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Jeremiah 3:1-6, John 20:1-18

An Unfinished Easter

by Patricia de Jong

April 7, 1996

It was the day before Easter, 1962. My mother and I decided, that Saturday morning before Easter, to make me a new Easter outfit. Off we went to Fenstemacher's Fabric Store to find a pattern and material. I must admit to being unabashedly culturally feminine in those days-I chose a bright pink skirt, a white top, and a pink mohair jacket. The pattern was a Butterick "easy to sew," which was another way of saying, "By the time you figure it out, it will be easy to sew, but until then . . ."

Mom and I began to cut and sew on Saturday afternoon-no small feat, since there were three siblings at home smaller than me. We worked through supper and through the Saturday-night bath regimen. We stayed up past the late-night news and past "The Star-Spangled Banner" which signed off the local TV station; on into the night we sewed and pieced together the amazing pink Easter outfit. It was not until we heard the morning birds sing that we knew we could go no further. It was 5:30 Easter Sunday morning. We were not finished.

Before church, my mother pinned together the back of the blouse and taped up the hem of the skirt. On the way to church, in the car, she basted the lining into the bright mohair jacket. Later I recall sitting very carefully in the pew, hoping that I wouldn't scratch myself with the pins that were placed at a variety of critical places in the outfit. When I stood up to sing "Christ the Lord Is Risen Today," I looked down and saw that my hem was dragging. I went to church with an unfinished Easter outfit that morning.

Oddly enough, the Easter story, too, is unfinished. It's not an easy story to comprehend or to figure out. There are no step-by-step directions for what it means to us. It's a roughly taped-together story which could fall apart at any moment. This resurrection story is filled with jagged moments of aborted losses and near misses and is held together by the thinnest thread of believability and authenticity. As we listen, we find ourselves beginning to squirm in our seats; how can a whole religion, and two thousand years of it at that, be based on a story such as this one?

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Three of Jesus' friends went to the tomb early in the morning. Mary went when it was still gray dawn on the day after the Sabbath. She saw that the stone had been rolled away and knew instantly that this could mean trouble. She went to her friends, John and Peter, and told them what she had seen up at the cemetery. They returned to the tomb and stooped to look in. Upon seeing the tomb empty, it's reported that John saw and believed, but Peter entered the tomb and checked everything out. But seeing that what Mary said was true, the two men returned to their homes. Their role in the story is unfinished and disappointing.

Mary has her own story to tell. She stands at the tomb weeping because Jesus is not there. Her friends have left her and have gone back to whatever it was they were doing before she fetched them. But she cannot return with them; she is too distraught. Perhaps she wants some time alone to collect her thoughts and organize her mind for what is next. She turns suddenly and sees, through the veil of her tears, a gardener. He speaks, and she recognizes him when he says her name.

"Rabbouni," she says, using his title, that of "Teacher," rather than the more familiar "Jesus," which would have meant something different. But Jesus says to her, "Do not hold me, but go and tell my friends that you have seen me."

Mary responds with an instant obedience, which means she understands that he is not on his way back to her, but he is headed somewhere else altogether.

Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza calls Mary the "apostle of the apostles" because she not only discovers the empty tomb, but is the first to receive a resurrection appearance. But even Mary's story feels unfinished to me.

Being as close as she was to Jesus, wouldn't there have been a few things she would have liked to ask him? Imagine, those of you who have lost to death someone you love, wouldn't you have a few things you'd like to talk over, if your loved one came back to you, even for an instant?

She has been weeping, great sobs of grief. Jesus moves so easily beyond her tears, away from her sorrow; wouldn't it have been at least courteous of him to comfort her or ask how she was doing?

This is a stunning, but tragically incomplete, story. It's a unfinished story, a failed Hollywood script; a story with rising tension, but precious little release and minimal interaction between the principal characters.

Jesus keeps his friends guessing, wondering what this is all about. Will they see him again? Will it be the same as old times? What are they supposed to do now? Is this a resuscitation of a corpse, another Lazarus miracle? Or the reanimation of a dead body? Could this be the resurrection Jesus talked about during the last week of his life?

Whatever it is that has happened, it is miserably unfinished, it keeps us hanging on-half in suspense, the other half with some irritation, for we cannot pin it down with scientific certainty or even spiritual discernment.

The only way to go is to finish the story ourselves.

All too often, we, like Mary, choose to stay at the tomb. We choose to finish off our own stories before they are completed. We stop at those moments of fear, struggle, defeat, and despair in our lives. Rather than choosing to live an Easter faith, we stay stuck at the tomb, bewildered by the absence of the body and paralyzed by our losses. We live, for all purposes, as if it is a Good Friday world; a world where violence, suffering, greed, and death reign with stubborn sovereignty.

