April 5, 2015 - Easter Sunday

"Seeing More Than Just the Gardner"

Read: John 20:1-18

There are some things that you have to do alone. No one else can do them for you.

Your birth is your own.

You must breathe for yourself, eat for yourself, and sleep for yourself. And, in all honesty, one must die an earthly death for themselves. If you have faith or not – well, you have to answer that for yourself, too.

Consider, then, the individual and somewhat solitary encounters with the Resurrection that the Gospel of John records. This Gospel tells us that Mary came to the tomb alone. In fact, she came to the tomb while it was still dark. Finding the stone rolled back and the grave empty, she ran to tell the others. Peter and the "Beloved Disciple" started running together, but they reached the tomb separately.

Alone each one looked at the grave. Each one entered alone – saw alone – believed alone.

Mary stayed at the empty tomb and heard with her own ears the words, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?" Thinking that it was only the gardener, she said, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away." Then Jesus called her by name: "Mary," he said.

Sometimes I wish that the Lord would call me by name on Easter morning. And so do many others. The woman who is a widow, who weeps alone; the one who is in prison alone; the one who bears sickness alone; the orphan who is left alone; the many "Thomas' " who doubt alone.

Today we celebrate new life: Especially life that cannot be shut up in a tomb. Today we celebrate together with those like us who find the merger in their own existence with the living Lord. Today we begin a new story – our story.

Frederick Buechner writes:

"It is precisely at such times as this that Jesus is apt to come, into the midst of life at its most real and inescapable time: At suppertime, or walking along a road. This is the element that all the stories about Christ's return to life have in common. Mary waiting at the empty tomb and suddenly turning around to see somebody standing there –someone she thought at first was the gardener.

He never approached from on high, but always in the midst, in the midst of real people, in the midst of real life and the questions that real life asks. Sacred moments of miracle, are often the everyday moments, the moments which, if we do not look with more than our eyes, or listen with more than our ears, reveals only the gardener."

The whole church of Christ is singing of new life on Easter. So in the midst of Easter morning, we too, look and expect to see the miracle of the living Lord.

Today we join our voices and our hearts and celebrate the reality that we, too, have seen the Lord!

Rev. Robert D. Wright