By Ross Bartlett, Kingstong, Ontario, Canada

Easter Sunday

John 20:1-18 Up Close and Personal

Whenever I read John's telling of the Easter story I am struck by the urgency and action. Run, see for yourself, act, believe! Perhaps that's in contrast with the chapters that come before, which are very heavy theological monologues filled with all sorts of dense material. In the actions which are less physical than the others there's still a sense of immediacy. Mary, even before it is dawn, goes to the tomb, unwilling to be separated from the Teacher, even in death. She finds the stone rolled away and there's no pause for consideration; she runs to find the disciples. Then there's that footrace between Peter and the other disciple - spurred on by confusion, surprise and love. There are two occurrences of belief - the Beloved Disciple at the sight of the grave clothes and Mary at the words of Jesus - both are quick, immediate. Christ's commission to Mary: "Don't linger here, don't try and hold me or this moment. Go and tell others." That first Easter inspired action and urgency. The responses were immediate and intense.

Many of our lives are filled with urgency. From the moment our feet hit the floor we're running at so many different tasks. Just trying to name them is exhausting. I have it on good authority that it doesn't change when we reach retirement either! But there are other kinds of running that we can mark in our lives. We run towards God: seeking a fuller Christian life, deeper commitment, prayer, devotion, service to others. Then we find ourselves running away from God, lost in the issues of the moment, caught up in the concerns of everyday life and getting ahead, grasping what this world holds and values. Then we turn and run from the world, troubled by the emptiness in our lives or sickened by what we have seen and done. That seems to be the rhythm of our lives: now involved with God, now rejecting God; first caught up in the world, then moving away from the world. But always we seem to be active, never resting, always shifting. We should recognize the activity in the resurrection story because it parallels our lives. We recognize that we run: how many of us can say for sure where the direction for all our activity comes from.

We should also recognize the other activity in the story, for it's our story too: Mary weeping for what might have been. We have all lost what we loved. If it wasn't a person, and it often is, then we have lost a dream, an ideal, a hope. In our grief we would give anything to hear that voice again, to hear our name called, to respond by flinging our arms around that person in a hug which would never let go, not even across the abyss of death. Have you ever wept in the predawn darkness for what might have been; for what once was and isn't any more? If you have, then you know how Mary felt.

I'm going to take a risk and name a question which is in the bellies of more than a few of you today. It's not a question you're supposed to ask in church. You're certainly not supposed to ask the preacher! So let the preacher ask it for you: "Did it really happen?" Or is it just some notion that we go along with while we go to church because we like all the other stuff that church does? Do we have to believe it? Whoa, now that's a very different question! I'm not in the business of telling people what they have to believe, but I do find it's fascinating what we may believe, once we open our eyes.

Let's acknowledge right off the top that the fact that no one has risen from the dead since, insofar as we know, is a major block to many people's belief. We don't know the "how" of resurrection. One way at that is to ask, "if you had a video camera in the garden that morning what would it have recorded? We don't know. The gospels themselves are silent on the matter - there is no living colour and gory detail as if this were a magical feat or a Steven Spielberg movie event designed to overcome the skeptical and overwhelm the doubter. Resurrection stands as an unprecedented and unrepeated event. That causes some people great difficulty. Unlike almost every other human experience you can name we do not have eyewitnesses. We even have folk who have "died" and come back to speak of their experiences. But that's not so for resurrection.

Now, I could take you on a long perambulation through all the arguments for and against the reality of resurrection. They flare up every now and then. A few years ago a work of nonfiction spent four months at the top of the New York Times best seller list, purporting to explain how the resurrection was a hoax or a fantasy. More recently, various media across the country got all excited when the Moderator of the United Church was claimed to have denied the resurrection. The fact that Bill Phipps most explicitly did not deny the resurrection is less interesting than the fascination which the issue exercised for so many people. The debate continues around what has arguably been the central event in western history. But you probably aren't interested in a rehearsal of those arguments.

For me, there is one thing that argues more eloquently than anything else for the truth of the events that we celebrate today. That is the evidence of changed lives. On Good Friday, which seemed anything but good at the time, the followers of Jesus were frightened, hiding, broken-hearted. Within weeks of the events of Easter, this same story which we celebrate today was being told in Jerusalem and within months it was being preached throughout Israel by people who were prepared to undergo torture, imprisonment and even death for the truth of the message they bore. It is the change in that ragged group of fishermen and tax collectors, in a company of men and women without power or influence. Were all these people prepared to die for a hoax they had created, a story they had cooked up? The strongest proof of the resurrection is the change that it makes possible in the lives of those who encounter the Risen Christ.

Faith is generated differently in different people. It has always been that way. Peter saw everything and nothing and left wondering about what he had seen. The Beloved Disciple saw the very same things and believed. Mary, with no hint of the resurrection weeps at the tomb. She's a follower of Jesus but she has no expectation of a miracle. She only imagines that someone has done a further indignity to the teacher from Nazareth. She does not look for what she does not expect to see. Have you never had the experience of being in a room and hearing someone enter, and thinking it was one person begun to speak before you realized it was someone quite different? How much easier for Mary, distracted by grief, having no reason to expect a resurrection? Who else would be in the garden except the gardener? She was brought to faith by the voice of Christ; she believed because she had an experience which we all have shared, the speaking of our name by someone who is near and dear to us.

So where are we today? If you have that question, "is it true?" what are you going to do to discover an answer? Do we miss him because we are disinterested? Or are we, like Mary, seeking for the living amongst the dead, ploughing around in the evidence of 2,000 years ago when Christ himself stands by our side waiting to be recognized? Christianity, after all is said and done, is not a matter of knowing about Jesus, but of knowing him; not an issue of debating theories but of meeting him.

Our lives are filled with urgency. If urgency were visible colours this room would probably be a rainbow. We run through our lives. We stumble and fall and scrape our knees. And get up and run again. After all, a saint isn't someone who never falls. A saint is someone who, after they fall, gets up, dusts themself off, and runs again by the grace of God. We run toward the springtime, for Christ is Lord both of our times of dying and our times of new birth. And as we run, we have around us the great company of those who, in every age, have run this race. Thanks be to God. Amen

© 1998 I. Ross Bartlett