Amazement and Terror on a Day of Glory, The Reverend David R. Williams, Easter Sunday--Year B--April 16, 2006

Mary stands weeping outside the tomb.  The tomb is empty.
 
The current events of the Lenten Season and Holy Week make us wonder, not unlike Mary.
 
An advertisement in the newspaper for a Drive-thru Crucifiction (sic) at a local church creates a moment of wonder.  Is this Crucifiction a play on words or is it really misspelled?! And-- “Drive-thru?”
 
Mary stands weeping outside the tomb.
 
On the eve of the release of the movie version of “The DaVinci Code,” there is a frantic scramble by “concerned Christians.” Scholars write books countering the DaVinci Code implications about Jesus.  Newspaper ads are presented.  E-mails and special DVDs are sent from local churches to the general population--ready to defend the “real Jesus story.”  Could Dan Brown’s fictional tale of mystery diminish and even change the nature and supremacy of Jesus?  What is this frenzy?
 
And then another Gospel is uncovered, going all the way back to within two hundred years of Jesus’ death.  This Gospel does not have a sacred name attached to it – like Thomas, or Peter, or even Mary.  This one is titled the Gospel of Judas Iscariot.  Scientists and scholars have tested the manuscript.  It is authentic.  How might this new text affect my understanding of Jesus?
 
One day Jesus was with his disciples in Judea, and he found them gathered together and seated in pious observance. When he approached his disciples, gathered together and seated and offering a prayer of thanksgiving over the bread, he laughed.
 
The disciples said to him, “Master, why are you laughing at our prayer of thanksgiving?  We have done what is right.”
 
He answered and said to them, “I am not laughing at you.  You are not doing this because of your own will but because it is through this that your god will be praised.”
 
The said, “Master, you are the son of our god.”
 
Jesus said to them, “How do you know me?  Truly I say to you, no generation of the people that are among you will know me.”
 
When his disciples heard this, they started getting angry and infuriated and began blaspheming against him in their hearts.
 
When Jesus observed their lack of understanding, he said to them, “Why has this agitation led you to anger?  Your god who is within you…provoked you to anger within your souls. Let any one of you who is strong enough among human begins bring out the perfect human and stand before my face.”
 
They all said, “We have the strength.”
 
But their spirits did not dare to stand before him, except for Judas Iscariot.  He was able to stand before him, but he could not look him in the eyes, and Judas turned his face away.
 
Judas said to him, “I know who you are and where you have come from.  You are from the immortal realm of Barbelo.  And I am not worthy to utter the name of the one who has sent you.”
 
Judas said to Jesus, “Look, what will those who have baptized in your name do?”
 
Jesus said, “Truly I say to you this baptism in my name…(and will enable them to overcome) everything that is evil.”
 
“But you, Judas, will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me”
 
Oh my! Judas, the disciple whom we believe represents all evil is really the only one who knows the secrets of Jesus?
 
And Mary stands outside the empty tomb, weeping.
 
The Gospel of Mark ends with the three women fleeing the tomb in fear.  “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
 
Friends,, we did not arrive here this morning with terror and fear on our minds.  A flowering cross, the sweet fragrance of Easter lilies, special musicians, an exceptional anthem, kites flying – not the stuff of fear and weeping.
 
It is easy to become numbed by the awesome reality of the Christian story.  We know it so well and we are ready to sing the Alleluias.  So, where do trembling, weeping and fear play on this glorious day?
 
The Easter story as it is written by the evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, begins after the Sabbath.  The Sabbath is Saturday.  Sunday is the first day of the work week for first Century Jews, Gentiles, Romans, and Christians. The Easter story begins on the first day of the week.
 
The Good News of ministry begins after we have we come to the temple, the church, for sacred worship and takes shape as we carry out the Good News into the world of our workplaces, homes and communities.  It is after their time of worship that the women go to the tomb to do their work.
 
The three women awaken early.  They start their first day of the week before the noise and clamor of commerce, construction, transportation of goods, and the daily market.  This is the FIRST day of the week.  The women travel to the tomb where they find the stone already rolled away.  Other accounts of this story present the stone as an insurmountable challenge. “How will we remove the stone?” ask the women.
 
We awaken most days with some burden, some heavy thought to be reconciled, managed, dealt with, encountered—or avoided. What might be our anxieties and resentments? A meeting with someone, a task to accomplish?  A responsibility to someone else? A business trip? Pending treatment of a newly-diagnosed disease?
 
Move it aside.  Roll it away from the opening to the tomb?  Jesus is not in there, we find.  He lives in here, in my heart and mind.
 
And Mary weeps when she sees the boulder rolled away and the tomb is empty.
 
We do not know what the meaning of this strange occurrence. Could the story be changing on us?  We know Jesus to be a friend.  We know Jesus died three days ago.  We know Jesus is buried here.
 
Who are the strange people in the tomb?  Who is Judas Iscariot? What secrets are held in the heart of Judas, secrets unknown to me?
 
“Woman, why are you weeping?” the voice asks Mary on this first day of the week, very early in the morning.  The heavy stone has been removed.  The tomb is now vacant. The only burden left is living with the question “Where?” Where have they, the Romans, the Judases, the fiction writers and novelists, the Jews, the pagans, the disciples, the people I live with and work with every day, where have they taken Jesus?
 
“Mary,” the voice calls.  Through our confusion, we hear the calling of our own names.
 
As Jesus requests, Mary goes to her closest friends and begins telling a story – an astounding, earth-shattering, soul-wrenching story.  For two thousand years the story has been told person-to-person, town-to-town.  Sometimes the details change with a new culture offering a new slant or interpretation.  But the basic truth of the story stays the same because you and I and the disciples and anyone else in history had nothing to do with it.  This resurrection is God’s miracle.
 
“I have seen the Lord,” Mary says through her fear, excitement and astonishment.  “I have seen the Lord.”
 
We arrive on this Resurrection day and walk through the red doors of a church sacred to us, a place breathing the prayers from almost a hundred years past.  This is the first day of the week.  The week has begun.  We bring perhaps heavy concerns that must be managed.  And we find the stone is gone.
 
This is astounding news! Before we can catch our collective breath, we hear the calling of our names by the One who is indeed alive. Our hearts aflutter, we sense that we now are different, changed, for, once again, we are an Easter people.  And we have a story to tell.
 
Alleluia, The Lord has risen.
The Lord has risen, indeed.  Alleluia.
 
Amen.