St. Gregory’s Church Woodstock

Sunday, 12 April, 2009, Easter Sunday

The Rev’d Susan Auchincloss

John 20:1-18

For today’s reading go to:http://bible.oremus.org

Nature has her secrets, but we humans have questioning minds. Last spring I visited friends who live on the mountain above the village. Standing on their deck, I looked up to where the wall of the house met the eve, about ten feet above our heads. Eastern Phoebes had built a nest right in that angle. In fact, the lip of the nest so nearly touched the eve that I wondered how those wind-borne architects squeezed into their nest. What goes on inside? Those used to be nature’s secrets, but no more. Our friend had installed a pea-sized surveillance camera in the nest. From the vantage point of their kitchen, we watched life in the nest unfold on the screen of their laptop: gaping baby beaks, quivering quills, and a beady-eyed parent, offering a fly.

Supposing it had been possible to install a tiny surveillance camera in Jesus’ tomb, what might the screen have shown? We could imagine that it showed Jesus slowly sitting up, after some thirty-six hours, unwinding the burial cloth, folding it and laying it to the side, summoning angels to roll away the stone, and then walking out into the cool, pre-dawn air of Easter morning. Or, another possibility, perhaps the mystical bird of his baptism came again and breathed new life into him as he lay in the tomb. Whatever it showed, can you think of anything that camera might have shown that would turn your life inside out? Anything that would bring a skeptic to faith? In truth, no matter how far we peer into the cache of nature’s secrets, knowledge alone has no power to transform our lives.

So let me ask you. Was the resurrection another example of nature’s secrets – a branch of reality that we have not yet learned to account for? If so, the resurrection would be a curiosity, a wonder even; but I will still be the same old me in my same old world. I will still give my credit card number to Netflix, not Bread for the World. I will still pray, “Thy will be done,” then rise from my knees and go do as I please. If the resurrection is just one more secret of nature, and not a wind that sweeps me up and turns me around, it will lack any power to transform, and scarcely be an experience to form a faith around.

The trouble with scientific explanations is this: we can wrap our minds around them. It may take years of study, but in the end we understand scientific theories and judge them on their power to explain. In other words, we make scientific explanations meet us on our terms – terms involving logic, proof, reason, analysis, and so on. That works well as far as the natural world is concerned; but if the resurrection met us on such terms, it would qualify as a fact. It would no longer be a saving event. A saving event demands we meet it on its terms. The resurrection is THE saving event. So the real question of the Resurrection is not how did it happen, or even did it happen? The real question is much harder: am I willing to have it happen in me?

Many Christians stand where Mary stood in today’s reading. Over the years she had come to love Jesus; in fact, she may have been his closest disciple. So it is no wonder she wept at his tomb; her whole world, at that moment, centered on loss, on corpses, and the rituals of burial. Then a mysterious stranger appeared; and when he spoke her name she knew that in some sense Jesus was present. In that moment she turned from death to life. True, she did not recognize him by sight; she did not even recognize his voice; but when he spoke her name she knew he lived.

He lived, yet he forbade her to hold on to him. That left her in a kind of limbo. On the one hand, she had her memories: his teachings, his miracles and his boundless generosity. On the other hand, she could no longer feel such day-to-day intimacies as pressing her foot into the sand-print of his foot or pressing her cheek against a cup, still warm from his hand. Mary both had Jesus and did not have him; and the same can be said for many of us today. We have mental images, but little sense of living intimacy.

Like Mary, what we want is the Holy Spirit to brood in us until our hearts sing with the new life of Jesus Christ, resurrection life. What we want is not a spring cleaning for our old life, but our stale, old life turned inside out. What we want is a presence so real that we feel no impulse to cling to things external, as Mary tried to do with Jesus. In time Mary would have what she wanted; but at the time of today’s reading she serves as an emblem of the hunger many Christians feel even to this day. Where can we turn, then, for the real food and not the picture?

In the spiritual life parthenogenesis – that is, reproduction by a single cell alone – doesn't work. The new life of the resurrection requires the participation of both the Holy Spirit and the human heart. The Spirit longs to come into our hearts; and you would think that with all the power of the universe behind the Spirit, penetrating our puny hearts would present no problem. Yet it does; because the Spirit of God will never violate a closed heart. For our parts, our hearts long for the Holy Spirit; and you would think that with all the hunger behind that longing, throwing open the doors to our inner sanctum would present no problem. But it does. We tend to be cautious. We leave the chain on the door. No deal; for the wing span of the Holy Spirit runs to infinite inches. There can be no question of degree, of partial openness. Total self-giving on the Spirit’s part demands total self-surrender on ours.

Yes, I say, supposing I do this; supposing I open myself to Christ’s Spirit. How will I know I have this new, resurrection life in me? I could, perhaps, imagine that I have installed a tiny surveillance camera in my heart. I could check it daily, hourly even, and monitor what kind of activity is going on in there. Do I hear the cheep of joy and peace? Is new freedom stretching its wings? Has fresh zeal for the common good begun to hatch out, along with compassion for myself and others? The Resurrection is not just history, much less natural science; it is a present event, taking place in our hearts even as I speak, as we allow them to be cracked wide open by the holy spirit of new life.