EASTER SUNDAY 2007

“Look Up!”

John 20:1-18

Rochelle A. Stackhouse

Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen, indeed!

But Mary didn’t know that. Mary came looking for a dead body; you wouldn’t expect to find anything else in a cemetery. She looked down and just inside the open tomb and saw no body. Suspecting a crime or conspiracy, she ran for help.

Peter and that Beloved Disciple (since we’re not sure exactly who it was, I’ll call him BD) went to the cemetery because Mary was upset. They thought they’d find a body or maybe evidence of that crime or conspiracy – or evidence that Mary was just hysterical. They looked down and saw no body. They seemed to pay a lot of attention to that cloth that had wrapped Jesus’ body, focusing on the place the body had been laying. John says that BD saw and believed, what, I am not sure. But Peter, well, I’m guessing that he wasn’t interested in even entertaining the idea of a Jesus alive, after how Peter had denied even knowing him.

So they went home; what else was there to do?

All three of them were looking down in grief, in fear, bodies bent with the weight of the last week, eyes tired of tears and lack of sleep. Their sight was full of death, their dreams of his torn body on the cross, their waking moments spent hiding for fear the religious leaders, or the Roman soldiers, would come after them next. Their spirits full of the emptiness of unfulfilled expectations.

In the midst of all that weight bending them low, was it any surprise that all three of them missed seeing those two angels waiting in the tomb?

It’s funny how we don’t see things, even if our eyes are functioning well. I thought of something from my childhood this week, when my mother would ask me to clean my room and then come to inspect, only to find some sizable remaining mess. I’d say, “I didn’t see it,” and she’d reply, “If it had been a lion it would have bitten you!”

Then I thought of people I have known for whom Easter is a far-off hope, but Good Friday is a daily reality. I thought of people who are either so pressured or have sunk so low in despair that they can no longer see the beauty of the world around them or feel the love of family or friends right in front of them or even sense the presence of God anywhere in their lives. It has nothing to do with the health of their eyes and ears, and everything to do with their hearts and minds and spirits being focused down by the weight of living, down on the ground, down among the tombs, down among the shrouds.

“O Mary,” we want to cry out, we who already know the end of this story. “O Mary, look up! Peter, BD, look up! Look up!” And when Jesus stands there, we want to shout out, “Mary! Listen to that voice! Stop crying and look at his face; it’s Jesus! Oh, can’t you see?”

An old spiritual speaks to Mary like this: “Oh, Mary, don’t you weep, don’t you mourn. Oh Mary, don’t you weep, don’t you mourn. Pharaoh’s army got drownded; Oh, Mary don’t you weep.”

Look up – look up. Forget about dead bodies. Forget about shrouds and tombs. Forget about evil and power and fear and shame and sadness and weariness and suffering and all that has to be done. Yes, those things are still in the world, still, too often, in each of our lives.

But there is now something else, oh now there is something else, more powerful than all of that. It doesn’t make sense in any scientific or political or medical or logical way, and that’s precisely the point. This is something beyond and above and yet right in the midst of all that – an extravagant, ridiculous, grace-flooded moment of pure undeserved gift, because that’s how God does things. “O Mary, O Peter, look up, with your eyes and with your spirits!”

O Friends, look up! The dying preacher in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead says to us, “Wherever you turn your eyes, the world can shine. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see.”

A little willingness to see. Mary first, she saw those angels, because she was willing to take a second look and not give in to despair or fear. And then she saw Jesus; he spoke her name, and she knew that her Redeemer lived, and that the world would never look the same to her again.

That same day, Peter and the other disciples heard Mary’s news and something opened a little inside them, a little willingness to hope, so that they were ready for Jesus to come among them. They put away the shame of their betrayal and desertion when he said, “Peace be with you.” They put away their doubt and fear and even the worry that others might mock them for having lost their senses.

Then, slowly at first, they unlocked the doors of their house and their spirits. They shone with the borrowed light of the resurrected and living Jesus. Then others who had that little willingness saw a vision different from the barren ground and grinding world around them as they saw Jesus in the disciples, and together they all claimed the power of life and forgiveness and hope, and they changed the world, mostly for the better.

Beloved in Christ, look up, listen. You don’t have to bring a thing this morning except a little willingness to see and hear. For one who is not the gardener is calling you by name, wanting to lift you up and send you out away from the tombs and locked doors and fear of the powers of the world. It won’t make sense to those who will not look, and, like Peter, you can just go home. But if you are willing, like Mary, to take a second look, you might just see the change in the world that is still real, still transforming darkness into light and death into life. Jesus is here, in bread and cup, in all of you gathered who also shine with the light of the resurrection, not of a resuscitated body, but of a still living Christ. Look up! Listen! Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen, indeed! Alleluia.