Great Vigil of Easter and Solemn Mass 03/30/24

Sermon for the Great Vigil of Easter
St. Mary’s Church
March 30, 2024
Romans 6:3-11      Mark 16:1-8

When the three women of Mark’s Easter story approached the empty tomb that first Easter sunrise, their hearts and souls were already empty.

As a military chaplain I have accompanied another officer, or senior non-commissioned officer, both of us in uniform, while walking up someone’s sidewalk—sometimes even at sunrise—knowing that the person or persons in that house were about to have their lives changed forever.

“I regret to inform you, that your son (or husband, or father) has been killed as a result of hostile action . . .”    In an instant.  Sometimes before anything is said, normalcy, confidence, hope, and even dreams vanish.

A death always causes other deaths—not physical ones.  The death of dreams.  The death of hopes.  The death of companionships.  The death of some familiar social arrangements.  The structures of our happiness are damaged: income, the place we live, the things we do that give us joy often suffer, the trust we had in life.

Then there are the other “little deaths” that suck the breath out of our souls.   They begin with words such as:

 “The cancer is stage four.”  “Your brother has been arrested.”  “The company has been sold.”  “You no longer have employment here.”  One minute before, life with its routines, plans, and expectations.  Afterwards, heartbreak, worry, panic.

That was the state of the hearts, minds, and souls of the three friends of Jesus that approached His tomb that morning.
Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome didn’t have their lives changed in an instant.   They had watched in horror as the friend they had followed from back home in Galilee, who unlike other teachers and religious authorities of the day,  had welcomed them, along with his other disciples and confidants, as he healed people and talked about the kingdom of God—had died in increments, their own hopes and dreams as battered and bludgeoned as his tortured body, until he was dead, and so were their hopes and dreams and trust in the power and providence of God.

They had come to the tomb to give him a proper burial—to lovingly bathe and anoint his wounds and abrasions, out of their respect and love for him, and for their own need to do something.  Because those who are dead don’t need their wounds attended to. It was something to do when there was nothing else they could do, and because their ministrations might push back a little against the pain and emptiness they felt inside themselves.

They didn’t even know if they could do it!  The tomb had been sealed with a huge stone—a boulder.   More than  these three women had the strength to move.  In addition, maybe there would be soldiers of the Roman occupying army guarding the tomb, or religious Temple Police—because for reasons they couldn’t understand, their friend had been feared, and considered dangerous, by both the State and the Temple.

But they kept going anyway.  And surprise!  There were no soldiers.  And the stone had already been rolled away from the entrance!  They hurried their pace, thoughts rushed through their heads, none of them comforting.  Grave robbers?!  The Authorities?!  They wouldn’t leave him alone, even in death?

Setting foot inside the tomb they saw a young man.  He was wearing a white robe and looked out of place there.  Maybe even out of place to be in their country at all, or any known country.  He spoke to them.  “Peace, Sisters.  I know you have come to see the body of your friend, Jesus.  I tell you, there is no body!”  He gestures to a place on the floor where there are bloodstains and bloody burial wrappings.  “He has been raised from death.   Go!  Tell the disciples!  Tell Peter! Tell them he is on his way back to your neighborhood. Back to Galilee.   There you will see him, just as he told you he would.”
As Mark tells it, they ran as fast as they could out of the tomb.  They weren’t rejoicing, either. They were terrified!
Why? Up to that point there was still certainty in their worlds.   
A cynical certainty, but a certainty.

When someone has died they are dead.  Period.  You can bet your own life on it.  And when the Romans set about to put a person to death they got dead and stayed dead.   No way he could still be alive, no matter what the mystery man said.   Their last vestige of what anchored their lives in good sense and surety vanished along with their hope and dreams.  It warped their minds and upset their psychic equilibrium. 

NOW, The death of Jesus was THE end of an era for them.  The end of a golden time of community, love, and hope.  An end to their dreams.

The empty tomb and the news of a dead man who would be alive and waiting for them  in their old haunts was the end of the world as they knew it!   Natural law had been suspended.   What next?  Would the stars fall?!

Things didn’t add up and their psychic moorings had parted.  They could only flee in fear.  They didn’t tell anyone what had happened, because how do you speak of the undecipherable? 

However, they ran from the undecipherable to what they hoped was the known and familiar. They kept running until they reached Galilee. Mark didn’t record that in his Gospel, but other Gospels record appearances by Jesus in Galilee to the remaining disciples(Matt. 28:16-17; John 21:1 ff)—and were not these women recognized as disciples also?

Galilee was that which they knew, and had known, since they were children.  It was everyday reality to them. However, as in the empty tomb, their encounter with their Risen Lord, scars and all,  had to be anything but reality as they knew it.  The old neighborhood looked the same, but the world had changed.  Nothing was the same anymore.   They knew that, no matter what was reported on the local channel out of Tiberius, the consequences of death were defeated and evil deeds no longer had the last word in the affairs of men. But in the meantime, they hung out with the Risen Jesus, in the old familiar places, and God was present in Him and with them. They stood astride earth and heaven, between the known and the unknown.  It was their world, but it was not their world as usual anymore.

The Easter story is not just about the Empty Tomb and God’s victory over death and evil.  It is just as significantly about God instead being in Galilee, in human incarnation—in our shape and form.

God did not resurrect Jesus from the dead just so that we could one day go to heaven, but also that we should have His presence with us in the midst of the life we have still to live. 

Galilee symbolizes our common everyday life, the places where we work and play, raise families, partner in marriages, and enjoy friendships.  It is also a place of daily challenges, and the daily grind.  

I don’t know what has happened to most of the people I once tried to comfort after they had been given the worst possible news and felt their joy and their futures were sealed in a tomb.  But the ones I know about, despite grief they will always carry, have found hope, new dreams,  new relationships, and new joys in a life that goes on.  Whether they know that or not, it is the work of God.

God came to humanity to dwell among us as a Jewish carpenter named Jesus so that we may not only have life eternal, but also life that is shared with the Eternal, with God’s very self.  God continues to dwell among us in the humanity of those we love and who love us, and even in fleeting contact with strangers in the midst of an ordinary day, and, in despite our “little deaths,” that sometimes aren’t so little, gives us courage, joy, insight and meaning.  He will also appear to us in the faces of those who are poor, homeless, and, yes, even crazy, as He points out the situations and systems that neglect them.  
 
He heals, but He also interrupts, surprising us with his presence in unlikely or unexpected places, making something out of what we consider to be nothing.  We find that what we consider to be disasters to be God’s opportunity to reveal His power and presence to us.  He keeps appearing to us and offering Himself to us even when we have rejected Him in the past, worshipped other (usually secular) gods, and disappointed Him.  It can be frightening to be loved like that by the God of the Universe, but it is true!

As someone who often fails to notice the obvious, I offer a borrowed insight.   Christians have seemed to worship on Sundays from the very beginning of their gathering as Christ followers.  That was the day of the week in which Jesus was resurrected.  In the sacred calendar they were raised in, the Jewish calendar, Saturday was the holy day.  A day of rest.  Sunday was the first day of the work week.  So Jesus was  raised on the day that everybody went back to work.  The ordinary was sanctified by the extraordinary.  Our Resurrected Lord did not meet his friends and followers at the Empty Tomb, but back home, back at work ----in Galilee.

Where is your Galilee located?  It is wherever home and neighborhood is for you when you leave tonight.  On Monday it is at the keyboard, lathe, bedside, or shop. 

 I suggest that, right now, for all of us, it is here; at 13th and Holmes.

                                          --The Rev. Larry A. Parrish
                                             March 30, 2024