Resurrection of the
Lord/ 8th April 2012
In
John’s Gospel we begin Easter morning in the dark. While it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went
to the tomb. We don’t know why. It’s not like she was expecting resurrection
and wanted to be the first to see; she wasn’t expecting the stone rolled away, wasn’t
expecting an empty tomb. Full of sorrow,
maybe unable to sleep, she went to the tomb.
Why? The other Gospels tell us
that the women went with spices to anoint and embalm his body. Here, Mary Magdalene goes alone. Maybe she just
wanted to be close to his body, to what was left of his presence. She goes to the tomb with love mixed with
grief. This might sound morbid, but
there is a comfort, I know, in being able to go to the grave of a loved one, to
just sit there, to pray, to think, to remember.
But then she discovers that the body
of the man she loved is now missing.
She’s lost her Lord not once, but twice, yielding a double-grief. John and Peter
have been and gone, verifying the fact that the body was indeed missing, they
go home and leave Mary all alone. “Mary stood weeping outside the tomb,” John
tells us. It’s a painful, poignant
scene, isn’t it? Imagine how that must have felt for her? Abandoned.
Alone. Lost. Confused. She notices two angels sitting where Jesus’
body had been, at the foot and at the head.
“Woman, why are you weeping?” they ask.
“Because they have taken away my Lord and I don’t know where they have
placed him.” She turns and notices a man
there, thinking he is the gardener. But
she doesn’t really see him. Her mind,
her sight, her thoughts are all clouded by grief.
That’s what grief does. That’s what fear and sorrow and sadness can
do. They muddy our judgment, falsify
what we say, hinder our understanding, blind us to what’s happening right in
front of our eyes.
In a dizzying moment like this we
naturally look to hold on to something, something to grasp that’s solid and
sure, something known and rational – even if it might be wrong. John tells us the tomb is in a garden. Mary is in a garden. So Mary expects to see a gardener. Who else would be there? That’s whom she sees. It’s rational – but she’s wrong.
I’m intentionally honing in on this moment
in the story because I think it’s telling.
My hunch is that all of us have had moments, like Mary, when our judgment
and assessment in times of crisis are distorted, even wrong. We think we’re being rational, but it just
might be the rational that stands in the way of allowing us to see what’s
really going on. Facing dead men walking
and then talking constitutes a time of crisis, at least to me. The skeptic in
all of us starts to surface and wonders, how can this be? We turn to the rational as a kind of default
defense mode. In a scientific, skeptical
(some might say, jaded) age like ours, our default mode is reason – we ask what’s reasonable, what’s possible within the scope
of reason. Our rational default mode is
often a defense against the
possibility that we might not fully understand what’s going on and that scares
us.
Now don’t get me wrong, our rational
mind is useful and good. Reason as a
method of knowing has taken us far – and we probably need more of it in some
areas of our lives. Yes, reason has
taken us far, no doubt, but I wonder if it has taken us far enough?
There
are aspects of reality that cannot be known through reason. There’s a lot that goes on in this universe
and within our hearts that reason doesn’t understand, such as why we are blown
away by the beautiful – whether it’s in nature on such a glorious day like
today, or on a canvass, or in the human soul; why are we are rendered
speechless by music or the power of words or when both are combined in the
singing of a hymn; or why we are overwhelmed by the presence of God in
stillness or in prayer; or why we smile and laugh when we see a baby smiling or
laughing; or why we cry inconsolably when we’re lost in grief. Reason is not helpful in these moments.
Novelist
and essayist David James Duncan says this way of talking about human experience
sounds foolish, because it is foolish – “to unadorned reason.” But he has come to this conclusion: “from boyhood through manhood,” he writes,
“it has been my experience that trying to grasp an insight, a deep mystery, a
transrational experience, or any act of love via reason alone is rather like
trying to play a guitar with one’s buttocks. Our powers of reason, like our buttocks, are
an invaluable tool. But not for the
purpose of hearing ‘vast pulsating harmonies’ in nature when we listen to the
sounds of the woods.”[1] Philosopher and economist, E. F. Schumacher
put it like this, “Nothing can be perceived without an appropriate organ of
perception.”[2]
So tell me, what kind of organ is
needed to recognize resurrection? That’s
the question. What is required for the
transfiguration of perception? What will
remove the scales from our eyes and allow us to see? What will speak to us in the midst of fear
and grief and pain and sorrow? The
rational mind will get us only so far.
The
contemporary neuroscientist and psychiatrist, Iain McGilchrist, argues
convincingly in his book, The Master and His
Emissary: The Divided Brain and the
Making of the Western World, that for the last several hundred years we
have favored the rational side of our brains, primarily to aid evolution and
progress, however this has been done at the expense of our emotional,
intuitive, feeling sides.[3]
We can discover a lot about the world
using the rational; to use only that part, however, we cut ourselves off from the
part that honors mystery and the sacred. We’re divided creatures, cut off from
what our souls are really searching for. There’s a marvelous animated summary
of his views that you can find on YouTube,
which I recommend. It’s from a speech
Gilchrist gave summarizing these ideas.
