Uncontrollable
John 20:1 – 18
Our Lenten journey has ended, and we have arrived at Easter full of the Spirit!! Every year, we retell the same story over and again: gaping tomb, confused mourners, unexpected and unbelievable encounters with angels and a gardener. Every year, the story moves us along from searching in sadness, to shocking disbelief, and finally to joy of the resurrection. And every year, we meet the challenge at the heart of Easter Sunday: to persist through fear and darkness, to believe beyond what we think we know, to not be controlled by all of those things that seek to erode our faith and confidence and thereby we welcome the risen Christ in unexpected places and unfamiliar faces.
At Easter, our Spirit should be Uncontrolled by the challenges that we face in our secular lives and our spiritual lives. Every year, we decide if we will allow our hearts to be transformed by the promise and the very presence of Christ; if we will trust in our own coming into life again and again. But it isn’t just once a year that we get to decide. Every day, every year, you must decide whether hope will be controlled by despair, and whether we believe that love is stronger than the fear of death.
As we heard in the Gospel reading for this morning, Mary Magdalene is the first to enter this garden, and here, she discovers it was much more than a garden of memories, more than a cemetery to receive the remains of a lifeless body. As we know Mary Magdalene is a follower of Jesus, a disciple. Despite what you might heard about her in present day culture, society, or drama there is simply no evidence that she was anything other than an extraordinarily courageous and devoted follower of Jesus. The Book of Luke said that she came to Jesus because she had demons, Luke says seven of them, and Jesus cast them out. He helped her through what today we might call a time of mental and spiritual challenges. He helped her to control those demons and because of that she chose to follow him.
We heard earlier this morning at the Sunrise Service that Mary Magdalene was the first one to communicate with the now Resurrected Jesus when he met her in the Garden. She didn’t recognize him with newly transformed and glorified body. We saw how Mary, either by design or happenstance was the person that preached the very first Christian message, the first sermon was short but to the point, it was a message that would make any preacher proud as she declared “He Is Risen!”
It was in the in the early hours of the first day of the week, when Mary returns to the tomb. The sun is not up yet. It is that predawn, mysterious gray, when it is difficult to see anything clearly. The tomb had been sealed when she left it on Friday but when she arrives there this morning it is open. She looks in and the body of Jesus is gone. She imagines this is the final insult: someone has stolen the body, and who knows what they are going to do with it. This gentle, loving, strong, honest man is denied even a peaceful resting place. She weeps tears of grief and bitterness as returns hurriedly returns to tell the sleeping disciples that his body is gone. (“A Fourth Church Sermon by John Buchanan | April 4, 2010”)
Mary finds Peter and John and tells them what she has seen, and they run back to the tomb to confirm her story and yes, it is empty, but they are as confused and dumbfounded as she is. But they are still concerned for their own safety, so they return to their locked residence. They apparently did not remember the message from just three days before when Jesus told them that even though would be killed, yet he would in fact rise three days later. But on this first Easter morning there would be no alleluias, no shouting “He is risen,” no singing. Instead they lock the door behind them to and finish the night’s sleep.
But Mary is determined to find out what happened to her master, so she goes back to the garden. It is still dark, but now someone is there. The gardener maybe, maybe he will know who took the body. He asks, “Why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?” but she doesn’t recognize him. She proceeds to tell him the whole story, the man, the trial, the crucifixion, the rushed burial, and that now someone has taken away his body. “If you know where he is, please tell me, and I will bring him back here.” Uncontrollable, unstoppable she pleads to the stranger
The man speaks her name, “Mary.” Finally, she recognizes him, not from his body, but by his voice. She knows that voice. She knows without question is Jesus. She tries to embrace him, but he stops her, “Do not cling to me, I have not yet ascended to the Father but go tell the others.”
We have known this as Jesus warning her to not touch him, because he had not yet made his final ascension to the Father but the Greek word translated as “Do not hold onto me” means something more than simple touching it means “do not try to confine”, control, manipulate, own me.
You see in the resurrection of Jesus that the Spirit of Jesus cannot be stopped, cannot held back or controlled, not even death could do that. The lesson is the first Easter lesson. If Jesus were to stay, then the Holy Spirit could not come. But through the resurrection The Spirit of Jesus, the one that he had promised that He would send would come and its’ force would be Unstoppable!
