“RABBUNI”
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A sermon preached Readings: Psalm
139:1-12, Jn 20:1-18 |
“It was still very early…”
(Jn 20:1)
I
want you to think yourself back
to the very start of the Easter morning story –
to perhaps 2 a.m., 3 a.m.
Here is Mary, getting up after half a sleepless night,
pacing the room, eyes puffed with tears,
now half blindly searching for clothes, spices –
and setting off for the tomb,
the focus of her anguish drawing her like a magnet.
And
many here will be able to identify all too easily
with the desolation and emptiness of Mary
walking through the cold night air towards the tomb.
Sadly,
some of us can get stuck at that point on the journey.
frozen, petrified, in the remorse and tears of death
and despair.
Lot’s
wife was turned to a pillar of salt
because she looked back –
And someone once said that
if we spend the whole of our life looking backwards,
we risk being turned into a pillar of salt tears
Rock
superstar Eric Clapton
is one of those who admits he was like this.
When his four year old son Conor
fell to his death
from their apartment window, Clapton said
"I went off the edge of the world for a while….
I turned to stone.."
But there is something beyond tears,
and in time,
Clapton turned to his music again
and wrote that wonderful piece,
singing about meeting his little boy in heaven:
Beyond
the door
there's peace I'm sure,
And I
know there'll be
no more tears in heaven.
(Song: "Tears in Heaven," by Eric Clapton
and Will Jennings)
We
all make our own journey from despair to hope.
I think how often I have talked to tearful mourning
relatives
before a funeral about their wish to go to the chapel of rest
to view the body.
It
is an understandable
and I am sure often a very helpful thing to do.
And yet how often do they come back saying
(half sad, half joyful)
”But he wasn’t there – it was only a body”
They went to see their loved one in the tomb,
and – praise God –
they discovered that in Christ the one they loved
had already moved on to a new life.
They found but the empty chrysalis –
the butterfly had already flown.
And
so it is on this Easter morning
we follow Mary to the tomb itself,
and we find her searching for the dead.
And
perhaps it is because her eyes are clouded with tears?
But somehow in the half light of morn
she fails to recognize the risen Christ
and sees only a gardener.
Then
the “gardener” says “Mary”
and her eyes clear, the tears are gone,
and she knows that Christ is risen.
In the foyer, you’ll find a display
done by some of our young people during Lent,
featuring a picture of the Dominus Flevit window in
Jerusalem.
“Dominus Flevit” is Latin
for “The Lord Wept”,
and the chapel window thus called
is built on the spot where tradition says
that our Lord wept over Jerusalem on his way to his death.
You look out through this arched window
and see the old city as perhaps
our Lord did in tears 2000 years ago.
Today for Easter Sunday
you will see that within that arched window of weeping
has been placed the arch of the rainbow.
From despair to hope, from tears to joy.
You remember how Noah saw the sun shine
through the downpour of the flood,
and saw in the rainbow his assurance
that God’s promises were true.
So we see through the salt water of our Holy Week tears
not just a dying Jesus but a risen Lord -
and through the falling water of the tears of the world,
we celebrate the fulfilment in Christ
of the promise made to Noah and our sinful world.
So
with Mary and so many after her we come in tears to the grave
and discover in our darkest moment of sin and despair and heartache
·
the promise of paradise where every tear shall be wiped away
·
that the sun shall shine through the rain,
·
that spring flowers do break through the barren earth,
·
that the angel does ask
“Why are you searching here amongst the dead –
and not among the living?”
·
And that the living Lord does quietly utter your name and mine.
Rudyard
Kipling has a story about Helen,
a single unmarried girl who has an child Michael
in an age when illegitimacy was a matter of huge social disgrace.
It so happens that the woman’s brother dies in battle
just at the time the baby is born,
and so the young single mother is able to bring up her child
passing him off as her dead brother’s child, her nephew.
Years pass until her son –
still unacknowledged as such to the world -
is also killed in battle.
In the final scene of the story,
the woman goes to the bleak war cemetery to find her boy’s grave.
She is burdened with a torment of mixed feelings
of shame and grief,
unable even to tell anyone of the real sorrow she bears,
There she finds a man tending the plants around the
graves,
and asks directions.
The story ends like this:
He asked “Who are you looking for?”
“Lt Michael Turrell - my
nephew “ said Helen slowly,
and word for word, as she had done thousands of times in her life.
The man lifted his eyes and looked at her with
infinite compassion
before he turned from the fresh sown grass
to the naked black crosses.
Come with me, “ he said,
“and I will show you where your son lies”
When Helen left the cemetery
she turned for a last look.
In the distance she saw the man
bending over his young plants;
and she went away,
supposing him to be the gardener.”
Oh
the power of the Risen Christ in our lives was always thus -
·
to come and greet us and find us at our point of darkness,
·
to know us and know all about us before we even realise he is there-
·
to take our death and despair and heartbreak and
through it work the power of resurrection in us all,
and give us new life.
And how we need that in this dark and torn world of ours.
In
our failings,
our
darkness,
our
sin,
our
despair,
our
graves,
our shame,
our
hopelessness,
our
inabilities to love and be loved,
our
failure to be what we would be,
our inability to admit to ourselves
let alone anyone else what we really are.
How
we need one to come to us like a supposed gardener
once came to Mary long ago, and hear him say -
My
child, you are known, you are accepted,
you are loved, for what you are.
When
I went to the cross
I went to find you in your darkest deepest place,
and now I am risen, I come to share new life with you!
So
do not fear the night watches,
all you who dwell in the shadow of the grave.
But
walk on.
Listen for that word of the one
who utters your name in the still morning air -
This
is no gardener - that is Christ uttering your name!
Listen
for it, and when you hear,
turn around
look him in the face,
and
say with Mary this Eastertide,
Rabboni, my Lord
and Master.
And
then run,
run like you’ve never run before,
and tell the world,
for oh -
you have such news to share!