In that speech, he closes with this remarkable quote from Albert Einstein
(1879-1855): “The intuitive mind is a
sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the
servant but has forgotten the gift.”[4]
What is slowly killing the West is
hyper-rationalism, where we over-intellectualize everything, even the faith,
and see it as a problem to be explained or explained away. The sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) warned
in the last century, “We [Christians] are building an iron cage, and we’re
inside of it, and we’re closing the door.
And the handle is on the outside.”[5]
The solution is not for Christianity to become anti-rational (God knows that’s
already happening with the growth of fundamentalism). The solution might be remembering
there are others ways of knowing. Einstein again is helpful here: “The most beautiful thing we can experience
is the mysterious. It is the source of
all true art and all science. He to whom
this ‘emotion’ is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder, or stand rapt
in awe, is as good as dead. His eyes are
closed.”[6]
So what opens our eyes? What allows us to see? What is this ‘gift’
that bestows life? Who will turn the handle for us and free us from our iron
cages or crack open our tombs?
There’s nothing more mysterious and baffling
and wonderful than love. Not the sentimental or romantic variety, as wonderful
as they are. I’m talking about a deeper,
more profound form, which undergirds every other expression of love in this
mysterious universe. When Mary goes to
the tomb in her grief, it’s really love that sends her there after him – yes,
grief too, but if you stay with grief long enough we discover that often the
emotion that sits underneath it is really love – and it’s love that allows her
to find him and it’s Love-itself that finds her.
It’s
God’s love that turns the handle.
It’s
God’s love that opens our eyes and allows us to see
what reason can’t even begin to
imagine.
It’s
God’s love as pure gift that bestows life, which yields resurrection.
For,
isn’t this ultimately what resurrection is – love seeking love?
The one
she’s looking for is also looking for her, and will not give up until they meet
and they are seen by each other.
Yes, Mary’s love is strong, but not
strong enough to see through her grief and sadness. The gospel’s claim is that
all our searching is matched by an even stronger love who is searching of us. It’s
the kind of love that wants union and reunion with us and will never give up on
this goal, no matter what; a love that never gives up on us. That never quits. That never ends. That’s what resurrection is all about. It’s a story shot through with compassion,
and goodness, and devotion. In John’s
Gospel, Jesus said before he died, words that we heard here in the sanctuary on
Thursday evening: “I will not leave you
orphaned” (John 14:18). I will not abandon you. This is the word our souls need to hear and
know and feel in the depths of our being.
That God will not give up on us or leave us. No matter what we have done, no matter how
terrible we might have been or are, no matter the source of our guilt or shame,
no matter how heavy the grief, or dark the world may appear, nothing can
separate us from God. There are so many
in this world that simply do not know this or believe it’s too good to be true it,
or think they’re beyond redemption or hope.
No one is beyond redemption! No
one is beyond hope! There are people who
have been to hell and back who cannot accept that God is really on their side,
who feel hopeless, orphaned, lost in grief or double-grief and regret. Maybe that’s you.
Then hear this – not with your rational mind – but with
your heart, your soul, and with every cell in your body, hear this word in your
gut: Christ
is Risen. And the one who raised him
from the grave is the same one who in love calls out to you by name and invites
you to come alive and know again – or maybe for the first time – the deep inexorable love of God! A love that’s relentless, tenacious,
unyielding, resolute, it’s determined, unquenchable – inexorable! It will go to
any height or depth or length to show us we are precious and holy in God’s
eyes. This love is unflagging and
steadfast in its desire to be with us, to be near us, to hold us and never let
us go.
The
inexorable love of God has and is and will never stop entering
into death in order to reach
through it to us,
to lay claim to us and hold us;
it enters into all the darkness
of our hearts and the world and
endures
it all and suffers through it in order to assure us that the darkness can never
overwhelm us;
it seeks out every possible way
to bridge the chasm of separation
between us and God and one another,
to pull us back,
to
bring us home.
It never gives up.
It’s forceful and strong,
as scripture says –
“for
love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes
of fire, a raging flame” (Song of Solomon 8:6) – and yet
it’s gentle and tender, all at
the same time,
a love that can push away
boulders and shatter tombs,
and yet rests upon us and lives within
us
with a presence that warms and
assures us
that nothing can separate us from
God.
That’s
what Mary knew. That’s what’s offer to
you and to me. Resurrection. Love seeking love. Christ is risen! Christ is
risen indeed! Alleluia!
Image: K. Kovacs. Anastasis (Resurrection) fresco, Church of St. Savior in Chora, Istanbul, Turkey (May, 2011).
[1] David James Duncan, God Laughs and Plays: Churchless Sermons in Response to the
Preachments of the Fundamentalist Right (Great Barrington, MA: The Triad Institute, 2007), 216. The internal quotation, “vast pulsating
harmonies,” is Duncan’s allusion to Aldo Leopold’s (1887-1948)
mystical-naturalist history, Round River
(1953).
[2] Cited by Duncan, 216.
[3]
Iain
McGilchrist, The Master and his
Emissary: The Divided Brain and the
Making of the Western World (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2010).
[5] The “iron cage” or “shell as
hard as steel” (tahlhartes Gehäuse)
is introduced in Weber’s The Protestant
Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904/5).
[6] Albert Einstein, The World As I See It (Citadel Press,
2001).
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