An Honest Easter [John 20:1-18 - Easter Sunday 2020]

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

John 20:1-18

An Honest Easter

It is Easter Sunday morning and you are at home.  Our beautiful nave sits in still darkness, the pews as empty as the tomb.  There are no lilies filling the chancel with lovely perfume; no choristers packed tightly into the choir stalls.  The high altar is stacked with neither flower nor flagon.  There are no hosts on the Holy Table.

On this strange Easter morning, it would be easy to focus on what we lack.  Not only would it be easy, it would be honest.  Even as we sound our Alleluias today, we do so with a lump in our throats and grief in our hearts.

And so we have something very much in common with the women who ventured to Jesus’ tomb on that first Easter morning.  In the darkness of the pre-dawn morning, they traveled a dusty path to visit the cold, dead body of their beloved – their hearts overflowing with grief, cheeks burnt red by tears, their voices silenced by the dizzying shock of Good Friday.    

And at the tomb they found something for which they were entirely unprepared: nothing.  They were expecting something but the tomb was empty.  There was nothing there.

And so Mary, and her unmentioned female companions, returned by the same dusty road to tell a decidedly un-Easter story.  They tell the only story that made sense to them, the only version which could possibly conclude in an empty tomb on that dark morning.  They tell Peter and the other disciple that Jesus’ body had been stolen.  That is the first Easter story, the first sermon preached on the first Easter morning.  And it was not good news.

Peter and the other disciple race to the tomb to confirm this bad news.  They find the tomb empty, just as Mary said.  They even go into the tomb to make sure that Mary did not overlook Jesus’ body – just to be sure.  And because the space was small and social distancing important, the two disciples enter one-at-a-time; they take turns surveying the emptiness.  And then, like Mary, they returned home, to that place that best nurtured their sorrows, to hide away in their heart-break.  For as of yet, says the Gospel, they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.

It was the first Easter morning and it was off to a rough start.  The women had a painfully early wake-up call.  The body was missing.  Everyone was sad and confused and afraid and sweaty – from all of the early morning running.  The beginning of the story is entirely devoid of Good News. 

It was Easter; the tomb was empty; and the yet it was not Resurrection joy that filled the hearts of Jesus’ disciples; it was despair.  In her sadness, Mary stayed behind to weep and interrogate strangers; she was still looking for a corpse – which is more than can be said for the men in the story; they gave up and stopped looking immediately.  Peter and his partner sequestered themselves because the shadow of the cross was still long on that first Easter morning and their grief was still fresh.

Not every Easter is painted in pastels.  Not every Easter is sugary sweet or cradled in colorful plastic grass.  In fact that first Easter morning, the day on which Jesus rose from the dead, the day on which life conquered death, began in darkness – the dark morning weighed down with fear, sadness, and confusion.  Easter is a miracle; it is not an escape.  Easter takes place in a real world of honest struggle and genuine heart-break.  It always has and always will.

As you probably know, in the Church, Easter is not just a day; it is a season.  And I think it is interesting to contrast the beginning of this season with the end.  This season of Easter will end with the Feast of Pentecost.  The first Pentecost was a big social event; there were crowds of people, chaos in the streets.  It was a scene.  But the first Easter moment happened in a lonely garden.  It is the intimate meeting of a scarred God and a tear-stained, broken-hearted woman.

It is Easter Sunday morning and you are at home.  Our beautiful nave sits in still darkness, the pews as empty as the tomb.  There are no lilies filling the chancel with lovely perfume; no choristers packed tightly into the choir stalls.  The high altar is stacked with neither flower nor flagon.  There are no hosts on the Holy Table.

On this strange Easter morning, it would be easy to focus on what we lack.  Not only would it be easy, it would be honest.  Even as we sound our Alleluias today, we do so with a lump in our throats and grief in our hearts.

And maybe that means, for perhaps the first time in our lives, the story of the first Easter can make sense to us.  Because none of the things that we miss today are in the Gospel story.  But everything that is in that story – the fear, the sadness, the confusion – is present in our story on this Easter Sunday.

And so is Jesus.  Jesus is not waiting for us back in our beautiful building.  It turns out it is impossible for a stone structure to contain him.  He is alive and he is where you are.  You might feel alone this morning; you might feel hidden away; but you cannot hide from Jesus; the Risen Christ will always find you.  Just as he found Mary, weeping alone in the garden, he searches for us and finds us. 

When Jesus found Mary, he did not tell her to smile or to stop crying, he simply stood with her in her pain.  And then he spoke her name, so that she would know she was not alone.  She was known and she was loved.  Jesus he knew her – and in that moment she needed to be reminded of that.  Jesus knew her because he was with her.  The first place in the entire world that the Risen Christ visited was Mary’s broken heart.  And then he gave her a story to tell: the story of the One who finds the broken hearted and reminds them that broken things do not stay broken forever.