Friends, today's teaching scripture is from John chapter
20. Early on the first day of the
week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb
and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb.
So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple,
the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, They have taken
the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid
him. Then Peter and the other
disciple set out and went towards the tomb.
The two were running together, but the other disciple outran
Peter and reached the tomb first.
He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there,
but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came following
him and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying
there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus head not lying
with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in the place by
itself. Then the other disciple who
reached reached the tomb first also went in, and he saw and
believed. For as yet they did not
understand the scripture that he must rise from the dead.
Then the disciples returned to their homes.
But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she
bent over to look into the tomb, and she saw 2 angels in white
sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head
and the other at the feet. They said to her, Woman, why are
you weeping? And she said to them, They have
taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.
When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus
standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus.
And Jesus said to her, Woman, why are you weeping?
Whom are you looking for? Supposing him to be the
gardener, She said to him, Sir, if you have carried him away,
tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.
Jesus said to her, Mary. She turned and said to him in
Hebrew Rabuni, which means teacher.
Jesus said to her, Do not touch me, because I have not yet
ascended to the Father, but go to my brothers and say to them,
I am ascending to my Father, and your father to my God and your
God. Mary Magdalene went and
announced to the disciples, I have seen the Lord, and she told
them that He had said these things to her.
This is the word of the Lord. All right, Good morning.
If we have not met, my name is Parker Frye.
I'm. One of the pastors here at
Central. Vineyard and I'm so.
Happy to see. So many familiar faces, So many
new faces. Welcome, welcome.
We're glad you're here. Should we do the thing one more
time? Christ is risen.
There is a moment at the beginning of Terrence Malick's
film the. Tree of life where?
The mother speaks in voice over and she.
Says there are two ways through life.
The way of. Nature and the Way of.
Grace. You have to choose which one
you'll. Follow.
The way of nature, she explains, grasps and hoards everything
that it can possibly get its hands on, protecting itself from
loss. The way of.
Grace accepts being hurt in life and doesn't claw to stay on top,
doesn't claw for control. And what?
Follows is. 2 1/2 hours of a family moving through ordinary
life, experiencing joy and cruelty and tenderness.
A brother dies young and no one in the film explains why and the
film? Holds the grief of the loss.
Of a young son inside tremendous, almost unbearable
beauty and. Refuses to let.
You have one of them. Without the other.
It brings into sharp focus. The the the.
Glory, the holiness of ordinary life and it's central question
is simple, and I think it's the same question that a lot of us
find ourselves asking every year around this time when we come
together to celebrate Resurrection Sunday.
Can grace survive? Can the love of God, Can the
kindness of God, survive inside of suffering?
I've been sitting with that question as I've been preparing
for our time together this week. Because I think most of us know
that what we actually need from the resurrection is not a tidy
resolution or some kind of fairy tale ending to this.
Story about Jesus life. We need something that can
actually hold up in a. Chaotic world that most.
Mornings when we. Wake up feels like.
It might not, so I want to begin here.
The world that we. Woke up to this morning is
complicated, and you can almost certainly name your own version
of what's complicated about it. Something in your own life,
something in your own body, something in your own house or
something. Broader like the low.
Grade anxiety of watching things that took a long time to.
Build come apart faster. Than you ever expected the sense
that the ground around. You is less stable.
Than it used. To feel the realities.
Of your aging body, a grief that you can't quite explain to
someone who hasn't lived or experienced it themselves.
The resurrection doesn't ask us to set any of that aside.
And so, you know, as much as I would have loved more
pyrotechnics this morning and for Jared to zip line in to lead
us in silence, I think the truth.
That we're all aware of is that we live.
Complex lives and the complexity can't just be.
Erased. By reading a Bible passage one
Sunday morning a year, can it? That's not what the resurrection
is doing in the Christian story. It's it's not a feeling that.
You work yourself. Up to it's not some sort of
spiritual sense that we're trying to reach for or or drum
up inside. Of ourselves it's.
Something that happens to us, it's something that breaks into
the. Reality of our world.
And almost always happens. Where we least expect it.
Where we're not looking. For the love of God to.
Break in John's account of the resurrection is probably my.
Favorite because it starts. Right here in ways.
