Sermon – Easter Sunday 2024 – St Mary Magdalene, Outwood
Alleluia, Christ is Risen…. He is Risen indeed, Alleluia!
I am always glad when we get to Easter Day. Perhaps you are, as well. It’s a joyful occasion and, as Christians, we know there is a significance for us that can and must become life changing and life affirming. Actually, that’s not what I mean:
Really, “…as Christians, there is a significance for everyone that we meet, and for the world – that can and must become life changing and life affirming” – through us!
We literally have to turn up…. Like Mary Magdalene, like the Disciples….. We have to pay attention, listen, get involved, be prayerful, help others to find their way, or to find the right words to take part;
Sometimes it means we have to push through to the front…. And speak up for those without a voice… Sometimes…. Well, we might need to be quiet – to not engage, but find other ways to be loving, supporting and hopeful.
I can’t summarise all the ways in which we can be disciples… that’s for you to work out as you walk with the Holy Spirit… we are all different and God celebrates that in us! Yet God also gives us this moment… to remember, to look into the empty tomb… and rejoice!
Easter is not just the end of the Lenten journey, the result of Holy Week – but the start of something else. Easter wasn’t just the beginning of the Christian church, as a movement and then – well, whatever it has become – that’s mostly history…. No, I mean Easter is the beginning of our transformation.
Now, you probably noticed that there is a lot of running to and fro at the start of today’s Gospel. It’s nothing unfamiliar and it introduces us to a narrative sense of urgency and excitement that we have come to expect. In fact, that urgency is what we presume to be essential …. ‘Go and tell’….
Well, the Disciples came, they looked, one of them believed, and then they went home. For a while. Thankfully John then stops talking about ‘running’. It was all quite exhausting!
Whichever Gospel you read – the author takes Jesus from prophecy, birth, ministry, to passion and now to this moment. All of what happened before showed Jesus revealing God’s love for the world; Jesus reminding and retelling, encouraging and cajoling; challenging the evil in human hearts and seeking out the possibilities that love can create in all of us… because God so loved the world.
This journey of Jesus, didn’t just lead to His Passion… it was all that He was passionate about… which ultimately led to his execution.
His passion was for the kingdom of God, and what life would be like on earth if God were king, and the ruling systems, and empires of this world were not.
It is the world that the prophets dreamed of—a shared hope of justice in which everybody has enough and everything is fair. Social justice isn’t just a dream for politics and protest – it was at the core of what Jesus called the Kingdom of God.
And now here is Mary Magdalene, as she steps into the centre of this story…. She is quite overwhelmed in that moment, and she stands there, weeping. And then the truth is made clear. Her sadness can turn to joy. The warmth of hope inside the human heart… is revealed now…. By Mary? Yes, but because such love was revealed to her first, by Jesus.
John doesn’t tell us much about Mary Magdalene, although we learn more about her from the other Gospel writers. We first see her at the foot of the cross, with the others.
Now she becomes not only the First Apostle – having seen the risen Christ; but she is given the mantle of an Angel – Announcing this encounter to the Disciples.
Think about that…. Mary “…went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; [18]”
Like Gabriel bringing the Good yet terrifying News to Mary, the Mother of Jesus…. It is Announced. And what is the message she is to bring…?
“I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” [17]
This is the shared hope of which Jesus had spoken – a shared union with God.
Whatever this meant to Mary, or whatever it would mean to the Disciples… this is what Jesus wanted to say. He had already spoken of having to die, and being raised up… Of seeds having to die in order to become more fruitful…. And now His message speaks of this being imminent…now!
How then can we share that ministry with Mary – with all the prophets, the saints and… every one else, down through the ages, who have sought ways to share this Good News, this pathway to the transformation that God hoped for?
Sometimes the ‘responsibility’ of the Gospel – of being a Disciple of Jesus, in this current age, all seems too much. Hurrah for Easter Day – Oh good, it’s a Bank Holiday tomorrow…! Back to work Tuesday….
