Christ is Risen! - John 20:1-18

         Christ is Risen!

What more can I say? This is why we are here this morning.  The fact that the tomb was empty, when Mary arrived that morning, is not a surprise to any of you. The fact that the gardener was really Jesus is not news. No matter how expected this wondrous outcome was for us, it was not the outcome Mary was expecting, when she traveled to the tomb that morning. Dead people are, well, dead, and they are most definitely not alive, the definition of one negates the other. You are either dead or you are alive and although a once alive person can become dead, things going the other way simply does not happen (outside of a handful of miracles). The fact is, here on this earth death is a fairly permanent state of affairs and generally irreversible. Yet, come Sunday, there Jesus is very much alive, although apparently easily mistaken for a gardener.

There is absolutely nothing new I can say about this passage this morning; nothing you have not heard before. There is nothing here that needs more explaining. Jesus died on Friday afternoon and then on Sunday morning he is alive. Hallelujah, Christ is alive; he has risen from the dead. Ok, where’s the ham? Let’s go eat!

O.K. That went all wrong, let's try again.

Christ is Risen!

This is why we are here this morning. This is why have gathered, why we gather each week actually. We are Christian and this is why we are Christians. Jesus is alive. He is not dead. Jesus, unlike every other person on this earth, when he died, he did not stay dead, and when he lived again he stayed alive. We do not say, “Jesus was alive,” like we would of Lazarus, or the little girl Jesus raised from the dead. They were both dead and then they were alive but then they re-died. NO, we say, Jesus is alive, whereas everyone else who has died has at least, eventually, stayed dead, Jesus is alive and he has stayed alive. Jesus is alive.

But then again that is the message of the Resurrection, death is not the end, death is not the final word. There is only one thing on this earth that once it happens, seems and feels absolutely permanent, beyond which there is no hope, and that is death.

This is the story of humanity. Once we lived, we lived free, we lived and lived and lived. We lived in communion with God, in relationship with God. We walked with God in the cool of the evening, chatted as the sun set and greeted God with joy at the dawning of the morning.  But then we invited sin into our lives, we allowed evil to come and rule in our hearts, to dominate our lives. When we are given the choice between what is good and what is not, we choose what is not, over and over and over again. We humans choose war, we choose hatred, we choose malice, and we choose to harm one another. We choose to kill, to maim, and to enslave each other. And as if turning on one another is not enough, we turn against all that God created, and choose to abuse and exploit creation.

 Our tale is the tale of the wayward Son, who chooses to turn from the love of the Father to do what is right in our own eyes, instead of doing what is good. But that is not the end of the story. God is patient, God is loving. God is never gonna give you up (never gonna let you down); God is never going to stop waiting. God longs to embrace each of us and say, “All is forgiven.”

So God came down here to set things right, to show us the way, to prove to us the lengths to which God would go to bring us back home. God came to earth and was fully and wholly human. Jesus was born, and grew just as we all did and lived just as we all do. And in doing so touched all parts of humanity and human life, so that by being touched by the divine, all parts of humanity, everything that is means to be human can be redeemed. And finally through his death and resurrection, makes possible that which was ultimately beyond our reach, life, not merely eternal and abundant, but everlasting life. By breaking the bonds of death, by crushing the serpent beneath his foot, he allowed for us all to live again, just as he did and, for us all to return our proper place in creation, living forever, as we did in the garden in pure unbroken relationship with God.

When Mary met the risen Christ that morning, in him, she met her future and the future of all who believe. When she saw Jesus that morning, she caught a glimpse of glory divine. She might have wanted to stay. Who could have faulted Mary, if at this point she was reluctant to allow Jesus out of her sight? Or if her first inclination was to never leave his side again, to stay with him, talking with him, learning from him? But her first inclination was none of these things. Her first inclination was to go and tell everyone, “I have seen the Lord!”

“I have seen the Lord!” 
It is because of this this testimony that the first disciples came to believe that the body of Jesus was not merely missing, that it was not that someone had stolen Jesus’ body in some bizarre and irreverent prank, that the story of the empty tomb was not a story of heartache and vandalism, but was instead the story of hope and victory. It was because of Mary's preaching of the gospel in one of the shortest, most poignant and important sermons ever preached, “I have seen the Lord!” “He is alive, he is risen,” that they came to believe that Christ was indeed alive.

So much of Christian tradition is play acting. The Church through the ages has heard Christ’s words spoken to his disciples about a child who was with them that particular day, saying that the kingdom belonged to one such as this, and that our faith must be like that of a child. We have taken his words quite literally.

At Advent and during Holy week we all become like children. We play act that we are disciples following Christ through the events of his final week. We imagine that we were with Christ on his final night, pretend that we too watched him as he died. We leave the sanctuary in darkness on Friday evening, and try envisioning how dark that Saturday must have felt to those who did not know what the morning would bring. And then we wait, with the anticipation of a child, to come together and with joy and say, “Christ is risen!” We come like children. We come full of joy, full of wonder, full expectation, knowing our Savior has been raised from the dead, knowing that Christ is alive. We come wanting once again to remember the most important thing in which we believe that when Jesus died, he did not stay dead, that on the third day he rose again and lives forever more. And we remember that because of Mary. Because this one woman shared What she had seen and heard. We know this most amazing, most astonishing, most unexpected thing, is real. Christ is alive. But we know more than that, we know that although we like all humans will die, we will like Christ rise again, that one day we will live forevermore.

And this is not just a treasure to hold in our hearts like Mary the mother did with all the things she remembered from Jesus’ childhood. This knowledge is not our gift to hold close to our chest like a beloved memento, or to be stored away like a precious jewel, kept safely in a vault as one might money or gold, no this is a gift to be given, to be shared, to be spread around, to be sung from the tallest building, proclaimed from the highest mountain, and shouted in every valley; it the story that is to be told in every city, every town, every village, in the countryside, in the forest, in the darkest hovel, in the largest mansion. It is  to be proclaimed from every roof top so that all may hear, may know the truth of the risen Savoir and understand what this means for each of us, for all of us, if we believe.

This is the call of the resurrection. We are all called to go tell them! 
This morning we joined Mary, as she rose early, we imagined just for a moment that we did not know what we know. We pretended to know, to understand her sadness her heartbreak. We internalized her fear and her despair as she went back to fetch the disciples to tell them the horrible news, the body is gone. We playacted that we too did not know who it was that greeted us. We were confused along with her when the gardener was not the gardener and we joined her in her joy when Jesus said our name and we knew; we knew Jesus is alive, that he is not dead that he has risen from the dead.

When we repeat the holy mystery of our faith together, “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.” What we are also saying is, “We too will die, but we too will rise, we too will live again.”

We must also join Mary as she followed Christ instructions to go tell them. As we go from here this morning, we are to run, and not walk into the world and share with everyone who will listen, proclaim to all who will hear, Christ is alive, death has no victory, the oppression of the grave has been broken. Christ has risen. Jesus is alive, and one day we too will join him. One day we too will live as Christ lives.

So let us go forth from here together proclaiming the good news of the Gospel, “Christ is Risen!”