That the other gospels. Don't quite do the same way.
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark.
Mary Magdalene came to the tomb. While it was still dark.
She came before dawn because someone she loved had been
executed and she didn't know what else to do.
Maybe she couldn't sleep. She's certainly not there.
To celebrate. And.
This is where. The resurrection account opens,
It's in the dark with a grieving woman who showed up when
everyone else had scattered to the four winds after Friday's
events for fear of retaliation from the government and the
religious leaders. And I think John begins there
on. Purpose because.
That's the person that this. Story is for.
This story is being written and recounted.
Precisely for the. Person who comes.
While it's still dark. Before we get on to what happens
next in the garden, I just want to show you something in John's
gospel leading up to this. Text that.
I think changes the way that. This whole story reads.
And I don't. Know if you'll ever be able to
read it. Again, without thinking about
this, John uses darkness and light as a motif.
All throughout his gospel. So if you read it from the
beginning to the end. You'll see that throughout.
He's painting a picture of something that's happening in
the world using these. 2 words these two.
Ideas, Darkness and light. From the very earliest.
Lines of John's Gospel The light shines in the darkness, and the
darkness has not overcome it, and he returns to it over and
over and over again. He says people love darkness
rather than light. Jesus says.
I am the light of the. World while you walk, walk while
you have the light. And so on and so on.
And by the time. We reach while it was still
dark. In John 20, that phrase.
Carries the weight of. Everything that's come before it
as we've journeyed through John's entire.
Gospel we have. This darkness and light theme
and now. While it's still dark, it
appears the. Darkness may have overcome the
light once and for all. But this is the.
Final darkness in John's gospel, it's the final mention and God's
new creation is coming in to the darkness while.
It was still dark. But John is doing something even
more deliberate than just that, which I find fascinating.
He's mapping the whole. Story.
On to the first week of Genesis. So if you open your Bible to the
very. Beginning John is telling us
that God is making a new. World he's.
Describing a completely new creation after the same pattern
that the first one was created, the.
Prologue tells us. In the beginning was the.
Word. As a way of echoing in the
beginning, God created. And so John is announcing from
the very beginning of his book that the one who was present at
the first creation is the one who is present in this new story
that he's beginning to tell. And then, if you're paying
attention, he tracks the events of Holy Week against the
Creation Week, so on. Friday the 6th day, Jesus is
brought before the. Crowd and Pilate presents him to
the people. John pauses to note the time and
the day. Very.
Carefully. It was the 6th day of the week.
And Pilate says, behold the man John wants you to feel the.
Echo of the. Creation of humanity on the 6th
day. So Jesus is crucified.
And just before he died, he speaks one final word in John's
gospel. It is finished that.
Word. To telesty the same word in the
Greek Old Testament when God is finished.
With the work of. Creation on the 7th day in
Genesis and God. Rests.
Jesus dies. And is laid in the tomb as the
Sabbath begins, the 7th. Day, the day of rest, the work
of the first created order is. Done, and has been laid in the
grave. This first world that that.
Ran off the rails. The ways that.
That the humans have taken advantage of each other, have
exploited one another. Have built up.
Systems that oppress and control.
It's been laid in the grave on the 7th day, and then John 20
very intentionally opens with the. 1st.
Day of a new week, a new beginning.
And it's not just. A clever literary device.
John is making a bold claim in the way that he's writing this
story. What happened on the Day of the
Resurrection was the beginning of a new.
World the 1st. Creation had been re enacted,
had been had been recapitulated and the old.
Order is over. God has done again what God did
in the beginning, spoken life into lifelessness, spoken life
into the thing that was not alive, and set a new creation
into motion. And so the resurrection isn't.
A reversal of defeat. It's the beginning of something
that has never. Existed before.
Something that we are entirely unfamiliar with.
It's. A world in which.
Death has been defeated from the inside, one in which.
The physical. Creation itself has been cracked
open and is being remade. Before our very eyes.
And John? Tells us that it starts while it
was still dark. Mary comes to the tomb and she
finds the stone rolled away, and she runs to tell Peter and the
other. Disciple and.
They come and look and they see. The burial clothes.
Lying there, the face. Cloth folded up separately.
