2025-04-23
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
My life changed forever on Easter day 40 years ago when my son Chris literally bounced into the world. He hasn’t stopped moving since!
I was raised in a family of girls and even after all these years, I still haven’t figured out the wild, constant motion of boys – or at least my boy! Although I never would, there were moments I thought about putting Chris on a leash because my life as his mom has often seemed like nothing more than an endless game of keeping track of him. And it’s a game I usually lose.
When Chris was 18 months old, my brother-in-law and sister-in-law got married on the Goodtime, and I spent the entire wedding making sure my child didn’t go overboard. When he was four, we lost him for what felt like hours outside Cinderella’s castle at Disneyworld when he took off, darting under people’s elbows in pursuit of character autographs. When he reappeared a short time later, proudly displaying all the signatures he’d gotten, I felt I’d aged at least 10 years!
And Chris is the only person who can climb the creaky stairs of our century home without making a sound, a skill he perfected as a teen when breaking curfew. Since college, he’s lived in Denver, India, Florida, New Orleans and California. At this moment, he is learning to captain a 50-foot sailboat more than 20 miles off the coast of Portugal before he returns next week to his duty station in the Central African Republic. We never know where he’ll be off to next!
Maybe it’s because of my experience as Christopher’s mom that I have some inkling of understanding how Mary reacted when Jesus says that she can’t hold on to him. Pause for just a moment and imagine how Mary must have felt. She had followed her beloved Jesus all the way from Galilee and, even after all the disciples had fled, she was there as a witness when he drew his last breath on the cross. And with his death came the death of her hope: her hope for a better world, for a place where women like her could be accepted and included in society.
By the time we encounter Mary in our familiar text this morning, she has spent more than 36 hours in utter despair mourning Jesus’ crucifixion before she strikes out in the dark of that early morning to sit vigil at his graveside. But nothing is going as she expected! Arriving to find the stone rolled away and the body gone, she runs to tell the disciples what she has encountered.
Returning to the tomb and stumbling upon a pesky gardener, Mary is exasperated as she just wants to know where they have put the body of her beloved teacher. It is only when he calls her by name that she realizes it is her rabbouni who is speaking to her. Elated, one can imagine all she wants to do is throw her arms around his neck and never let go, but Jesus tells her that she cannot hold on to him.
Not being able to hold on to Jesus is really nothing new. We remember that when he was twelve and visited the temple in Jerusalem for the first time, his parents lost track of him and went frantically searching for their son. Later, when his friends assumed that he would be at the temple, Jesus might just as easily be off in the desert praying, on a hillside teaching, or hanging out with prostitutes, tax collectors or some other sinners.
Maybe it’s part of our effort to keep track of this man who will not be contained that causes us to get so caught up in the question of resurrection. We want to know – need to know – if the physical resurrection was real. We get caught up in wanting to fully understand the one event in Jesus’ life that happened while no one was present.
But all of this seems to miss the point. Notice that they gospels don’t ask, “Do you believe?” but rather, “Have you encountered the risen Christ?” This morning, we celebrate Easter, this event recalling Christ’s resurrection, on a lovely spring day when everything in the world seems new. We come dressed in all our finery to sing hymns and alleluias and, after a cold, dark winter, we want to sit happily in our pews and bask in the sunshine with the perfumed scent of Easter lilies wafting all around us!
But Easter doesn’t really happen in flower bedecked sanctuaries or in the midst of our hunt for chocolate eggs or even around festive family dinner tables laden with ham and scalloped potatoes. Easter comes in the darkness, in the black of night when all hope seems lost, in the loneliness of the cold, echoing spaces of a tomb.
Easter comes in that dark night of heart-wrenching pain, of devastating disappointment and smothering guilt when the bullies’ attacks just won’t stop and we don’t think there is anyone we can turn to, when they’ve broken our spirits, and we start believing their taunts. It comes in the middle of the night when, in the midst of a family crisis, we look into the eyes of our child and realize we don’t know the person staring back at us.
Easter comes when we are spoon-feeding the frail mommy who once fed us and whose once-strong body gave us piggy-back rides every time we asked. It comes when the person we have loved for nearly all of our lives, the person on whom we’ve depended to be there for all the difficult moments is sitting in a wheelchair and no longer remembers our name. Easter comes when the freedom we have known all of our lives is slowly eroded as people are disappeared without due process and we feel overwhelmed and helpless.
It is in the darkness of these moments that we need to see Jesus again, to hear him call us by name, to throw our arms around his neck and hold on tight. It is in this darkness that we need to have our hope restored. What we long for, what we miss and beg God to give us back, is gone. Easter doesn’t change that. We cannot cling to the hope that Jesus will take us back to the way it was.
The only way out of the darkness is to move ahead. And the only one who can lead the way is Jesus. It is when we understand this that we realize that this day is not about springtime and trumpeting songs and pretty spring dresses. Easter is about more hope than we can handle.
Understanding Easter in these encounters helps us to understand Mary’s encounter with her beloved teacher in the tomb. She wants to cling to him in indescribable joy, but he says, “Don’t hold onto me.” This isn’t the Hollywood ending we were hoping for. We yearn for a long, tearful reunion and Jesus telling Mary to run to get the others. He’s back and they’re all heading home together.
But we realize that following Jesus is a never-ending process of losing him the moment we think we have him all figured out and under control. The question is not, “Do you believe?” but rather, “Have you encountered the risen savior?” Mary has, and we imagine her life is never the after that. Neither are our lives when we encounter Jesus and follow him into a life free of fear, loosed of the things that have held us back. We begin to understand Easter when we realize that we cannot hold onto Jesus – but we can be confident in his hold on us.
All we really know on this Easter morning is that the risen Christ is on the loose – and he knows our names! The world will never be the same. And for that, we sing alleluia. Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed.