Text: John 20:1-18

I sure am happy it’s Easter. Lent has felt hard and heavy. Both the scriptures I’ve been preaching on and just the news and the business of family life. To be here at last feels life a huge sense of relief! We get to eat delicious food and find hidden candy and celebrate with dear ones.

All of that is so good. And it’s all real, of course. And yet. It is complicated. Easter is complicated and life is complicated. It may be Easter, but there is still sadness in the world and in our lives. We are, some of us, very tender with grief and loss. We are experiencing pain or disease in our bodies or in the bodies of those we love. We are witnessing the unjust systems of the world do violence here in our country, in our streets, and around the world.

We are not singing it this morning, but I’m sure many of you know the Easter hymn, “Thine is the Glory.” Formerly, it went “Thine is the glory, risen conquering Son” but now, with our new hymnal we sing “resurrected One.” I quite like the focus is on resurrection rather than domination. 

In any case, the second stanza of that beloved hymn is, 

“Lo! Jesus meets us. Risen from the tomb

lovingly he greets us, scatters fear and gloom.

Let our doubting spirits find a voice to sing:

Christ who died is living; death has lost its sting.” 

Has death lost its sting?? I kind of think death still hurts.  A lot. Fear and gloom may have scattered but they have not gone far. Our struggles haven’t gone away – our lost ones are still lost, our own or our loved ones’ mental health still suffers, our illnesses have not been miraculously healed. Easter is complicated. 

It was complicated even from its first moments. It was dark when Mary first approached the tomb. It was morning, but she came because she was sad and traumatized. It is the day after Passover. Which means that in the midst of her grief and trauma, she’s had to put those feelings aside  to celebrate a memorial of her people’s salvation from death. 

So this is the first moment she’s been able to spend with the depth of her loss. In the dark, she goes to the place of her friend and teacher’s body to mourn – and then finds him gone. Already this Easter story is seated in disorientation and imbalance.

When Mary discovers the empty tomb and runs to tell her friends, Peter and the “Beloved Disciple” get into a kind of foot race to get there. They see the empty tomb. They have had the experience of resurrection. In fact, some scholars believe that “The Beloved Disciple” is Lazarus, since he’s called “The one whom Jesus loved,” at other places in the Gospel.

Surely Lazarus – and all of Jesus disciples – know that Jesus brings the power of new life. And so, the story tells us, they believe. Though it’s not entirely clear what they believe. That Jesus has been resurrected? That Mary was telling the truth and the tomb is empty? In any case, having been made believers, they go home. That’s that sorted out.

But Mary stays. Mary stays because unlike her friends she wants to feel these feelings. She can’t just make the grief and trauma go away. It is Easter. Jesus has risen. But she needs to feel the way she feels. There’s no hurrying grief.

Our theme throughout Lent has been “Dwelling in Dissonance.” This might be the biggest dissonance of all, the moments between seeing the empty tomb, but still feeling the heaviness and grief of loss. Mary is willing to stay in that dissonance. To dwell with the experience of loss, to remain in the empty place. And because of that willingness, she is able to experience a transformation.

Angela Gorrell is the author of a book called The Gravity of Joy. Though I haven’t read it (and probably won’t, honestly, I heard her on a podcast) I appreciate how her ideas resonate with this kind of experience.

Gorrell is a prof at Baylor’s seminary but spent several years at Yale as a research fellow studying joy. Which is a thing you can study, apparently! And in the midst of this serious pursuit of joy, she experienced one of top of the other some of the most traumatic experiences a person could: the deaths of several members of her family, including her father to opioid use, a young nephew and a cousin to suicide. 

She remembers during that time hearing from her colleague at Yale Willie James Jennings that we can make pain productive without glorifying or justifying suffering. That is, you don’t have to explain away the horrible thing in order to make meaning out of pain. 

Some Christians are fond of saying things like saying about the disaster or grief that “it’s all part of God’s plan” or “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.” I hope you’ll excuse me if I say, that is complete BS! Stuff happens all the time that’s more than we can handle! And God does not have a ‘plan’ for our suffering. In those times, God comes alongside. God shows up and tenderly calls our name.

Within her grief, as she stays in the feelings of loss, Mary encounters God. Jesus appears to Mary and calls her name. John may or may not have meant it, but it’s a reminder to me of his description of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, the one who knows his sheep just as they know him. The one who offers gentle care and calls each one home.

Something else that Jennings has written and spoken about is about joy. That joy is an act of resistance. He says,

I look at joy as an act of resistance against despair and its forces… Joy in that regard is a work, that can become a state, that can become a way of life…It resists…the way despair wants to drive us toward death and wants to make death the final word.

[Joy and the Act of Resistance Against Despair | YCFC (yale.edu)]

And by death he doesn’t mean just the end of life but all death’s forces: “war, violence, the ways that life is presented as not worth living.” And joy is not the same as happiness or pleasure or ‘toxic positivity.’ It is, as Gorrell says, “Getting up expecting that God will meet me and that I will be able to recognize beauty.”

I have talked about joy before, I think. About proclaiming joy, especially along with others, as an act of solidarity and hope. That has been my experience of singing resistance. It was one of primary reasons for initiating the events in Kirkland. I wanted there to be community rooted in joy and hope that doesn’t deny the power of authoritarianism but acknowledges it and resists it together.

Even after Mary realizes (finally) that Jesus is Jesus and not a gardener – though it is amusing to think of him as looking like a gardener (overalls anyone?) – Jesus reminds her that she can’t keep him there. She must not cling to him. She needs to let go. He is alive, yes, but their relationship will not be the same. It is by experiencing both resurrection and release that she will be able to receive his Spirit’s presence with her always.

Mary will have to keep figuring out the complexity of having experienced the grief and trauma of crucifixion and the joy of a resurrected Jesus and the need to release him. Of seeing Jesus with her, hearing him call her name and being told she’ll have to navigate the path of discipleship ahead without him as her teacher, her ‘Rabbouni’ to guide her and her fellow disciples.

Easter is as messy and complicated as the rest of life. Maybe more because all the emotions are that much more heightened. It’s a complicated as the rest of faith and discipleship. But ultimately it is the story of resurrection joy. A joy that does not need to deny despair or fear or sadness, but which will push back against their dominance. Will resist their forces with vigor.

My friends, Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! 

In all the emotion we experience with that proclamation, may we meet the Jesus who calls our name and invites us to follow in a new kind of relationship. 

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