Sunday: Easter C
Reading: Luke 24:1-10
Preacher: S. James Steen

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.                                                                                                                 Don't go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.                                                                                                                    Don't go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the doorsill                                                                                                   Where the two worlds meet.

The door is round and open.                                                                                                                                  Don't go back to sleep.[i]

 One of the remarkable things about this most holy of days is that it celebrates a God who is absent.  They came looking, but the tomb was empty.  There are many details of the Easter tradition that vary from one Gospel account to another.  But on one point all agree: There was a tomb, and it was empty.  In Jewish culture it was the work of women to prepare bodies for burial.  Since it wasn't permitted to do this work on the Sabbath, early on Sunday morning, after the Sabbath had ended, female disciples of Jesus procured the necessary items and headed for the tomb.  And as we have just heard, "They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body."

It is at this point that the story really gets interesting, because each storyteller gives his own version of what happens next.  What follows the discovery of the empty tomb depends on the particular concerns of each writer, concerns formed by issues facing the local communities in which they were writing, as well as by larger issues that were influencing life in Palestine when each Gospel was written.  And, of course, in a world of limited communications and transportation, each account was influenced by which stories about the Resurrection were circulating in their geographical areas.  As the poem says, "The door is round and open.  Don't go back to sleep."  You might miss something wonderful, if you go back to sleep.

What follows the discovery of the empty tomb is almost like an explosion of events, varying from Gospel to Gospel, and giving us a rich tapestry, woven of the ways each writer and each early Christian community made sense out of what had recently occurred.  If we are to find a vital faith, I am convinced it won't be by seizing on one of these stories to the exclusion of all the others as providing the answer.  Rather, it will be through our celebrating - or better yet, immersing ourselves in - the diverse answers the Gospels give to the question of where the empty tomb leads.

As one writer has observed, "It is in the finding, not in the seeking, that religions goes awry....Empty tombs foster faith; not certainty.  Empty tombs do not mark the end of the chase, only the beginning.  An empty tomb invites compassion born of empathy for those still looking.  An empty tomb proclaims God is out of the box and not to be possessed.  An empty tomb suggests that God is elsewhere.  It is Easter.  Hunt God as well as eggs.  Eggs you may find, but pray for your sake and the sake of the world, that God will continue to elude you."[ii]  People who are still looking for God do not ostracize minorities or declare war on people of other cultures or blow themselves up for Allah.

Possibly the most beautiful and poignant post-empty tomb encounter in the Gospels is found in John.  There, after finding the tomb empty, Mary Magdalene stands outside weeping, wondering what has been done with Jesus' body.  While this is taking place, she turns around and sees Jesus standing there.  But John tells us that she did not know it was he.  In fact, she assumed it was the gardener, that is, until he spoke her name, "Mary." 

This encounter is not about the resuscitation of a corpse.  Far more powerful, it is about the mystery of God becoming alive to us when we recognize and affirm one another, and thus connect at a level that changes our relationships and us.  The encounter may be fleeting, perhaps only a glance or a smile, but it has made all the difference in the world.  In the encounter between Jesus and Mary, It involves conveying love and respect through the use of another's name, something that is hard to comprehend from our cultural perspective, where even sales people or tech supporters on the telephone address us as if we were best fiends. 

This was especially significant in Palestinian society, where the speaking of a person's name was believed to make the essence - the soul - of that person available to the speaker.  So when Jesus, unrecognized by Mary, simply calls her by name, suddenly everything changes.  Immediately, in response to this one word, "Mary," she recognizes him and says, "Rabbouni" (Teacher), thus completing the connection between the two.

And this is not all.  It appears that Mary responds to what has transpired by embracing Jesus, as it would seem perfectly natural for her to do.  For he then says, paradoxically given the intimacy of the moment, "Do not hold on to me."  It's significant that he does not say, "Get away from me," or "Don't touch me," but "Do not hold on to me." 

It's a perfect follow-up to the empty tomb.  For it's another reminder that, no matter how much we want to find the one answer that will end our search, we cannot capture God.  We cannot hold on to Jesus.  We cannot domesticate him for our own comfort without putting him back in the tomb.  Instead, we are invited to seek and to follow him, a quest which, if we take it seriously, will never make us comfortable for long, but will provide us with a lifetime of excitement, and will continually reveal to us a fresh Christ who repeatedly surprises us with new life. "The door is round and open.  Don't go back to sleep."

This seeking after Christ is more than a mental exercise.  For he calls us to follow him out there, into the world, where we will discover him working with children in Shoesmith School across the park; feeding the homeless in the Open Kitchen in North Kenwood; working to strengthen families and or to assuage loneliness in the spacious homes of our community; seeking cures for diseases in the laboratories of the University; attempting to alleviate poverty and violence, and weeping with the people of Haiti and Darfur and Iraq.  He is out there, always on the move, calling us to go out and seek him wherever people hunger for compassion and justice.

As Teresa of Avila said 500 years ago,

"Christ has no hands but ours,
no feet but ours.
We bear him to humanity;
we bring him forth to his world like Mary his mother.
Without us he can do nothing:
that is how he chooses it shall be."

"The door is round and open.  Don't go back to sleep."

Amen