A strange detail to include, if not to say that it's like
someone got up and left in an orderly fashion, and then the
disciples go home and John said he he so simply they they went
back to their homes. They saw this and it was almost
like in the grief and the anxiety.
That they carried. Forward from From.
Friday they see the. Scene and are not sure what to
make of it. They are, sort of.
So deep in their own experience of the previous.
Few days that. An encounter with all the
evidence right in front of their faces causes them to.
Just sort of go. I don't know about that.
And they? Leave but Mary.
Is left standing outside the tomb.
She stays and I think we're meant to sort.
Of stay with her. For a moment as we make our way.
Through the story, she's. The one who came before dawn.
She's the one who stays when the others leave.
She doesn't have a. Theology of the Resurrection.
She doesn't have some special insider knowledge about what's
going on. She has no framework for what?
Could possibly be. True of this moment, she has.
Grief. She has love.
For someone who has died and nowhere.
Else to be. And she stands there in front of
the empty tomb of her friend and her teacher, weeping after her
other two friends go away. And there's something in this in
between moment that stands out to me.
Peter and the other disciple came and looked and went home.
And we're not told why they left.
But for whatever reason, they leave, Mary doesn't.
And I think. That the.
Posture that she represents of staying present without answers
and without a plan turns out to be the.
Exact way that. You and I are meant to receive.
The. Resurrection into our own lives.
I see myself. In both of these.
Responses both the response. Of the other two disciples.
And Mary's response? And I hope you can too.
It's hard to lean in, It's hard to keep looking.
It's difficult. To search for a.
Reason to. Allow yourself to hope.
When your intuition screams, that a different thing.
Altogether is what is at. Hand around you, She looks
inside and she sees 2 angels. Who asked her why?
She's crying and she tells them that someone has taken the body
and she doesn't know where and then she turns around and a man
is standing in the garden and she doesn't recognize him.
We were reading this story with our almost 4 year old this week
and she found it very strange that Mary didn't recognize
Jesus. Almost incomprehensible.
You know she. Was like they were friends.
And, and she was kind of like, you know, we moved on and then a
little. Bit later on she was like.
But why didn't she recognize him?
They were friends. Like she should have known who
he was, you know, So funny. It's a funny little detail, but.
John almost certainly wants us to notice that she assumes he's
the gardener. Because.
If you think about the creation account we were just recounting
in Genesis. 2 The very first. Human being is placed in a
garden and given the work of tending to it.
To. Bear the image of God.
Is to be a. Gardener is to tend to the
people and the things that have been placed around.
You to be a. Keeper of the Creation.
This is the. Original vocation given to the
humans in the very beginning. And here in this new creation,
Resurrection Garden, the risen Jesus appears in the original
vocation for the first humans. He's rightly recognized as the
one who tends the ground, as the one who tends the creation.
And so we think that. This is a silly error.
On Mary's part, but what I think is even truer underneath.
This is that she doesn't realize how correct she is that she's.
Come face to face with the gardener.
The man asks what she's looking for and she tells him she just
wants to find where they've. Put the body.
She wants to be near him and that's all she has.
There's no. Theological category for.
Anything beyond that. And then he says her name, Mary,
one word, and she recognizes him.
She knows him and I think this is the center.
Of the whole passage, not the empty.
Tomb. Not the disciples racing to the
empty tomb, not even Mary being sent away after.
This. Not the folded grave clothes.
This. Moment because the resurrection
doesn't announce itself with some kind of apologetic argument
for all the reasons. Why Jesus must certainly.
As a matter. Of historical fact have.
Risen from the dead this day we present to.
The jury exhibits. AB and C it doesn't come to.
Us as a legal. Argument.
Or a thesis that's. Defended before a crowd with a
string of straw man. A strong man.
Bulletproof legal logical arguments.
Full of polemic certainty, it comes through being known, being
known by the gardener, by the one who tends the creation, by
the one who tends. Your soul, your life.
And Mary hearing her name in the.
Voice of the rabbi who she thought.
Was gone. The Good Shepherd passed through
death out the other side. And came back and the first
thing that. He does before.
Anything else before any explanation, before any
teaching. He doesn't even perform any more
miracles after this point. He calls.