What Jesus endures defines the suffering of the world. Recall the passion of Jesus: the denial of Peter, the betrayal of Judas, the fearfulness of other followers, the fickle crowd who cried "Hosanna!" one day and "Crucify him!" the next. Recall the cold-blooded judgment of Pilate and the leering racism of the Roman soldiers who couldn't wait to get their hands on the one who said he was "King of the Jews." There was the loneliness of Gethsemane and the agony of Calvary. Good Friday has within it all the elements of hell on earth and then some. The word "excruciating" comes from the Latin ex crusis, "from the cross." What Jesus endured defines the suffering of our world.

I hardly need to remind you the world Christ died to save is a world badly in need of salvation from its suffering. Ours is a world of reprisals; think of the Middle East, Rwanda, the Freemen of Montana. Ours is a world of injustices; we recoil in horror at the madness of the unabomber, the craziness of continued nuclear testing in international waters, the rape and killing of young, innocent teenage girls in California. Ours is a world of tragedy and sorrows; we remember and grieve with the families at the deaths this week of Ron Brown and 33 others on a hillside in Bosnia; we are well acquainted with a world which is stuck in the despair of a Good Friday.

But we who hope cannot stop here.

I do not need to remind you that is up to us to finish the story; as Christians and believers, we can define our position and declare our willingness to make a difference, every one of us in this blessed hall today. Amid a world which urges us to take advantage of others, ease our own lot, obtain power, consider money of vast and overwhelming importance and prominence, every one of us has the ability to finish the story in a different way. We don't have to walk away in bewilderment or stand at the tomb weeping. What we can and must do is discover for ourselves, and then put into motion with others, the power of the love that shines so radiantly in the face and word and deeds of Jesus Christ.

In the end, it is love that counts. I am interested to note that Jesus made the cover of Time, Newsweek, and US News and World Report this week. Of course, this is a well-timed commercial endeavor; but at the same time, I believe people are hungry for a center in their lives, hungry for spiritual sustenance, hungry for deep and lasting community based on more than good times or exercise.

People are hungry, starving for meaningful love and relationships; in our homes, with our families, in our communities, and also the world. Easter simply means love counts.

The message we receive from the empty tomb is not that love wins over everything except human treachery, or over everything except fear, or everything except despair, or everything except racism or pain or death. The meaning of this day, if we embrace the Christ of the empty tomb, is that love is the only thing that triumphs over all else. As Bill Coffin says, "If we fail in love, we fail in all things else."

Easter is unfinished because it is a demand as well as a promise. It demands not sympathy for the crucified Lord, but loyalty to the risen one; it demands an end to all our complicity in crucifixion. At the close of this service, we shall sing our hearts out: "And he shall reign for ever and ever." For Christ to reign means that we must finish Easter by living lives worthy of the love God gave to us in the life of Christ.

The Easter demand is great, but so is the promise. St. Paul says it for us:

If God be for us, who can be against us? Who shall separate us from the love of God? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness or peril? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through the one who loves us.

Last Thursday evening, nearly a hundred of us from this community gathered in the Large Assembly for a Maundy Thursday service. It was a beautiful candlelit evening, made lovelier still by a powerful dramatic reading, gorgeous flowers, delicious soup, and beautiful music. The meaning of Maundy comes from the Latin for "command" and reminds us of the great commandment-"Love one another, even as I have loved you." At the conclusion of worship, we simply washed each other's hands in the basins set for us at table.

As many of you washed each other's hands, I thought to myself, "This is the metaphor for the church." Washing hands of outreach to the homeless, washing hands of loving grandmothers and trusted administrators, hands of child caregivers, hands that reach out to strangers, hands that play music and create art, hands of business professors and history administrators, hands of children and strangers and intimates. "The work of our hands, O Lord, establish thou it." "Love one another, even as I have loved you." "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the close of the age."

On Maundy Thursday, we held in our hands the promise and the hope of Easter Sunday.

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Scripture does not tell us whether Mary held out her hands to Jesus at the tomb, but he does say to her, as if she was reaching for him, "Do not hold me." Easter does not return her and Jesus to the past. Easter opens up a new future. On Easter, even the routine of the future is redeemed!

We are meant to finish Easter. Did we not sing, just moments ago, "made like him, like him we rise; ours the cross, the grave, the skies"?

Once again, from St. Paul, who had a firm grasp of the mystery of this day:

For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. And when this has happened, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? . . . Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, beloved, be steadfast, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in God your labor is not in vain.

Amen.