April 16, 2006 - Easter: a comedy in two acts
Easter – Resurrection of the Lord
16 April 2006
John 20.1-18
Easter : a comedy in two acts
© J. Christy Wareham, 2006
I feel for Peter. You have to be fully self possessed to stand the company of your betters. Better people are all around all the time. It’s what Peter must always have had to reckon with. There was always this matter of John, for instance, the disciple “whom Jesus loved.” What was that like to live with, to be not the one Jesus loved, or at least loved not as much.
And now, on Easter morning, there is this footrace to the tomb, and, as if belovedlessness were not enough, John is more fleet of foot, as well. I can relate. I often see Dale Coffey here, for example, whose daughter Maggie we will baptize in just a bit, sprinting up the street on his run after work. Now, I work out every single day, but no loving creator gave me the legs of a thoroughbred to run with. I couldn’t keep up with Dale. If I got a 10-second head start to a tomb a mere block away, he would beat me there—I know that. What must it feel like to be the Presbyterian Jesus loves?
Ask Dale.
But I want to talk about the gospel, a story always in need of telling. Now, people who know me are familiar with my complaints about Hollywood’s low target for quality storytelling, but I have to say that a sitcom might offer the best rendering of the gospel on Easter morning at the tomb, according to John. A little clever dialogue, some sight gags, and a laugh track could go a long way toward giving the feel of this little pack of friends we call disciples. We have, I believe, a comedy in two acts.
In Act One, the beloved gazelle disciple screeches to a halt at the mouth of the tomb, and while he’s reaching for his water bottle, up comes the tortoise Peter, who crawls right in. It had looked to the gazelle a little dark in there with what might be, Mary Magdalene’s report notwithstanding, a body. A little peek in, and the he saw death bands thrown in a pile, but you can never be too sure. In any event, something dead had been in there, which is the sort of situation a skittish gazelle prefers strength in numbers for. A dead body, which may in fact be gone, isn’t going to love him any less for being careful. When Peter doesn’t fly shrieking from the tomb, the beloved disciple takes his chances, and both are inside.
Sure enough, there’s no stink. There’s no lumpy pall. There’s no eerie groaning that bodies sometimes make after a while. No body, sure enough, just a pile of rags. The beloved disciple “saw and believed,” but all he believes, so far is that the body’s gone. A risen life would be something else again.
You imagine The Honeymooners’ Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton—Jackie Gleason and Art Carney. One smarter in his mind than in fact, and the other only smart enough to know he doesn’t get it. The obvious is the most they grasp, and what they try to make of things is usually not the truth of them. If Ralph and Norton were at the tomb, it wouldn’t be much different. They’d look at things, shake their heads, and go back home to Alice and Trixie.
What else can they do? A tomb is not a glass of water. You can’t have a half empty tomb, or a half full one. You can’t change it with an optimistic attitude. A tomb with a body is dead; a tomb without a body is dead and gone. What’s the difference? Our two characters don’t see one.
We know what that’s like, an empty tomb whose chief virtue is that there’s no body spoiling in it. People live with that outlook all the time.
Christians follow the good shepherd beside still waters and lie down in his green pastures, but the empty tomb discourages them from staying with him through the dark valleys of self-examination. We don’t like the unknown of change we have to undergo if we’re going to risk becoming more fully human. Christians thank Jesus for dying to cancel their sins, but the empty tomb leaves them wondering if just being blind to some sins, like greed and envy, wouldn’t make life a little more tolerable and self esteem a little more attainable. Christians worship the risen prince of peace and send money through their churches to feed the hungry, but Jesus’ body missing from the empty tomb reminds them to hedge their bets by voting more for war and less for the poor. Christians claim Jesus as their friend, but the empty tomb reminds them that certain friendships can eventually cost them more than they bargained for.
Act One of the comedy ends, as the first part a sitcom does, without seeing how the problem will work itself out. With Peter and John sitting at home, hoping a long night of television will yield sufficient amnesia to resume normal living, we wonder if there’s anyone out there to give the story another life. The tomb sits there empty, and we wonder if God has given up on the story altogether and taken a cruise to the thithermost island paradise, where human civilization hasn’t ruined everything, so far.
Act Two begins with an unexpected character. It’s Mary Magdalene, again. But she’s already seen the burgled tomb. She’s reported the theft but has come back to the crime scene. What is she hoping for? That her eyes have betrayed her? That the body only stepped out briefly for coffee and a Danish? That she’d missed a telltale clue to what actually is going on in this crazy whodunit into which the Pink Panther should be bounding any minute?