Her by her name Mary and she recognizes him and she says
Riboni teacher and I think the reason that John tells.
It this way is because this is the.
Way that resurrection continues to happen.
This is the way. That the new life of the risen
Jesus continues to come into our lives.
Not by some spectacle, not by something that grabs our
attention. Not with trumpets.
Not in the dramatic. Or the obvious.
But in the ordinary. Way that it.
Comes to Mary, hearing her name spoken by a friend and
recognizing him. It's quiet.
It's in the. Dark through the.
Experience of being known, that we come to know the risen Jesus
and so through something that that finds you in grief, in the
dark, in confusion. That you thought you were.
Carrying alone by. Yourself while it's still.
Dark, the risen Jesus speaks the names.
Of the people he's. Calling to himself and.
This is also. The moment to name what the
resurrection actually is. Because I think the word gets
used loosely. And I I don't want to.
I don't want to let it. The resurrection isn't a
metaphor for things getting better.
It's not spiritual symbol of hope.
The tomb is empty. The.
Body that was laid. On the tomb on Friday is not
there. What happened to Jesus isn't
some kind of resuscitation or a return to ordinary life.
The way that it was before. It is complete transformation.
New creation matters in this. Story A physical.
Body that is somehow both continuous with what it was and
has become something completely new is at the center.
Of this story, He, Jesus is is touchable.
He's real, but he moves through locked doors.
And isn't always recognized and is.
What the scriptures called the first fruits.
Of a new kind of existence, one where the entire creation.
As we see it. Is being pulled forward into the
future. And then Jesus says something
kind of unexpected. To Mary, he says.
Do not hold on to me. Do not cling.
And I think at a glance this seems sort of.
Cold Mary thought Jesus was dead.
And now he's not dead. And now she recognizes him.
And the first thing that he says is don't cling to me.
And I think. If I were Mary, I'd be like.
OK, you know, like why? Why are you being like that?
I I think. One of the things that Jesus
communicates in saying this. Is that this isn't just a.
Return to the way that things were.
I'm not back to just keep doing the things that we were doing
before and we pick. Up the story where we left off
the resurrected Jesus. Can be encountered but can't be
contained, can't be pinned to a specific moment.
You can be met by him, but you can't freeze the encounter in
time. And I think when I hear.
Jesus, say the words. Don't cling to me.
I hear that the ways that we. Experience new life.
The ways that we. Experience the the.
Life of the Resurrected. Jesus coming into our life.
It's not something that can be returned to or captured like a
museum piece. We can't go back to the way that
things were before Friday. It's not a restoration of
something that came before. It's not a return.
It's something altogether new. And I think you and I can
probably think of moments in our.
Lives where we've had. Some kind of encounter with the
what I would call the presence of God.
Or the love of Jesus. Or some people might even just
call transcendence where the weight.
Of the beauty of the world, of the love.
Of God sort of comes. Crashing into your life.
And if you're not? Careful you sort of.
Spend a lot of time trying to find that again.
To recreate the. Circumstances in your life, you
know, what was I doing? What did I?
Have for breakfast that day. Who was I hanging out with and
and try to find this like healthier.
More. Exciting place that you were in
at one point. I think there's a version of
Christianity that really becomes about trying to hold on to
something, trying to revive some version of safety or.
Certainty that felt solid. Once 5 or 10 or 40 or 100 or
500. Years ago, but.
Jesus said to Mary and, and I think maybe even to us, don't
the new creation, the future Kingdom of God breaking into the
present can't be fully comprehended by looking back.
It's ahead of us. Breaking something open.
That we thought was sealed, that we thought was put away out of.
Reach from us, and I want to talk for just a moment about
what I think makes this Sunday more than just an annual
commemoration of this. Part of the story it's that
this, this first day. Of the new.
World The. First day of new.
Creation that Jesus steps. Out of the tomb, into is not
over, Paul writes in Second Corinthians.
Chapter 4. God who said let light.
Shine out of darkness made his light shine in our hearts again.
Quoting Genesis 1, he's saying that the same voice that spoke
at the beginning. The voice.
That called light. That called material reality out
of nothing. Is still.
Speaking and new creation isn't just a past event that we look
at from a distance. We can easily think that.
