A SERMON FROM ST. MARK’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH

NEW CANAAN, CONNECTICUT

Break on Through to the Other Side

The Reverend Peter F. Walsh Day of the Resurrection: Easter Day 2018

These words are spoken in the name of the one who walked out of the tomb and who lives eternally together as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Ringside Seat Two stations came in strongly on my AM radio, I had a ringside seat for the 1960’s. I was a boy, WROW that played Lawrence Welk, and too young to participate, but old enough to WTRY, Troy played top 40, plus a smattering of know what was going on. Crazy times. the harder edged music: The Foundation’s Build me Up Buttercup and Jimmy Hendrix’s Purple Haze. The Vietnam war raged to the comforting voice of Walter Cronkite on the evening news. Martin 1967 Luther King marched with strength. He had a 1967 was a big year for me. I was eight. It was beautiful dream, and he was shot for it. I stayed the summer of love. I spent a fortune of nickels up past my bedtime, in my PJ’s and lay on the on a complete collection of baseball cards. Carl living room rug, staring into our 9” black and Yastrzemski of the Boston Red Sox won the white TV as two astronauts with the coolest Triple Crown. I bought a Cowsills album. astronaut names, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, landed on the moon. Longhaired hippie The Doors freaks of the love generation rebelled against Jim Morrison of The Doors came blasting their parents in San Francisco and in my through the mono speaker of my little radio. It hometown. While all this was unfolding I was scary music with a great beat. Even as a kid watched Wide World of Sports, The Dick Van Dyke I knew The Doors got their name from Aldous Show and I love Lucy. Huxley’s book, The Doors of Perception. It was Huxley’s exploration of whether drugs could Soundtrack of the 60’s bring self-transcendence. In the end, Huxley Upstairs in my bedroom, the soundtrack of the concluded they could not, but that message 60’s grooved itself into my psyche like the never got through. tracks on the albums I played. I took the family record player and put it in my room. It had a Break on Through (to the other side) spindle and arm and three speeds. The first song on The Doors first album was Break on through (to the other side). I thought the I knew every skip and scratch on my sibling’s beginning sounded a cross between the thwack, albums: The Beatles, Herman’s Hermits, The thwack of helicopter blades in Viet Nam and a Rolling Stone’s Ruby Tuesday, Led Zeppelin, chugging train. Jim Morrison proclaimed with Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow, and Simon great ferocity the psychedelic way. and Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits. I spun my 45’s. I still think the Beatle’s Hey Jude on Side A and Last week I had a meaningful conversation with Revolution of Side B was the greatest 45 of all Dave Marsh, the renowned rock critic (who time. may well be sitting next to you this morning). We were talking about The Doors, psychedelic rock and Van Morrison’s transcendent blues. Dave said a profound thing to me: “The desire empty. Mary does what we all would do. She was good but the map was bad.” What I heard goes to get help. Peter and John and Mary in that was that the desire for transformation return to the tomb. It is empty. Peter, “saw the and transcendence is a holy desire implanted in linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that us by God, but drugs are assuredly not the path. had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen Drugs are the wrong map. They killed Jim wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself.” Morrison. The mystics of the Church, and in Peter and John leave; Mary stays. She weeps. fact the mystics of every religious tradition, have spoken about the God-given, holy desire to lift Two Angels the veil to see into the spiritual realm – to break She bends over and looks back into the tomb. on through to the other side. There are two angels in there, one at the head and one at the foot of where Jesus once lay. She Jesus Breaks on Through to the Other Side does not recognize them as angels. They do not In Resurrection, Jesus breaks on through to the say, “We are angels from the heavenly realm, other side. He steps out of tomb and into the messengers from God.” She is grieving. She is spiritual realm. not seeing with spiritual eyes.

