Welcome to All Saints’! I am really glad you are here to worship with us on this night when we meet again our risen Lord. A part of me wonders what brought you to church tonight. Are you visiting family from out of town? Were you invited? Is someone you love being baptized? Maybe you are anxious to see the new baptismal font in action? I wonder if this is your way of getting out of the chaos of Easter morning services. I imagine a few of you are here because someone dragged you here against your will. Are you here because this is your favorite church service of the year?
Whatever your reason for being here, our risen Lord receives
you all with open arms this night—you who are glad and you who are weary, you
who are excited and you who are indifferent, you who are filled with joy and
you who are filled with despair, and you who are everywhere else and in
between. Our risen Lord wants to meet
you exactly where you are and nowhere else.
Scripture says, “Early on the first day of the week, while
it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had
been removed from the tomb.” The text
does not say why Mary got up before the sun to come to the tomb on that first
day of the week. Maybe she couldn’t sleep
and needed to see again that Jesus really did die. But maybe she still hung onto a glimmer of
hope. Maybe God really will bring Jesus
back from the dead. We can’t know for
sure why Mary came to the tomb that morning except we know that she loved Jesus. The important thing for us to remember
tonight is what happened when she did show up.
Immediately, Mary notices that Jesus is gone. She then runs to tell Peter. In turn, Peter runs to the empty tomb. The beloved disciple passes Peter in a sprint
and wins the race. And ever since the church has held 5ks for fundraisers.
It has always been that way, it is tradition! When the race is over, all three witnesses
stand at the threshold of the tomb, but it is Peter who enters first followed
by the beloved disciple. They don’t
really know what to think and go home. And
then Mary enters the tomb and begins to weep.
If Mary hung onto any hope, that hope is gone now. She believes that someone took Jesus. What other possible explanation is
there? Blinded by her tears, she demands
that the gardener tell her where Jesus is so she can take him somewhere
safe. And this is moment when the risen
Lord is made known to Mary. In her tears
and in her grief, Jesus calls out, “Mary!”
It is true! Jesus
will wipe away every tear from our eyes.
Brushing her tears aside, Mary sees the risen Lord standing right in
front of her and calls out, “Rabbouni!”
Jesus tells her not to hang on to him and instead to go and tell the
disciples what she has seen. She does as
Jesus says and preaches the first sermon in church history saying, “I have seen
the Lord.” Every sermon should be this
simple—I have seen the Lord.
Mary’s witness to the good news is based on her own
experience with the risen Lord. And her
experience is that the risen Lord meets her in her grief and in her tears. Over the next several weeks, we will see how
Jesus meets others. Jesus meets the
disciples in their fear as they huddle behind locked doors. Jesus will meet Thomas in his doubt. Jesus will meet Peter in his guilt. And each time, in different ways, Jesus tells
those whom he encounters “Go and tell others what you have seen.”
Thus, our witness to
the risen Lord does not happen in a vacuum or in the abstract. Like Mary, the risen Lord wants to meet you
exactly where you are in your particular situation even if you think your
particular situation is the last place in the world Jesus would look—as we will
see next Sunday, Jesus can appear through locked doors! The risen Lord knows that we live in a world
where everyone is touched by the depth of loss and despair. And because he knows that loss is all around,
our risen Lord wants to tell us that God’s love is all around. And the way that the world should know this
love is through the preaching and spreading of the gospel in our churches and
in our homes and in our workplaces and wherever people are hungry for good
news.
Tonight we encounter the risen Lord as a community of faith
and as people with our very own story to tell.
Through our own particular encounter with the risen Lord, we know there
is reason to hope. Like Mary, we know
that our tears are not the end of the story.
How do we know? We know because
the risen Lord appeared to Mary and dried her tears. Mary then told Peter and Peter told the other
disciples, and the other disciples told their respective communities, and those
communities told the world. Now it is
our turn to preach. As witnesses of the
risen Lord, we are called out into the world to tell others, “I have seen the
Lord.” So go into the world and preach
your sermon, preach in only the way you know how in both word and deed.
If you tell jokes, tell a joke to someone who is
sad. If you like to have people over to
dinner, invite someone who is lonely over for dinner. If you like to garden, befriend that neighbor
with a black thumb. If you know what it
is like to lose a parent, tell someone who has lost a parent that you know how
badly it hurts. If you know someone who
is having a hard time and you really don’t know what to do or say, just tell
them that you love them and are there for them.
Give them reason to believe that the risen Lord is standing right next
to them in their grief and in their sorrow. Give them a reason to believe that
the risen Lord is showing them a way out of their loss.
The world is hungry for this news. The world is hungry to hear our Savior
calling out, “you who are lonely, you who doubt, you who are ashamed, you who
are lost—I am with you now. I will never
leave you. How can I leave you? I have been raised from the dead.” And now brothers and sisters, you who have
witnessed the risen Lord, preach on!
Alleluia, Christ is risen! The
Lord has risen indeed, Alleluia!
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