The story of Jesus. Being raised from the dead is
something that we're looking back 2000 years in history.
To sort of. Take a gander at once a Year and
think a little bit about what it means for us, but I think.
The truth about this story is that the first.
Day of the New World is not over, I think paying attention.
Is the the spiritual practice that Easter?
Calls us into, not just the. Belief in the.
Resurrection as an intellectual. Exercise.
That we can sort of assent to and say.
Yeah, I think. Jesus was raised from the dead
back in the day. Check.
We're being called into a way of seeing and learning to notice
the ways that new creation is actually breaking through into
our lived reality in places that we might otherwise.
Walk past without a second thought there.
Are moments of unexpected kindness from someone you may
have completely written off, conversations that were supposed
to go one way and end up going someplace else entirely.
There are moments when we think a relationship in our life is
finished, and it takes one small, unexpected step toward
reconciliation, toward resolution in a morning when you
wake up and something that's been.
Heavy for a. Long time suddenly.
Feels a little bit lighter. Almost inexplicably, these are
not small things, these. Are the first day of new?
Creation crashing into the. Present there's a a little.
Passage from Thomas Merton that I always think about when I when
I think about this. Idea.
He had a moment like this in 1958.
He was a monk. He was someone who spent years
living behind monastery. Walls by.
Choice and lived in Kentucky. He went into Louisville on some
errand and was standing on a street corner, 4th and Walnut,
and suddenly something cracked open in him and he wrote about
it. Later I was.
Suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I.
Loved all those. People that they were mine and I
was theirs. That we could not be alien to
one another, even. Though we were total.
Strangers. It was like waking from a dream
of separateness. And then he wrote this line.
Which I haven't. Been able to get out of my head
all week. There is no way of telling
people that they are all walking around shining like the sun and
friends. I think this.
Is one of the places where the resurrected Jesus meets us.
Most intimately when we have the opportunity, when we have the
presence of mind, to slow down and to notice.
People to notice the God. In people.
The ways that that. The imprint of the gardener is
on our neighbors, is on the people that we rub.
Shoulders with at work. Is on our difficult family
members. This is resurrection language.
It's what it. Looks like when we finally
suddenly. See the first day of new.
Creation breaking in all around us because something is shining
through the ordinary world. That we would have.
Completely missed 5 minutes. Earlier.
And I think it's important to note that Merton didn't have
that moment in a sanctuary. Sanctuaries are beautiful.
I'm so happy to be here with you this morning, reading the
scriptures and singing songs. But resurrection moments
probably most often come to us in our ordinary.
Everyday lives. Merton had this moment on a
street corner in the middle. Of a busy city.
The new creation was. Already at work in the world.
And for just a moment. He could see it.
The English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote it this way.
The world is charged. With the grandeur.
Of God it will. Flame out like shining from
shook foil. He knew the darkness, and when
you read this poem in in its entirety, it wrestles honestly
with. Why, if the world carries this
charge of beauty, it's so easy? To miss and the answer that he
gives. Is that we're distracted.
And we're pressed down and we're worn smooth, he says.
By the weight of. Ordinary living the world.
Is smeared with. Trade and toil.
And we lose the. Capacity to notice but this
isn't where the poem ends it pivots and he.
Writes because the Holy. Ghost over the bent.
World broods with. Warm breasts and with, ah,
bright wings. The Spirit is still.
Brooding over the world that you and I live in, the spirit that
animates the. Life of the first day of the
new. Creation and the way.
That the. Spirit moved over the.
Waters at the very. First, creation.
God's presence is moving over the waters of the unformed.
Parts of the world. Around us, beckoning this life
into the present. And so the question that's put
to us is not only. Do you believe?
That this happened, it's. Are you learning to see it?
This is the crucial question that we must ask ourselves
every. Time we reflect on the
resurrection of Jesus the God man come as a human.
Put to death, swallowed by death.
But conquers death and comes out the other.
Side. Are you learning to see it?
Where is the Spirit? Bringing life to you right now.
Is it in your relationships? Is it in your neighborhood?
Is it in parts of your own inner life that you'd maybe quietly
given up on? Where is resurrection pressing
through? Where is the gardener standing
waiting for you to? Hear your.