There’s nothing comic about it all to Mary. Momentarily, she’s a little off-script, comedically speaking. She’s weeping. She sees two angels, which doesn’t simplify things. They’re one at either end of the slab. “Why all the tears, baby?” ask Mr. Angels Number One and Two, very tenderly. “Why all the tears, baby?”—in close harmony, like the Everly Brothers.
What’s the answer to that? You’ve had a life. You have a history, some of which people know, and some that is your secret, alone—a lot of water over the dam, in either case. At some point, you reconciled yourself to the notion that you’d made a mess of things, and all you hoped for was to distract yourself enough for the rest of your days to die without having to think about it all more than you could stand. Then along came someone who took a shine to you, though not in exactly the way you were used to someone taking a shine to you. He told you about what you had and were that was beautiful and good and wise and hopeful and worthy.
Others had said such things to you, and they were liars. They told you things for their own interests, not yours. But this one seemed to know something that you maybe hoped at times was true about you, and what if he was right? So you followed him. You listened to him. You believed him. You thought things, felt things, said things, and did things that you hadn’t the courage before to think, feel, say, or do. Life got better. You felt joy. You found strength. You grew confidence. You learned hope. The world, to you—the future, to you—might be full of wonder and delight, after all.
And now this man is dead. Worse, they’ve taken his body, and so you’re crying about it. What about that, Mr. Angels Number One and Two, surprises you?
Then. Jesus steps into the tomb. On the laugh track, there are a few oo’s, ah’s, oh’s. This is a surprise. Mary thinks it’s the gardener, which thought, in sitcoms, we learn about in mutterings. “Oh, for crying out loud,” Mary would mutter, “these gardener’s have no couth! What’s he doing here in a tomb, feeding the geraniums?!” (Titters on the laugh track.)
This moment rivets. The supposed gardener could easily have been in the crowd that demanded the cross for him. He could have been the grave robber that took him. All she asks for is that, whatever the ostensible gardener did with him, he show her where he is.
The ostensible gardener says, “Mary.” He says her name—his voice, saying her name.
That’s a funny thing—isn’t it?—the voice of someone who knows us as truly as we can be known saying our name. You know a voice like that. There is no other voice like that.
What if you were to, just for the moment, believe that the very thing about you that you can’t stand for anyone in the world to know is actually known by one true heart in the world, to which this voice belongs. Maybe there are several things, things you have not ever told and pray to heaven no one will ever find out, and you decide that this one true heart in the world does now know it and has known it. And somehow, everything is okay with this true heart knowing you like this—knowing you exactly as you are, so personally but without you fearing it.
Now, if this one true heart were to die—if the world got angry at it and killed it for being true in exactly the way you needed it to be true—you would be left with, well, nothing. Nothing to lean on, nothing to hope for, nothing to live by. You would weep, of course. If someone asked you, “Why all the tears, baby?” you would maybe slap him, even it was an angel. But Mary doesn’t slap him.
“Rabbouni!” she exclaims. “Teacher,” John translates. Well, more than teacher, I assure you. Mary was born with her soul intact and has since assaulted her soul with all the things we all of us assault our soul with—according to our own wounds, fears, and desperate waking dreams. Jesus has seen it all and heard it all and told it all. That’s why they killed him. Mary was relieved and eventually joyous about it, but they thought maybe they could maintain the charade a little longer. Mary doesn’t care about them any more. She has been fallen and she has been broken, and all she wants his to stand and be whole. She just wants her integrity back and her self back.
When Jesus says “Mary” to her, she knows it’s all been true. It’s been true that she is who she is, that she’s done what she’s done. It’s true that even through the worst of her falling she has been finding herself. It’s true that brokenness is, to God, simply the project of fitting all the pieces together in the time you have left. It’s true that while not all the pieces ever fit anywhere in this world again, there is a realm beyond sight where every piece lives in peace. It’s true that, if you do your own spiritual work and lie to yourself as seldom as possible and never yield to hate and always fight to love, you will often construct the kingdom of God for a little while around you. It’s true that even when you fail in everything, you can all the same sit in the empty tomb and wait with angels in the looming presence of death until someone comes in to remind you that life is the last word. If you think it’s the gardener who’s the one who shows up, well, how hilarious! Who else? Life is the only excuse there is for a gardener.
End of Act Two. Fade to green. Amen.