Music…Rock Seeing, but not recognizing Today we rock because the rock has been Not only does Mary not recognize the angels as removed and the tomb is empty. The Easter angels, she does not recognize Jesus as Jesus. hymnody Jesus Christ has risen today, That Easter She turns back from looking into the cave, and Day when Joy was bright, and Christ is alive, let Jesus is there in front of her. She does not Christians sing is our “break on through (to the recognize him. She does not recognize his other side)” music. This is our soul music voice. She thinks he is the gardener. because it is about the life of our souls. The Spiritualization of Jesus’ Body There is an irony here. If you think that the Why does Mary does not recognize him? Jesus stuff of psychedelic rock is wild, it is nothing is resurrected, not resuscitated. Resuscitated is compared to Jesus. It is nothing compared to when you die and come back to life in the same Mary Magdalene. Ironically, the wild story is not body. We saw this with Jesus’ raising Lazarus of psychedelic rock and roll. It is in the Bible. Bethany. Jesus, on the other hand, is resurrected. He is entering more deeply into the Today we get a ringside seat. The veil is lifted. spiritual realm. He is being elevated. We see into the eternal. What do we see? Jesus’ Circular Spiritual Life Stumbling On the Greatest Spiritual Event To get a grasp of what is happening here, we We see that Mary Magdalene stumbles on the need to remember the context. Jesus’ spiritual greatest spiritual event in the history of life is circular. He comes from God and returns humanity, and that she has no idea what is to God: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word going on. No one tells her that she is about to was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the see spiritual beings on earth. beginning with God…

The Story At Christmas, we celebrate his coming, as John In the pre-dawn darkness, Mary goes to Jesus’ says: and the Word became flesh. grave. His grave is a cave with a cylindrical rock rolled in front of it. To Mary’s shock, the stone Then, as John says, [he] lived among us, and we have has been rolled back and the tomb is empty. seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of Imagine that for a moment. It would be like grace and truth. going to your best friend’s grave and finding it

Now at Easter we are celebrating his return. In Jesus is risen and still rising. To use Bede John’s Gospel, the crucifixion, the resurrection, Griffith’s way of describing our spiritual lives, and the ascension are all part of one movement: Jesus’ subtle body becomes the spiritual body in Jesus’ returning to God. This is what Mary the Ascension. This is something that we have stumbles upon, and this is what we see from not made enough of in our tradition. At the our ringside seats. Ascension, the material body becomes fully spiritual; Jesus is fully integrated into the Jesus’s Changing Body spiritual realm. Jesus looks different to Mary, because he is different. He is being spiritualized. In the West, The Proclamation is Bold, the Insights Profound we speak of the triad of mind, body, and soul. The proclamation is bold: Jesus lives and so Jesus’s resurrected body is sometimes known as shall we. Jesus is indestructible. You cannot kill a “glorified” body. In the East, they speak of him. You can kill his body, but you cannot kill another triad, of three bodies in one – material, his Spirit, just as you cannot kill God’s Spirit or subtle, and spiritual. Bede Griffith, the Oxford your spirit. Don, Benedictine monk, and theologian who moved to India to start a Christian ashram, In the resurrection, Mary Magdalene sees the wrote much about what happens to Jesus as he truth that we so often miss: We are not human breaks on the through to the other side. Griffith beings with spiritual lives. We are spiritual says that Jesus’ physical body has been beings with human lives. destroyed. In the resurrection, his subtle body is manifested. It has form and particularity. Jesus Jesus says to Mary, “go to my brothers…” Then is not a ghost. later at the Ascension in the Gospel according to Matthew, he says, “Go and make disciples.” Calls her by name With this “Go-Go” directive, Jesus is inviting In one of the most poignant pieces of scripture, the disciples and all of us into his movement. Jesus calls Mary by her name. With this he Our faith does not look back to a guru or a opens her spiritual mind. She recognizes him prophet. It looks forward to the Son of God and calls him “Rabbouni.” Rabbouni is more who brings us with him. than Rabbi or Teacher. It includes the awareness of a Godly presence. Jesus is the door. Jesus is the door. He even says it in John’s Do not cling to me Gospel. “I am the door.” Jesus is the door of Then Jesus says to Mary, “Do not hold on to perception. If you want to know what is going me.” I prefer the older translation, “Do not on the other side, look at Jesus. cling to me,” which is ripe with other implications. Whatever spiritual state Jesus is in, We, too, shall break on through to the other he does not want his body touched. But note side. that later he says to Thomas, “touch me, put The Resurrection has cosmic consequences. your fingers in my wounds.” Whatever spiritual We, too, shall break on through to the other state Jesus is in, it is one we do not know well. side. Through the door of Jesus, you and me and all of creation will break on through to the Risen and Still Rising other side and live in spiritual union and Then Jesus said, “I have not yet ascended to the communion with “your God and my God.” Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, Now that is something that can really blow your to my God and your God.’” mind.

Amen.