Scott Meador First UMC John 20:1-18 April 16, 2017
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Scott Meador First UMC John 20:1-18 April 16, 2017 “Everything Changed” I One of the biggest television shows of the 1980’s and 1990’s was Dallas. The show focused on the comings and goings of the powerful Ewing family in Dallas, Texas, a wealthy family in the oil and cattle-ranching business. Now one of the features the show became known for was their famous cliffhangers to end a season. The biggest cliffhanger came at the end of the third season in 1980. This was the cliffhanger in which J.R. Ewing, played by Larry Hagman, was shot. Remember the focus on “Who Shot JR?” During the summer of 1980 my maternal grandmother came to visit our family. She was from Texas and my mother got tickets for her and my grandmother to attend the Phil Donahue show, which was filmed in Chicago, where we lived. Anyway, during a commercial break, Phil Donahue learned an audience member was member was from Texas. He quickly asked my grandmother, “Who Shot JR?” as if my grandmother knew because she was from Texas. Needless to say, “Who Shot JR?” was a major topic of conversation. Well, another cliffhanger occurred at the end of ninth season. Bobby, played by Patrick Duffy, had died at the end of the show 1984-85 season after being run down in a car. Duffy had chosen to leave the series, but with this career failing to take off and Dallas wanting it’s moral compass back, his return was plotted by writers. In the final episode of the following season Bobby’s wife, Pam, played by Victoria Principal, who been married during his absence, wakes up in bed to hear a shower running. Expecting to see her new husband, Mark, she instead discovers the person in her bathroom is Bobby. At the start of 1986-87 season, it was revealed the whole of the previous year’s events, including Bobby’s accident and subsequent death, as well as everything else that happened on the show for the intervening twelve months, were all a figment of Pam’s imagination. It was all a bad dream! II Now I lift up all of this because Mary Magdalene wakes on the Third Day, and she is hoping the events of the last couple of days have been a bad dream! She is hoping everything will return to the way it was once was. On Friday, Jesus had been betrayed by Judas in the Garden of Gethsemane, tried and labeled guilty by the Sanhedrin, brought to Pontius Pilate, and told to carry an ugly cross to Calvary. On Friday afternoon, he would speak his final words and die. It was very sad and dark. Well, it is now the Third Day, the Second Day had been the Sabbath Day. Nothing happens on the Sabbath. But, on the Third Day, Mary has work to do. She needs to anoint the body of Jesus for burial. And as she wakes and makes her way to the tomb in the early hours of the morning, she is hoping the death of Jesus had been a bad dream. She is hoping he will be awake and alive. She is hoping that somehow, someway, everything will go back to the way it once way. 1 Well, eventually she makes it to the tomb. It had to have been a very difficult walk. She quickly finds out that not only is Jesus not around, but his body has been taken away. Hoping for some good news, the news is now worse than she ever could have imagined. Finding the empty tomb, Mary flees to get Peter and John. She knows right where to find them. Because on the Sabbath Day just ended, these followers, who have spent months together on the road with Jesus and one another, apparently have slowly reconvened, not really knowing where else to go. They’ve faced one another with guilt and confusion and sheer terror, this group where so few of them stayed loyal to Jesus, and they’ve slowly started talking it through, over and over and over, trying to understand, trying to grapple with their utter panic they will be the next accused. Peter and John come to the garden, investigate and leave again. Peter is filled with guilt and not really sure what to make of it all. John, the youngest disciple, becomes a quick believer. But Mary won’t leave, because she has still received no answer that satisfies her. Jesus’s body is still missing, so she keeps asking her questions, “Where is the body? Where have they laid him?” She is filled with the grief and darkness and sadness and fear. This is an extremely difficult time. In a matter of moments though, she will encounter someone she assumes is the gardener. She will ask this person if he knows anything about the body of Jesus. She will soon learn this gardener is indeed Jesus. She will make this realization when Jesus says, “Mary.” She just needed to hear her name. She now realizes Jesus is alive. This is tremendous! This is the good news of Easter! Seeing that Jesus has come back to life though, she wants things to go back to the way things were. But Jesus makes it clear, I have come back to life, but things will be different now. Jesus says, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” So Mary goes and shares the news. With our Lord’s resurrection, people do not need to live in darkness, new life has come. This is very good news. It’s just that life will just be different from now on. There will be some work to do. The church needs to be established! III In many ways, I think we connect with Mary Magdalene on Easter Sunday. With our Lord’s resurrection, we realize we don’t need to live in darkness. We have new life. We don’t need to be consumed with grief and darkness and sadness and fear. Life Mary too though, we tend to want things to go back to the way they were. Easter brings new life, it’s just that this new life is often something different than we previously experienced. For so many of us, when we talk about resurrection, we tend to talk about resuscitation instead. The two are different. Resuscitation means bringing back to life, returning life to the way it was. Resurrection means a whole new life, a different life. I wonder if many times what we really want is resuscitation. We want God to play like a broken record, returning things to the way they were . same life, relationships, and possessions we had before. I think is what Mary Magdalene wanted. Throughout the Lenten season, we have spent time looking at a book by Rob Fuquay, entitled, The God We Can Know. In the book, Fuquay writes about the difference between resurrection and resuscitation that many of us pastors can relate to. 2 He writes about a time he arrived as pastor in a church appointment in North Carolina. After being in the community a few months, he stopped by the bank to make a deposit. He hadn’t met the teller so he introduced himself. He said he was the new pastor at the church just down the street. The teller at the bank looked up and said in a rather somber tone, “Oh, you’re him.” He wondered how he was to respond to that! She then continued, “I used to go to that church.” Pastor Fuquay responded back, “Well, I hope you come back.” She said, “Can’t do it. I liked the former pastor too much. He was wonderful.” Then she looked at him and said, “No one could ever replace him.” The pastor quickly needed to reassure himself not to take this personally. He then replied back, “You are exactly right! No one can replace your former pastor. No one ever will. But I hope you will be open to the possibility, whether in this church or somewhere else, that God can bless you as much through another pastor as your former one.” Fuquay commented in the book that the woman never returned to that church, but he hoped she went on to discover a community of faith and pastoral leadership that made her feel as blessed in a new chapter of life as she did in an old one. What a disappointing faith it would be to believe God is not able to do today or tomorrow what God did yesterday. What a sad condition to feel God’s best blessings have already been dispensed, that God’s blessing power has diminished. It’s so easy to crave resuscitation, isn’t it? To want things the way they used to be? To want God to replace a pastor, a church, a spouse, a friend, a job, or a home? That’s what Mary Magdalene wanted. But Jesus said, “I am the Resurrection and the Life.” He doesn’t just restore. He brings new life, something different and better than ever before. Death takes away. Death forever changes things. That’s what death does, but here’s what death cannot do, death cannot give a future. Death cannot create. Death cannot do a new thing. Only the Great “I Am” can do that.