Without Our Seeing--March 25, 2020
"When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome brought spices, so that they might go and anoint [Jesus' body]. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, 'Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?' When they looked up , they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, 'Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you'." [Mark 16:1-7]
I know the timing is all wrong. I know we are two and a half weeks before the calendar calls it Easter, and we aren't supposed to be to this part of the story yet. I know that we are not only wading into the heaviest part of this season called Lent, but also some of the worst days of the COVID-19 outbreak here in the United States. Schools are extending how long they are closed for. Numbers of confirmed cases are climbing, just as the experts told us they would. And for church folks, we are staring at the increasing likelihood of not being gathered together with everybody for Easter Sunday. It doesn't feel like a celebration, and it doesn't feel like the right time for talking about Jesus rising from the dead.
But... that's exactly the point.
Nobody was ready for it when Jesus actually rose from the dead, two millennia ago, either. Nobody was expecting it (well, maybe Jesus), certainly not Jesus' closest disciples or the women who were such dear friends of his that they came to anoint his body for burial. Nobody had ordered lilies and hyacinths. No one had practiced a choir anthem. And nobody had even gotten a special outfit to wear for the occasion. My goodness, the women didn't even have a plan figured out for how they were going to roll the stone away from the entrance to the tomb, and that was when they were expecting just to find a corpse inside it! Nobody was planning a celebration on that day of resurrection--and yet, it happened, all the same.
This is the beautiful, blessed, frustrating, wonderful secret of the God we meet in Jesus: God doesn't need our permission, our preparation, or even our awareness first in order to save and redeem and resurrect. Jesus has risen before anybody else shows up on the scene on that Resurrection morning, and at least as Mark tells it, Jesus doesn't even hang around outside the tomb long enough to be sighted by the handful of women who were there. There isn't a voice or a flash of light or even so much as the fringe of his garment to grab onto--only the promise that he is off to the next adventure and will catch up with his people when they join him on the next mission. He is, so to speak, loose in the world.
And from there--from that completely bonkers, totally unrehearsed scene with a handful of very confused women outside the city limits of Jerusalem--everything changes. Or maybe to be more accurate about it, from that moment, it becomes clear that everything already has changed. The resurrection has already happened while our heads were turned the other way. The tomb is emptied before the women get there. The stone has already been rolled away before a crowd has a chance to gather. That's how it was in the beginning, and the lack of a packed house didn't stop Jesus from rising.
I was listening to a magician give an interview on the radio not long ago. And when the interviewers asked her for some hint about the secret to a card trick she was famous for, the illusionist said modestly, "Let's just say that the trick is already done before the audience member pulls the card out of their pocket." I love that elegant way of describing it. Maybe that's the wonder of the resurrection story: God has accomplished it and slipped Jesus out of the grave before we, like the hapless mark plucked out of the audience, realize what has already happened. We are late to the party and only realize dimly, slowly, what has occurred when our eyes were turned in the wrong direction.
In other words, God doesn't need us to be there for the resurrection to happen. Jesus is already alive again, risen from the dead, and out the door to kick up some more holy troublemaking by the time we realize the grave is empty and death has been pickpocketed by a homeless rabbi. We don't have to be there to make him come back to life. Just the opposite: his sneaky resurrection is what brings us to life out of our deathliness.
I want to ask you to hold that thought in your head these days. I want to ask you now to remember that our presence or absence doesn't bring Jesus back from the dead--God doesn't need us to be there to witness it in order for Christ to rise from the grave. We are not audience members at a production of Peter Pan, and Tinker Bell does not need us to clap hard enough and declare that we believe in pixies to revive her from drinking the poison. The resurrection is accomplished for us, not by us, and that means it is a done deal without a big crowd, a loud organ voluntary, and even without a sermon. We can't make it happen more by our showing up, and we can't prevent it from happening by not being there. After all, the miraculous moment of resuscitation had come and gone by the time the women showed up at sunrise. Everything in the past 2,000 years has been basking in the afterglow of a moment we weren't there for, and for which God did not our presence to make it happen.
It may be that we Christians have the chance to gather physically together come Easter Sunday yet. But it is also increasingly likely that it will not be a wise or loving decision to do that, if it comes at the cost of putting millions of neighbors' health at risk. But here's the thing: Jesus is already risen, and he was even already risen by the time Mary and company got up to the borrowed tomb on the first day of the week. The trick is already done by the time the card is pulled out of the pocket. All that falls to us to do is to let it sink in, and then in awe-filled joy to go tell the next small group of people the news... and the next... and the next. The rest of the disciples were in a group of ten or less when they found out that Jesus was alive again, too, for that matter. Maybe what we need this year is the reminder that Jesus' resurrection, like his birth, could not be scripted or pinned down, but broke loose from every expectation and assumption of "how it is supposed to go." And maybe what we need for the rest of our lives is the urgent and joyful fire that comes from telling other people about the God who raises the dead with or without anybody else's permission or awareness. Maybe all the rest of our lives can be spent, not trying to get people to do something to get themselves "saved," but rather to see that they have been redeemed from death to life already by Christ's own resurrection when they weren't even paying attention.
Yeah, I could see spending the rest of my life doing that. I wouldn't even need a lily or an Easter basket to do it.
For whatever comes in two and a half weeks, let's be clear that Jesus is already risen, and is already onto the next adventure in holy troublemaking. Then we'll know our job isn't to wait around by the tomb to mark the site, but to go to the places where he's promised to show up... and let's join him there.
Lord Jesus, regardless of our timing or planning or expectations, be your own risen self, loose in the world, wherever you will. Just give us the grace to catch up with you wherever else you lead us.
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