forced. The music was flat, the flowers excessive. I felt as though I had thick cotton in my ears. Yeah, sure I thought through the fog of my own pain and grief, resurrection but not for me, not this year. Spiritual mentors told me I was stuck in Saturday, waiting for the Easter. Sadly, I think some of us spend our lives in Saturday.

Three weeks later, I was at a fiftieth anniversary celebration, and again I was separated from the joy. Then my eye caught some yellow rose petals on the floor, and I picked them up. My mother had loved yellow roses and without warning, as I held them, I was flooded with a peace, a deep peace and love. Jesus didn't appear to me, but the incredible love and peace, which came and stayed with me was Easter's promise. Resurrection had come, but with different timing and in a totally unexpected way. Remember also, Jesus didn't appear to the disciples on Easter, but later over a period of many weeks.

After that Easter morning, things for Mary and the disciples were never the same again. Their grief for the physical presence of Jesus must have remained, but Mary's Easter gift to us is that she saw in a new way. She understood that the risen Christ was alive, found among those truly alive. Jesus was changed and the love between Mary and Jesus fueled her passion and love for all those she encountered and inspired her for the rest of her life. On that Easter morning, Mary was transformed with a new understanding.

What does Mary's new search image have to do with us? We are too often content to see Easter as simply spring renewal come around again. We sit and hear this story of the resurrection through the safety glasses of two thousand years of historic distance and don't understand that it is indeed for us in our lives. If we see with new eyes and hear with new ears and if we are open to surprises of God's grace and forgiveness, we too can be transformed. When this happens, we live our life differently. Our priorities change. We will be able to be more honest about who we are and how we have lived. We will able to shed our false identity and become truly human, humble yet confident, more truly authentic. As we are transformed by God's grace, we become less selfish, less afraid and genuinely grateful for all that is in our lives. To be resurrected is to be fully alive in the here and now. And let me tell you, while it isn't easy or painless it is surely worth it.

Don't stay at the empty tomb. It's Easter. Easter is a YES to life, right here in the midst of our messy lives. Look around and get yourself a new search image of the risen Christ and get out there living and loving fully! Easter promises us new life and love and peace eternally to each and every one of us, no matter who we are or where we are on our life journeys. Christ is Risen for us! Alleluia!!! Alleluia!!! Amen.