What John is saying here is that death could not hold him, that death was not the end, in fact Christ’s death in many ways is the beginning, this is not the last word for him or for us. Mortal Jesus had the same limitations as you and I, he couldn’t be in two places at the same time. But now in His death on the Cross and his resurrection His mission and ministry had been fulfilled, the prophecies had been completed, and now Jesus was soon to send the unstoppable, the Uncontrollable force of the Holy Spirit, that has no limitations, that doesn’t face restrictions.
Free from the earthly bounds the now resurrected Jesus can instill into life an unquenchable hope and an irresistible sense that we are created for fullness and joy and life and a love from which not even death—his, ours—can separate us.
Mankind lives a mortal life in a world that is run by the Evil One, the great deceiver, it is one of the eternal obstacles that we have and must overcome, a long litany of tragedy and sadness—earthquakes, plagues, governmentally induced disasters, murder, starvation, mayhem. We presently living in time in which evil seems overwhelming. Sometimes it seems that in the midst of all that tragedy, it is inappropriate or dismissive or Pollyannaish to experience, to revel in joy and hope. So we don’t. We don’t allow ourselves, and we dismiss the happy and hopeful as naïve and unreal caring for others.
Yet it is in the most dreadful times and places that we experience the sights and sounds that prove that because of the resurrection of Jesus on Easter day, the Uncontrollable Holy Spirit is at work in the world, filling and refilling them with a sense of God’s grace, mercy, comfort and peace. God does not want us to be permanently mournful, and the resurrection advances His plan to send the Advocate to us and for us. The Heavenly Father wants us to be joyful and content with the life that we are living despite what the Great Deceiver tells us or does to us!
How many times over the past 50 plus days have seen and heard the joyful and praise-filled singing and music coming from homeless and threatened people of Ukraine? Without the presence of the infilling Holy Spirit in them, we would not be witnessing the incredible and awe-inspiring sounds of children laughing and people, in hiding and in safe places, singing hymns, singing with joy. That’s what people who have the Holy Spirit do in the face of evil, hatred and despair. That is the coming Holy Spirit that was guaranteed by Jesus when he crawled up on that cross, died that death and who rose on this day. Uncontrollable Spirit!
Coming back to our lesson today, that singing began in a garden long ago, before dawn, when Mary, weeping, devastated—as we are sometimes, frequently in fact, by the senseless cruelty of the world, the randomness of evil and death—heard Jesus say her name. At that point she knew in ways she did not fully comprehend, at a place deep in her soul, that he was the victor, not death. New life began at first light on Easter morning.
Hear the Good New my Friends………
Easter morning is not the end but rather the beginning of living our lives as justified and redeemed people, Easter People. Joyful, committed and expectant Easter People! Easter isn’t simply a day, a singular event that transforms all people that are empowered by its’ message but rather it is an ongoing state of mind, a passion, a lifelong commitment to service and faithfulness toward the atoning Christ and the loving Father that sent him to reconcile each and every soul back into the holy family.
Friends remember that it’s in the darkness that the dawn of morning light comes the Son rises again as the sun rises. It’s in the darkness that we discover the stone has already been rolled away and the love of God has been let loose in the world. It’s not very hard at all to see the darkness in the world. The darkness is ever-present and is all too real for those who sit in these pews.
The Easter story doesn’t discount the darkness but rather it affirms that resurrection has the power to transform a graveyard into a garden brimming with new life. Resurrection has the power to break open tombs and tear down walls. Resurrection has the power to transform the rocky wildernesses of our hearts into instruments of grace. Resurrection has the power to show death for what it is: “the possibility for love to come again.” (“Discipleship Ministries | Easter Sunday 2019, Year C — Preaching Notes”)
The resurrection of Jesus is not the ending of the story, but the beginning of many hope-filled risings to come. And because the Love of God will come, again and again (and again!), to raise us out of the fear of eternal death, so that we have hope and certainty in a world suggest something different. It’s just a whisper now, but if you sit in the stillness and the darkness, you can hear it calling you to rise to life’s challenges. (“Discipleship Ministries | Easter Sunday 2019, Year C — Preaching Notes”)
Then, like Mary, we must each decide whether hope is stronger than fear, whether life is stronger than hate, and whether love really is stronger than death, every day, every moment, with all our hearts. That is the unstoppable, Uncontrollable spiritual life that is found in the resurrection story! Amen.