Name and I want. To also briefly say.
It's not just our individual. Lives that are caught.
Up in this to stand up on a morning like this one and say.
Christ is. Risen is an act of defiance.
The resurrection is. The church's counter.
Proclamation to every system to. Every power to every.
Empire that runs on the logic of doom and hopelessness.
Every way that. As Hopkins.
Said the world presses. Us down and wears us smooth.
We push back against it by standing up on this morning and
confessing Christ is risen. It's a it's.
A refusal to concede. To every voice.
That's insisting that what's broken stays broken and only
gets. Worse.
And that what's lost is simply gone, it says.
That the God who spoke light out of the.
First, darkness hasn't gone quiet on us.
And so. I want to close with Mary still.
In the garden, she came before dawn.
While it was still dark. With grief and pain coming
because she loved someone who was dead and she didn't come.
With faith. Or answers or certainty or any
of those things. And she was the one who ended up
being the first person to carry the news.
That the world had. Changed forever and so friends.
Those of you who. Find.
Yourselves here. In a moment where you look
around and and it might. Feel like it is still dark?
My encouragement to you is that you may very well find
yourselves being the first person.
To carry the. Good news that the world has
changed forever back into your the brokenness in your family
system. Or in your workplace, or just to
the. Parts of your inside life that
you've not quite been able to make sense of.
Friends, Jesus, resurrection and these ordinary resurrection
moments. Are where we.
Become awake. To.
The love of God in our lives. And we don't have to wait until
we have everything sorted, until we have all of our questions
answered, until we can make sense of the circumstances
around us, until we find ourselves.
A little bit less depressed. Or a little bit less anxious,
they come crashing into the. Real world.
The world that we. Live in.
The real world. And it's a world that's being
invaded by the joy and the unrelenting.
Love of the God who? Who?
Loved it into being. So we are still.
In that first day, it's not behind us.
The first day of the new. Creation is the age that we're
living in right now, where this present age and the age to come
are intertwined, and the gardener is still standing in
the garden and is still speaking the names of the ones.
Who look for their teacher. And the invitation of the
resurrection is to be people who are paying attention.
People. Who are learning to see people
who can say I have seen the. Lord, because they.
Heard their name called. While it was still dark.
And so as we. Move toward worship.
And ministry. I want to invite the worship
team back up and I want to say something directly to anyone who
might be in the room who hasn't made a decision to.
To follow Jesus. The resurrection is not
primarily about getting your individual soul into heaven.
I know that's. A popular A popular take, but
the. Resurrection is about the
remaking of the whole cosmos, the.
Whole. Creation, everything that is,
everything that ever has been, the whole human story.
And God isn't just patching up the old.
World. He's making a new one, and it's
already begun. That's the scale.
Of the thing that we're talking about when.
We read this story. And the thing about that?
Story is that it's so big that there is.
Room for you to live inside of it.
There is room for you to. Look at a story where.
The God who makes the world, who sees its brokenness, Who sees
your pain, Who sees. The ways that your.
Life is messed up and says the restoration that I'm bringing,
the ways that I'm repairing the world are.
So big that. Even you fit inside of it.
And so I just want to encourage you not as a transaction, but as
an orientation. Of your whole life.
Toward the one who spoke the world into existence.
If you've never done that. If you've never.
Thought to yourself, the story is so big.
The story is so. Good.
The person of Jesus is so incomprehensibly kind that I
want to turn. All of it over, I'd love, I'd
love. To pray with you this morning.
One of our team would love to pray with you this morning.
Mary showed up in the dark and the risen Jesus called her name.
And if any of you find that that is happening to you today, come,
come and find one of us. Jared might have a couple things
for for ministry, but I just want to say.
If. If today is full.
If you're full of joy. If you're full of hope, If
you're full of faith, let it be. Full bring the joy.
And if you are carrying. Something incredibly heavy or
you find yourself just feeling a little bit.
Confused or skeptical about all of that?
That's OK. Mary came to the tomb while it
was still. Dark.
And so I would just encourage you to bring whatever it is,
anything that you would want to receive.
Prayer for. To to one of our.
Team will be posted. Up around the room.