A Pretty Fragile Way To Start A Religion

Sermon-Easter morning April 24, 2011
(Based on the words of J. Gresham Machen, “Prophets False and True,” in God Transcendent (Edinburgh, 1982), page 125).
God, save me from the sin of paring down the gospel to suit the pride of men.
God grant that I may deliver your message straight and full and plain, that, whatever else I may sacrifice, I will have one thing— the favor of my Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Do you know how your parents met? My father turned into a coffee shop one day and started flirting with the young girl who was the new waitress. When you find out how, quixotic, how chancy it was that got you here, you start thinking, wow, my life started in a very fragile way. A Serbian terrorist shot a minor Austro-Hungarian archduke in Sarajevo, Bosnia, in 1914, and that started a cascade of events that led to World War I. By the end of that War 4 years after that assassination sixteen million people died.
Mary Magdalene goes to a tomb where they have buried her friend, Jesus. What if she had slept in? What if she was too grief stricken to go? When she arrives, she sees the tomb is empty and decides to go and tell Jesus’ followers. Peter and John return to the tomb and find the clothes neatly folded ( this is to prove that grave robbers didn’t take the body) and the gospel says, (20:10) “Then the disciples returned to their homes.” What if the story ended there? What if Peter and John looked inside the tomb and thought, “hmm, that’s strange, Jesus is gone, let’s go back and have lunch”? Mary stays at the tomb, grieving. Two angels appear, and then Jesus. She doesn’t even recognize him at first! Until he speaks her name she thinks he is the gardener. As Barbara Brown Taylor writes: “The resurrection is the one and only event in Jesus’ life that was entirely between him and God. There were no witnesses whatsoever. No one on earth can say what happened inside that tomb, because no one was there. They all arrived after the fact. Two of them saw clothes. One of them saw angels. Most of them saw nothing at all.”(The Christian Century 1998)
But Mary is transformed-and she goes to tell the eleven disciples. And they go to tell the world. Bishop and Biblical Scholar N. T. Wright says that the greatest proof of the resurrection is that 11 scared little men who seem afraid of their own shadow suddenly overnight are willing to die for what they have experienced-and to die bravely. Does it strike you as fragile and frail how all of this is?
What if Mary the mother of Jesus had said “no” to the angel 30 years earlier? Theangel comes to Mary. This young woman and tells he that God has a wonderful plan for her life, and she simply responds, “”it’s not a good day for me, maybe next year?”
What if Mary Magdalene hadn’t gone to the tomb that morning? What if she overslept, what if in her grief she gave up, gave in, gave out? What if….What if… Does it strike you how thin, how fragile all of this was as the beginning of a world religion? What if Mary, thought to herself;”you know, Peter and John didn’t always treat me with a lot of respect as a woman and follower, I think I will keep all this to myself?”
It all depended on one person being changed-who then goes and tells another person who is changed-and another- …Life, especially life changing, life altering, life transforming events always seem fragile and thin when we look back at them. They always seem simple and uncomplicated. They appear so fragile, so tenuous, so feeble. You think this is thin? Ask your parents, the people who started YOUR life, the people who gave you life how they met.
Christianity, faith in Jesus has always depended, relied on, trusted in one person being transformed by the resurrection-and then their reaching out to another. Think about it. All of Christianity, all of Easter, all of God’s great power, may depend on what happens in your life-and who you tell. Does that feel like an awesome responsibility? Does that feel a little heavy? Burdensome? The thing is, when Mary Magdalene goes to tell Peter she isn’t thinking, “why did Jesus have to choose me? Why does it all depend on me? Why does all the responsibility for carrying this news fall on me” All she was thinking was, “my life is changed, and I have to let people know”. It wasn’t a burden for her, she didn’t act saddled with a terrible duty-for Mary learning that Jesus was raised was an amazing joy; she wasn’t weighed down-she was set free; she wasn’t overwhelmed, she was lifted up. Mary experienced a shift in the universe, a transformation for her life and the lives of the whole world, and all she could think was-I HAVE TO LET PEOPLE KNOW!
What if this same news depends on us? What if the whole world depends on us? All of Christianity, all of Easter, all of God, all of life may just depend on whether we let someone else know what has happened? Is there freedom in your faith? Is there joy in your life? Is there hope is you? Someone I think a lot of recently said to me, “how do I bring someone I love to Christ?” I told them, “just be loving, faithful, and full of hope and they will want to come all by themselves”-we are in a hungry world, carrying around platefuls of food. Let someone know what the resurrection means in your life. Is there joy in the resurrection, let someone know. Is there hope in this good news? Let someone know. Think of yourself as Mary Magdalene, and the whole world is counting on you. I know this seems pretty fragile, pretty thin, pretty powerless as a way of changing the world. But if the Resurrection shows us anything, it’s that one person being lifted up, one person being changed, one person being filled so full of God-will be enough. Hallelujah, he is risen, indeed.
Amen.