New Life and the Grace of God
Easter | John 20:1-18
Halleluiah! He is risen!
We say it that way: he is risen. And many of us respond naturally, The Lord is risen indeed. Hallelujah! We’ve been trained. But the words, he is risen denote that Jesus is the object, the beneficiary of the divine act. The act is raising Jesus from among the dead. He isn’t waking up on his own accord, friends. He has been raised by someone. And we know that someone is God.
This always evokes conversations of trinitarian theology that few really want to have on Easter. But I want to highlight this relationship of Jesus to being raised and that this highlights a relationship between Jesus and the one who raised him from the dead. That this is, and continues to be, a story of relationship.
Just like the relationship Mary has to the other disciples and to Jesus. And even the relationship she assumes is present between these strangers who she believes have acted upon the body of Jesus in the tomb. It is all action and relationship, my friends.
Competition
Another example of the confluence of action and relationship is Mary bringing the news of the tomb to the disciples, of Peter and the beloved disciple we assume is John who struggle with matters of trust and then race each other to the tomb. And I think this may be one of the most important depictions of the disciples misunderstanding the moment in all of John’s gospel.
What we read in the ensuing chapters, which we’ll go through in the Easter season, is a statement about belief without seeing. Meaning trusting in the word of one another. And here, these two men race each other to see with their own eyes.
And the writer, too, gets in on this. And maybe it is earnest because it is a follower of John’s who wants to make his mentor look good or maybe it is a kind of self-aware narrative in which he knows his hubris and competitive spirit is sinful. But either way, we receive it as a beautiful moment of grace because their conviction to be the best contrasts so greatly with the humility of Mary who is just trying to find Jesus.
It is the macho footrace and jockeying for top spot that makes the real connection between Jesus and Mary pop here. She is the one who looks the most devoted, the most faithful, and ultimately, the most like Christ of anyone. And this is why I’m about 85% convinced that the evangelist we know as John wanted us to see Mary as the greatest disciple.
Come on. She’s preaching the first Easter sermon. That’s the mic drop.
A Problematic Response
Action and relationship. That is the heart of this story. God has acted to restore relationship. God invites action to restore relationship. God has acted to bring new relationship. And God invites action to bring new relationships here.
Easter can be tricky because we remember this one action taken almost two thousand years ago and many treat it as exclusively about God having done something in that moment for our relationship forever and not the rest that flows from this. Which creates a kind of literal/theological view of the resurrection that defines salvation as a one-and-done moment for all humanity and we’re just walking around still giving thanks. This is a narrow, but common, understanding of our tradition and one that I dare say invites a passive relationship to God.
So, in this way then, Jesus suffered a long time ago so I can be good today. The end. This is a kind of fatalistic and deterministic view of our tradition and also strangely lets us off the hook. Because if God saved us through Jesus a long time ago, we don’t have to be responsible for anything we do.
The more holistic relationship we have to our faith, the more we see the action and relationship at the heart of the resurrection to not only include us in it, but draw the same from us.
Final Teachings
I want to draw two teachings from the days before the crucifixion and resurrection to remind us of what might be at the front of mind as we enter into the Easter season.
When Jesus is teaching at the Temple and being confronted by the leadership, a scribe asks which of God’s commandments is the greatest, and Jesus says Love God and the second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself. The scribe asks for one command and Jesus smushes two in there and says the second is like the first. Loving your neighbor is like loving God. He then says everything hangs from these two. Which, if we put it another way, means everything else is subordinate to these two.
Then, in John’s gospel, when they’re gathering for the last supper, Jesus washes the feet of his disciples and he commands them that they do this for each other. That they sacrifice and humble themselves in love to make one another feel loved. Much like in Matthew’s gospel he teaches that when they feed the hungry and clothe the naked, they are doing so to Jesus.
Action and relationship. Intertwined and inseparable.
These are the commands Jesus is leaving behind. That the disciples are to form their lives around: service, devotion, love for one another and for their neighbors, generosity, communion, all of the things that allow them to make other people’s lives better, to help them feel loved by God: and they are to do that as the grace of God. To act in relationship to express the relationship with God that already exists. In short: to be the sacramental presence to our world.
And then . . . Jesus comes back!
The Promise
Behind our celebration today is this promise, this command, this embodiment of faith: action and relationship. That this was already enough before the resurrection. The promise of it was enough. The command from God was enough. We had all we needed. It was like Jesus’s words to the disciples in chapter 14 when he said that they already know the way to the father. And Thomas is like,I’m not really sure, can you lay it out, I’m kind of a blockhead.
Jesus assures the disciples that they already know the way. They do. They’re just scared to trust in it without him.
The resurrection arrives as proof, yes. But more importantly, as a kind of doubling down on the promise itself. He was promising them action and relationship. Do good things and you are good people together — and you’ll be good with God. Now we have action and relationship can raise the dead. Resurrection joins the chat. And now transformation is possible. We’re not just being good people helping each other out. New shoots come out of dead trees. And all our work has new life.
This is the good news of Easter. New life and scale. That saving the world by loving your neighbor is possible. And the word we heard last night at our vigil continues to resonate as invitation and command: rejoice and be glad! This is the fruit of our people’s work: love and joy in this cosmic and hyper local relationship with all of creation and all of these beloved neighbors.
All of this has new life. That all our fears of death and destruction are phantoms: poof! New life in what we do and who we are and in all these messy relationships. That is Good News. That is resurrection joy. Rejoice! Be glad! Hallelujah!