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The Womb and the Tomb God, Empty Places, and You

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The Womb and the Tomb God, Empty Places, and You A SERMON FROM ST. MARK’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH NEW CANAAN, CONNECTICUT THE WOMB AND THE TOMB GOD, EMPTY PLACES, AND YOU The Reverend Anne F. C. Richards Easter Day ~ March 31, 2013 John 20:1-18 Happy Easter and welcome to The Virgin Mary had an empty womb. everyone! Thank you for coming to St. As she told the angel, “I have never Mark’s to celebrate the resurrection of known a man.” But God sent the Spirit our Lord. and Jesus was conceived. It caused a great scandal. Because something The longer I am a Christian, the more I appeared where it was not supposed to realize how beautiful Christianity appear: a baby in the womb of a virgin. is.…and how difficult it is to An empty place began to fill with life. understand. This may be one of the reasons tons of people don’t consider The other empty place was the tomb. themselves “religious” anymore: They Something different happened there. just don’t get it. As the famous Instead of something appearing where evangelist Dwight Moody said, “Most it is not supposed to appear, at the people know just enough about religion resurrection something disappears that to make themselves miserable.” is not supposed to disappear. A corpse is supposed to stay put in the grave. And who can blame them? Christianity But at dawn on Easter, Jesus’ corpse is is not for dummies. It’s difficult to not found in the grave. There is, understand, but if you do understand it, instead, an empty space. And somehow then life makes sense. Life coheres in a that empty space is filled with life. beautiful way. In these two empty places lies the There are two great mysteries at the meaning of Christianity. heart of our faith: the womb and the tomb. The mystery has to do with these Many of you were here on Palm two empty places, and what God does Sunday, when we read the narrative of with them. Jesus’ passion. It is a very convicting thing to hear, that narrative, especially since we all took the part of the crowd 1 and shouted “Crucify him! Crucify of the dead, where everyone who him!” You can’t leave a Palm Sunday chooses to be separated from God gets service and not realize your sinfulness. to go, not because they’re sent there by We have to sit with it for the week that God, but because that’s where they follows. Then, of course, we get to already have been, in life. It just return on Easter and hear about the continues. We get what we want. God resurrection, which seems to be God’s is not going to force us to be with God, answer to our sinfulness. It’s as if God now or later. says to us, “You tried to take death in your hands and hold your own against I wish it weren’t the case, but to me, and my answer to that is this: An understand what happened to Jesus on empty tomb, and my Son walking in a Easter as a reality for us, we need to garden, talking with a friend.” recognize the degree to which we also have gone to hell. Here’s the big myth: Have you ever noticed how often Jesus that hell is where you go after death if tried to tell us that the spiritual life is you are guilty of big bad things and you not really about sin? Over and over in haven’t repented. I guess so. But hell is, the gospel stories, people come to Jesus I think, mostly here on earth. It’s the worried about their imperfections and place of emptiness and absence, a non- misdeeds and their guilt, and Jesus place, a no-place where there is nothing basically says, “Why are you people except hopelessness, which is what always talking to me about sin? death really is. It is where we are when Religion is not about your compulsive we are afraid of love and life. And Jesus desire for perfection and your need to takes all this no-thingness and no- be blameless. Religion is about letting placeness and no-hopeness in his hands God put life in an empty place. And and he pulls it back up into life. He is that empty place is you.” so gracious that he resurrects us even before he himself is resurrected. God What did you all do yesterday? Holy can’t even keep up with him! Saturday is to Easter what Christmas Eve is to Christmas Day….we’re all As post-modern Christians, I think we rushing around, getting ready, making need to update our medieval preparations, cooking, shopping, plus understanding of our relationship with fitting in all the regular stuff, the sports, God. Of course we need to the kids, the meetings. And so Holy acknowledge our individual sinfulness. Saturday is often just the space we fill But I think we also need to begin to see between Good Friday and Easter Day. the ways in which we have created and capitulated to a more subtle kind of Well, I don’t mean to wreck your sinfulness, by which I mean a culture of Easter, but on Holy Saturday Jesus emptiness absence, a culture of went to hell. He descended to the place technology and consumerism that 2 separates us from each other and from filling our absence with God’s God and that sucks out our souls. We presence. are so linked in we’re locked out. We are trying so hard to be who we think That’s why every Biblical account of we are we don’t listen to who God is the resurrection is a story about people. trying to make us. We are so addicted It’s a story about an absence becoming to megabytes and messages and multi- a presence. Mary finds Jesus in a tasking that we are losing the ability to garden. A man, a woman, and a garden. be present to ourselves, to be present Remind you of anything? Of course, to life and to each other, to be present the Garden of Eden! And here it is to God. again, resurrected! And instead of a man and a woman disconnecting from We are not i-phones. We are not work each other and God and having to machines. We are not grades factories. leave the garden so that it becomes a We are not shopping carts. place of absence, here we see Jesus and Mary coming back together and filling We are fragile creatures, each of us with the garden with presence. It’s a new an enormous space in us filled with beginning for the human race. And it goodness and love. From the beginning happens when they look up and see of time, that goodness and love has each other and behold the life of God been threatened by our disobedience to in each other. Jesus says, “Mary!” and our own humanity. It is this goodness Mary responds, “Teacher!” and love that Jesus went to hell to resurrect. And he resurrected it with his And so yes, the resurrection was an presence. event in time. God pulled Jesus up from death. But the resurrection was I bet you have noticed that the also a disclosure of a reality…which is resurrection is not a witnessed event. that beginning with Jesus, God is The gospels have no stories about always resurrecting life itself. So you exactly how it happened. The writer of could say that resurrection lies in the John’s gospel could easily have had the DNA of the cosmos. It is our destiny, angels who speak to Mary tell her not only at the end of time when God details about it. But he didn’t. The makes all things right, but now. resurrection is not witnessed because it Because as humans and as children of can’t be witnessed. Conception and God, we are all walking relationships. resurrection are both invisible, because Any life that’s worth living is going to they are both relational. Resurrection is be a life with others and for others. what God did with Jesus and it’s what And to have that kind of life, we are God does within us and among us. going to have to be like Jesus and Mary. Resurrection is always about God We are going to have to look up from our password-protected private hells, 3 from whatever keeps us severed from each other, from our i-pads and our ellipticals, and we are going to have to really see each other and recognize each other and be present to each other and behold the life of God in each other. Then we will know that we are not droids. We are human beings, and we will have the grace really to live. That is God’s answer to every empty place, including the ones in us. And so the story of Jesus begins with an empty place, and it ends with an empty place. The womb and the tomb. Something appears where it’s not supposed to appear. Something disappears when it’s not supposed to disappear. God works with emptiness to make a new beginning. The resurrection is always happening. It’s the secret engine at the heart of the universe. Nothing can stop it. Ever. So please….silence your electronic devices, or you won’t be able to hear it: “Mary!......Teacher!” Amen.
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