Call to Worship:
“An Easter Poem” by Shannon K. Evans

Scripture Reading: John 20: 11-18

Second Reading:
“The Magdalene’s Blessing” by Jan Richardson

Sermon:

The story of Holy Week and Easter—the palm Sunday processional into Jerusalem, the last supper and washing of the disciples’ feet, the betrayal, arrest, crucifixion and resurrection—isn’t actually one story at all. We get bits and pieces from each of the four canonical gospels. Some of them are flat out contradictory, others include stories that the other gospels omit, and some have details that are just slightly different. We tend to piece these four stories together to create a singular narrative we know as the Easter story.

When you take the time to look at each one separately, the most uniform part of the story is the crucifixion. There is some difference in the wording, but all four gospels include the same basic details and timeline of events.

But the resurrection stories. The resurrection stories are wildly different. There isn’t even agreement on who the resurrected Jesus appears to first.

I’m sure the skeptics among you might say that is for a simple reason. There are historical accounts of crucifixions in the Roman Empire. There aren’t historical accounts of someone being raised from the dead. One is “true,” the other is “fantasy.”

But it’s Easter, so let’s take a break from our skepticism. As Theo so adeptly reminded us earlier, stories like these often contain a different kind of truth. So I propose another possible reason why there is one crucifixion story and multiple resurrection stories: Of the two, crucifixion and resurrection, it is resurrection that is the creative act.

See, the cruelty of state violence and oppression, the suppression of attempts at love and liberation, so often looks horribly, boringly, painfully similar. It’s why now we can look at what’s happening in our own country or in the world, and make comparisons to historic authoritarian regimes. It’s why Black theologians like James Cone, who wrote “the cross and the lynching tree” could read the story of Jesus’s crucifixion and so easily see the direct ties to the lynching of Black Americans. It’s why theologian Dorothee Soelle says that, “The cross is no theological invention, but the world’s answer given a thousand times over to attempts at liberation.”

Oppression and Violence are not creative forces. They aren’t even especially interesting forces. In our Easter stories, Pilate isn’t even that complex of a villain. For all of the pomp and circumstance of his Palm Sunday military parade, he’s essentially a mid-tier bureaucrat who outsources the moral responsibility of leadership. He is an archetype of Hannah Arendt’s famous description of the “banality of evil,” sitting next to Eichmann in the hall of fame of egotistical middle manager, perpetuating great evil by submitting thoughtlessly to the cog of a bureaucratic death machine.

This doesn’t mean that the violence and oppression perpetuated by those in power is any less destructive, any less terrifying and dangerous, any less agonizing and soul crushing to witness or experience, and any less worthy of opposition. It is indeed evil, but it is also dull, prosaic, unoriginal, lifeless. It only has one story to tell, with only one possible ending: and that ending is death. Anything that comes after, even if it’s simply the lifegiving process of decomposition, is the work of other forces.

There is only one story of crucifixion.

But resurrection. Resurrection is endlessly creative. Just look at all the different forms it takes in the gospels!

In the Gospel of Mark, in the earliest manuscripts before another ending was added on later, we don’t get any scenes of the risen Jesus. Instead, we get the women at an empty tomb and a stranger telling them, “Don’t be alarmed, You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here….go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’” Some Biblical scholars think this is a literary device, meant to point us back to the beginning of the Gospel, which begins in Galilee. Go back to the beginning to find the resurrected Jesus. Mark reminds us that the work of resurrection is never over, it’s a constant returning to the daily work of gathering disciples, feeding the hungry, healing the sick. Resurrection is not a tidy ending, it is not the prize after the work is over, but rather is in the work itself.

In the Gospel of Luke, our first glimpse of the resurrected Jesus is as a travelling stranger, appearing to two of his disciples who are walking away from Jerusalem, toward the town of Emmaus, scared and despondent. They do not recognize him at first, but offer him hospitality and food and shelter anyway. It is only in the breaking of the bread together that they finally recognized him. Luke tells us that resurrection is not merely a spiritual state but an embodied one. New life is found in community, in the breaking of bread, in acts of radical hospitality, and tender care for one another’s bodily needs.

In the Gospel of Matthew, it is the women who first see the resurrected Jesus. He tells them to go spread the word of his resurrection. “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers and sisters to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” It is women who become the first preachers of the risen Jesus’s message. Matthew tells us that the work of resurrection will be proclaimed by those on the margins and the message of love and liberation know no boundaries of gender, race, age, nationality, sexual orientation, or economic class.

In the Gospel of John, our reading for today, the resurrected Jesus appears to his friend and disciple Mary Magdalene asking her “woman, why are you weeping?,” but she does not recognize him. She mistakes him for the gardener, which must tell us something about Jesus’s appearance. John tells us that the work of resurrection is not the pristine miracle of white clad angels, but rather the work of those willing to get their hands dirty. Those willing to tend soil and plant new seeds. Those willing to ask questions about another’s pain and listen to the answer without turning away.

And it tells us something else profound. See, Mary recognizes Jesus when he calls her by her name. He says simply, “Mary.” This appearance is so intimate. Before she becomes the apostle to the apostle, before she goes forth to spread this astounding news, there is this quiet, sacred moment where this experience is just hers. John tells us that each of us has a holy calling, a role to play in proclaiming resurrection, that is beautifully, specifically ours.

The work of resurrection—of breathing new life into places where there was previously only violence and loss, of definitely proclaiming that the imperial forces of death do not get to have the last word, of daily bringing love and liberation into being—this is work that is so communal and so creative it can not be confined to one singular story. It takes all of us and it is never finished. It asks us to stay in the work, get our hands dirty, lean into community and constantly find new ways to love and care for our neighbors.

The gospel stories offer models for what this looks like, yes, but taken together they are a reminder that there is no single narrative of resurrection and thus invite us, through our living, to write our own.

Theologian Jurgen Moltmann writes, "Believing in the resurrection... means participating in God's creative act. Resurrection is not a consoling opium... it is the energy for a rebirth of this life." Religious scholar and podcaster Tripp Fuller posits that the invitation of resurrection theology is not just to believe some historical fact, but rather to see through the story of resurrection, a God who refuses to be God without us.”

A God who refuses to be God without us.

Us in the collective and us as individuals with unique and sacred callings to this work.

These resurrection stories are relational. The witnesses to the resurrection are as central to these stories as the event itself. They are stories of co-creation, of what it looks like to work with God to create a world where love is revealed to be greater than the death-dealing powers of empire. And there is no single way.

Our world today is not so different from the world of the Gospels. We face our own petty tyrants, watch in horror at unjust executions in our own streets. We too live in a society that does not welcome the stranger, does not clothe the naked and feed the poor or care for the orphan and widow. And we too are called to reject those conditions and build and alternative kingdom of heaven here on earth. We too are called to follow in the way of peace, and justice, the way of love and abundant life.

So this Easter our task is not to debate if this happened or how or which account is the most historically accurate. Our invitation is to join with the sacred in the creative work of resurrection. To join our own stories to these ancient ones. Our invitation this Easter is to decide how we will respond when we stand in the place of death and hear the living call our name.

Amen.