Hymn following the sermon:
16 April 2006
John 20.1-18
Easter : a comedy in two acts
© J. Christy Wareham, 2006
I feel for Peter. You have to be fully self possessed to stand the company of your betters. Better people are all around all the time. It’s what Peter must always have had to reckon with. There was always this matter of John, for instance, the disciple “whom Jesus loved.” What was that like to live with, to be not the one Jesus loved, or at least loved not as much.
And now, on Easter morning, there is this footrace to the tomb, and, as if belovedlessness were not enough, John is more fleet of foot, as well. I can relate. I often see Dale Coffey here, for example, whose daughter Maggie we will baptize in just a bit, sprinting up the street on his run after work. Now, I work out every single day, but no loving creator gave me the legs of a thoroughbred to run with. I couldn’t keep up with Dale. If I got a 10-second head start to a tomb a mere block away, he would beat me there—I know that. What must it feel like to be the Presbyterian Jesus loves?
Ask Dale.
But I want to talk about the gospel, a story always in need of telling. Now, people who know me are familiar with my complaints about Hollywood’s low target for quality storytelling, but I have to say that a sitcom might offer the best rendering of the gospel on Easter morning at the tomb, according to John. A little clever dialogue, some sight gags, and a laugh track could go a long way toward giving the feel of this little pack of friends we call disciples. We have, I believe, a comedy in two acts.
In Act One, the beloved gazelle disciple screeches to a halt at the mouth of the tomb, and while he’s reaching for his water bottle, up comes the tortoise Peter, who crawls right in. It had looked to the gazelle a little dark in there with what might be, Mary Magdalene’s report notwithstanding, a body. A little peek in, and the he saw death bands thrown in a pile, but you can never be too sure. In any event, something dead had been in there, which is the sort of situation a skittish gazelle prefers strength in numbers for. A dead body, which may in fact be gone, isn’t going to love him any less for being careful. When Peter doesn’t fly shrieking from the tomb, the beloved disciple takes his chances, and both are inside.
Sure enough, there’s no stink. There’s no lumpy pall. There’s no eerie groaning that bodies sometimes make after a while. No body, sure enough, just a pile of rags. The beloved disciple “saw and believed,” but all he believes, so far is that the body’s gone. A risen life would be something else again.
You imagine The Honeymooners’ Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton—Jackie Gleason and Art Carney. One smarter in his mind than in fact, and the other only smart enough to know he doesn’t get it. The obvious is the most they grasp, and what they try to make of things is usually not the truth of them. If Ralph and Norton were at the tomb, it wouldn’t be much different. They’d look at things, shake their heads, and go back home to Alice and Trixie.
What else can they do? A tomb is not a glass of water. You can’t have a half empty tomb, or a half full one. You can’t change it with an optimistic attitude. A tomb with a body is dead; a tomb without a body is dead and gone. What’s the difference? Our two characters don’t see one.
We know what that’s like, an empty tomb whose chief virtue is that there’s no body spoiling in it. People live with that outlook all the time.
Christians follow the good shepherd beside still waters and lie down in his green pastures, but the empty tomb discourages them from staying with him through the dark valleys of self-examination. We don’t like the unknown of change we have to undergo if we’re going to risk becoming more fully human. Christians thank Jesus for dying to cancel their sins, but the empty tomb leaves them wondering if just being blind to some sins, like greed and envy, wouldn’t make life a little more tolerable and self esteem a little more attainable. Christians worship the risen prince of peace and send money through their churches to feed the hungry, but Jesus’ body missing from the empty tomb reminds them to hedge their bets by voting more for war and less for the poor. Christians claim Jesus as their friend, but the empty tomb reminds them that certain friendships can eventually cost them more than they bargained for.
Act One of the comedy ends, as the first part a sitcom does, without seeing how the problem will work itself out. With Peter and John sitting at home, hoping a long night of television will yield sufficient amnesia to resume normal living, we wonder if there’s anyone out there to give the story another life. The tomb sits there empty, and we wonder if God has given up on the story altogether and taken a cruise to the thithermost island paradise, where human civilization hasn’t ruined everything, so far.
Act Two begins with an unexpected character. It’s Mary Magdalene, again. But she’s already seen the burgled tomb. She’s reported the theft but has come back to the crime scene. What is she hoping for? That her eyes have betrayed her? That the body only stepped out briefly for coffee and a Danish? That she’d missed a telltale clue to what actually is going on in this crazy whodunit into which the Pink Panther should be bounding any minute?
There’s nothing comic about it all to Mary. Momentarily, she’s a little off-script, comedically speaking. She’s weeping. She sees two angels, which doesn’t simplify things. They’re one at either end of the slab. “Why all the tears, baby?” ask Mr. Angels Number One and Two, very tenderly. “Why all the tears, baby?”—in close harmony, like the Everly Brothers.
