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The longest walk we ever take is the walk away from the grave -- feeling as if the world has come to an end –thinking about what used to be, and what might have been, after burying our dreams and hopes and all that was good about life – knowing it is over, done, finished, the end, and there is nothing you can do about it. To walk away – back toward friends who cannot understand and to a world that hardly cares. It is the longest walk and the saddest day, and sometimes the willingness to walk away is just not there.
Paul Laurence Dunbar was a gifted poet and publisher, born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1872, to parents who had escaped from slavery.
His parents instilled in him a love of learning and history. By 1900 his reputation as a writer and publisher carried him to Washington, DC, where he worked for the Library of Congress. 1900 was also the year that he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He died from the disease in 1904. He was thirty-three years old.
When he died, his mother left his room exactly as it was on the day of his death. On the desk of this brilliant man was his final poem, handwritten on a paper pad. After his mother’s death, friends discovered that because she had made his room into a shrine and not moved anything, the sun had bleached the ink in which the poem was written until it was invisible. Paul Laurence Dunbar's last poem had been lost forever.
Sometimes, in the fight to hold on to a life that was, we lose much of life as it is now, and will be in the future.
Mary Magdalene came to the tomb “while it was still dark.” She didn’t come with the any of the other women, or with spices to finish preparing Jesus’ body for burial. She came alone for one purpose, to be as close as possible to a life that was – to sit in the shrine and touch the stone, as she fights to hold onto everything it kept contained.
When she discovers the stone removed and all that it kept contained gone, her grief is pushed to the breaking point – the strength of her “weeping” is such that she is completely unphased by the sight of “two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet,” who speak to her. She believes that human beings are responsible for taking Jesus’ body. The presence of the angels is a sign for her that something greater has happened, but her ties to the past and her grief keep her from fully understanding and embracing what she is seeing.
How many of you have seen “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark”? What did the Ark look like? Specifically, do you remember what the lid of the Ark of the Covenant looked like? Spielberg’s designers took the look of the Ark in the movie straight from the description given in Scripture – Two winged creatures – Cherubim – angels – sitting on each end of the lid facing each other. The space between them was called “the mercy seat” – the “footstool of God” – and the place where the High Priest of the Temple would offer the atoning sacrifice for the people’s sin by sprinkling it with the blood of the sacrifice.
The angel’s presence transforms the empty tomb into the ark of the New Covenant – the mercy seat of God through Christ’s offering of Himself on the cross, and the power of Resurrection. It is no longer a cavern filled with death, but with the divine promise that there is no tragedy that God cannot redeem, no dream—even the elusive dream of peace on earth—that God, who raised Jesus from the dead, cannot energize and advance.
Mary Magdalene came to the tomb while it was still dark "but the darkness did not remain. The dawn broke. God's Son had risen. And He appears and breaks through her grief by speaking her name – fulfilling something that was said by Jesus earlier in John’s Gospel – “I am the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep; my sheep know me, and recognize my voice.”
She calls Jesus, “Rabbouni! (“Beloved Teacher)” and he responds by saying “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father.” For years this has been thought to mean, “Don’t touch me”– as if touching the risen Jesus violated some purity code. But that doesn’t make sense, when you consider that Thomas and disciples in the Upper Room are invited to touch Jesus, and he hasn’t ascended to the Father by that point either. I think that “Do not hold on to me” is a response to Mary’s “Rabbouni!” and her desire to “hold” onto the past, and to keep Jesus as her “beloved Teacher,” not letting Him rise to be fully God over her life.
A poem by Annie Johnson Flint, speaks to this Mary in all of us:
Some of us stay at the cross,
some of us wait at the tomb,
Quickened and raised with Christ
yet lingering still in the gloom.
Some of us 'bide at the Passover feast
with Pentecost all unknown,
The triumphs of grace in the heavenly place
that our Lord has made His own.
If the Christ who died had stopped at the cross,
His work had been incomplete.
If the Christ who was buried had stayed in the tomb,
He had only known defeat,
But the way of the cross never stops at the cross
and the way of the tomb leads on
To victorious grace in the heavenly place
where the risen Lord has gone.
Author and playwright, Victor Hugo once put it like this, "For half a century I have been writing my thoughts in prose and verse and history and philosophy . . . But I feel I have not said the thousandth part of what is in me. When I go down to the grave I can say, I have finished my day's work,' but I cannot say, I have finished my life.' My day's work will begin again the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley; it is a thoroughfare. It closes on the twilight; it opens on the dawn."
Easter is more than the celebration on a particular day, and of peculiar event. Easter is a way of being. We are invited by God to “resurrection living” -- moving beyond our losses and our fears – not gripping so tightly our family concerns -- our problems at work -- the anxiety over our health and our future, or even the loss of someone we love – to trust that God is fashioning a way out, even where we see no way out – and from that place, celebrate the promise that a new world is unfolding.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., used to tell the story of Sister Pollard, a seventy-year-old African American woman who lived in Montgomery, Alabama during the now famous bus boycott. One day, after walking significant distances daily for several months, Sister Pollard was asked if she wanted a ride. When she answered, “No,” the person responded, “But aren’t you tired?” To which Sister Pollard answered, “My feets is tired, but my soul is rested.”
A “rested” soul is the sign, and the gift, of resurrected living.”
We will continue to face all kinds of challenges and struggles along the way; our feet will be tired, but our spirits will be strengthened through the presence of the risen Christ. This is the good news we celebrate this Easter morning
Fr. Alton Plummer's Sermon for Easter Sunday, 2012
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"Welcome to Grace!"