How can I “announce” that Christ is Risen – to my friends and family, let alone to the world…?
How could I be the Rock on which a church is built…?
How could I turn my life around so that others see the light and joy, and not just my failings, which is usually what they expect to see?
When I stand weeping outside of the tomb – the place of dust and bones and ashes…. Who or what will open my eyes….. or yours?
And even if I could do just a little bit of that, what difference will it make? Does any of that sound familiar?
Well… Who else might be weeping outside of the empty tomb? Perhaps you know someone whose life has become empty, painful and bereft of joy….
Maybe there is a person in your life that is in the darkest of places right now… maybe the darkness affects you both, or others, and the light is too hard to see.
Or do you bring people you have never met into your prayers, into the presence of this Risen Christ – the people we see on the news – in places of war and misery, lamenting their loss, witnessing their pain.
Whoever you bring alongside this weeping Mary, just stand there with her, for a moment.
For us to proclaim that ‘Jesus is Risen’…. Or ‘Jesus is Lord’…. Might seem fairly easy amongst ourselves. Is it?
Elsewhere, non-christians might have no idea what we are talking about! Others will look at us as if we were fools, with a world-weary cynicism, or they might ask for scientific evidence of Resurrection…! They may even expect and want us to turn up with an integrity and confidence that they need, but that we might not be strong enough to hold on to….
For over two thousand years, Christians themselves have wrestled with the empty Tomb and The Resurrection, and how to ensure that the message of God’s love becomes paramount – indeed, that it becomes our passion.
Our passion…? Yes…! Living with the faith that has formed us, becoming disciples as we walk with Christ, weeping with Mary, praying in the Spirit, looking out for others – with an eye on the world, and an honest sense of our own frailties. And then keeping going, regardless…..? That’s passion….
We know we cannot have Easter without Good Friday – that one without the other makes no sense or is just plain awful…
Yet, It can become too easy to allow the darkness of Good Friday to seem normal. Well, it’s life isn’t it? Horrible things happen to nice folk, it’s a shame, move on… does that ring any bells?
But then…. The tomb is empty…. It wasn’t expected, but that’s how God is.
Everything is about to change for Mary… and for the world. Mary encounters her friend, who she’d believed to be dead and lost. He is Jesus. Yet different. He tells Mary not to hold on to Him.
Everything had changed. Look forward not back. Instead he gives her a task, a mission. And she goes….
Apparently, this is a year filled with international elections, with all the potential for change and/or disaster such occasions might bring; along technologies that could make it all impossible to live with. We have wars and famine that seem without end, with all the suffering being done by the innocent, as usual. We want to know what we can do about it…. If anything.
How can the Risen Christ – today – make all this misery stop, and build the Kingdom amidst the mayhem? There is no quick, easy fix …
Again, it’s up to us… to turn up – speak up, pray, take notice, listen to others and encourage debate; help the vulnerable to know they are not alone, that they too are loved and are a part of what you have!
And to hope… which is not ‘blind faith’ or meaningless optimism. Our discipleship is rooted at the foot of the cross. It is real. It will take a battering and, God willing, it will provide a strength that we will need. Yet it is faith, and if we let it transform us, all things are possible.
Whatever is before you this week. Whether the weeping continues for you and for those you love, for a while longer… Or whether you face the world and say “Christ is Risen”…
Remember, that God transforms everything and everyone, as He transformed Jesus into resurrected life. God transforms you and me. Today might be a joyful occasion but, sometimes even the most wonderful possibility is terrifying…
Next time it could be you called upon to do the announcing! Mary had to go and tell a bunch of blokes that she spoke to Jesus and they hadn’t – ouch!
Let others know of the cross…., yes… But above all, tell them about the empty tomb and how new life is waiting…
God does amazing and unexpected things through us…. All we can ever know for sure is that God will transform us every day, with love.
Alleluia! Amen.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Year B – John 20:1-18 – Acts 10:34-43