What’s the answer to that? You’ve had a life. You have a history, some of which people know, and some that is your secret, alone—a lot of water over the dam, in either case. At some point, you reconciled yourself to the notion that you’d made a mess of things, and all you hoped for was to distract yourself enough for the rest of your days to die without having to think about it all more than you could stand. Then along came someone who took a shine to you, though not in exactly the way you were used to someone taking a shine to you. He told you about what you had and were that was beautiful and good and wise and hopeful and worthy.
Others had said such things to you, and they were liars. They told you things for their own interests, not yours. But this one seemed to know something that you maybe hoped at times was true about you, and what if he was right? So you followed him. You listened to him. You believed him. You thought things, felt things, said things, and did things that you hadn’t the courage before to think, feel, say, or do. Life got better. You felt joy. You found strength. You grew confidence. You learned hope. The world, to you—the future, to you—might be full of wonder and delight, after all.
And now this man is dead. Worse, they’ve taken his body, and so you’re crying about it. What about that, Mr. Angels Number One and Two, surprises you?
Then. Jesus steps into the tomb. On the laugh track, there are a few oo’s, ah’s, oh’s. This is a surprise. Mary thinks it’s the gardener, which thought, in sitcoms, we learn about in mutterings. “Oh, for crying out loud,” Mary would mutter, “these gardener’s have no couth! What’s he doing here in a tomb, feeding the geraniums?!” (Titters on the laugh track.)
This moment rivets. The supposed gardener could easily have been in the crowd that demanded the cross for him. He could have been the grave robber that took him. All she asks for is that, whatever the ostensible gardener did with him, he show her where he is.
The ostensible gardener says, “Mary.” He says her name—his voice, saying her name.
That’s a funny thing—isn’t it?—the voice of someone who knows us as truly as we can be known saying our name. You know a voice like that. There is no other voice like that.
What if you were to, just for the moment, believe that the very thing about you that you can’t stand for anyone in the world to know is actually known by one true heart in the world, to which this voice belongs. Maybe there are several things, things you have not ever told and pray to heaven no one will ever find out, and you decide that this one true heart in the world does now know it and has known it. And somehow, everything is okay with this true heart knowing you like this—knowing you exactly as you are, so personally but without you fearing it.
Now, if this one true heart were to die—if the world got angry at it and killed it for being true in exactly the way you needed it to be true—you would be left with, well, nothing. Nothing to lean on, nothing to hope for, nothing to live by. You would weep, of course. If someone asked you, “Why all the tears, baby?” you would maybe slap him, even it was an angel. But Mary doesn’t slap him.
“Rabbouni!” she exclaims. “Teacher,” John translates. Well, more than teacher, I assure you. Mary was born with her soul intact and has since assaulted her soul with all the things we all of us assault our soul with—according to our own wounds, fears, and desperate waking dreams. Jesus has seen it all and heard it all and told it all. That’s why they killed him. Mary was relieved and eventually joyous about it, but they thought maybe they could maintain the charade a little longer. Mary doesn’t care about them any more. She has been fallen and she has been broken, and all she wants his to stand and be whole. She just wants her integrity back and her self back.
When Jesus says “Mary” to her, she knows it’s all been true. It’s been true that she is who she is, that she’s done what she’s done. It’s true that even through the worst of her falling she has been finding herself. It’s true that brokenness is, to God, simply the project of fitting all the pieces together in the time you have left. It’s true that while not all the pieces ever fit anywhere in this world again, there is a realm beyond sight where every piece lives in peace. It’s true that, if you do your own spiritual work and lie to yourself as seldom as possible and never yield to hate and always fight to love, you will often construct the kingdom of God for a little while around you. It’s true that even when you fail in everything, you can all the same sit in the empty tomb and wait with angels in the looming presence of death until someone comes in to remind you that life is the last word. If you think it’s the gardener who’s the one who shows up, well, how hilarious! Who else? Life is the only excuse there is for a gardener.
End of Act Two. Fade to green. Amen.
Hymn following the sermon:
Now the green blade riseth from the buried grain,
Wheat that in the dark earth many days has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.
In the grave they laid him, love whom men had slain,
Thinking that never he would wake again.
Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green,
Forth he came at Easter, like the risen grain,
He that for three days in the grave had lain.
Quick from the dead my risen Lord is seen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.
When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain,
Thy touch can call us back to life again;
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.
posted by J. Christy Wareham at
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