Easter Is About New Life

I'm sure I've said this before in a sermon or previous blog post, but it bears repeating and points to many other stories that are immediately relevant this Easter season. While Christianity emphasizes that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, the story of Easter is not about death, but about life. The most dramatic, literary example in the gospels is in the Gospel of John, when Mary encounters the risen Christ in the garden. Think about the literary images from Holy week. Green palm leaves on Palm Sunday are a symbol of life, sort of, but those palm leaves have been cut off from the living plants that produced them. Maundy Thursday is a meal, and food certainly represents life. This Passover meal also represents not just biological life, but the thriving that comes from liberation--the liberation of the Hebrew slaves from their oppressors in Egypt. The Maundy Thursday Passover meal is not all about life, though. Liberation and life are accomplished by the sacrifice of the Passover lamb, and also OUR liberation from sin and death is accomplished by the sacrifice of the Lamb of God. The week has evolved from a dead symbol of life, to a meal tainted with themes of death, to death itself on Good Friday.

Maundy Thursday and Good Friday define our salvation over against death; the death of the Passover sacrifice, the death of the first-born of the Egyptians, the death of Jesus. If Christ is victorious, who is Christ victorious over? "The last enemy to be defeated is death."

A remarkable thing about the story of Mary in the garden is that death is the void in the story. Mary comes looking for death and does not find it. The garden itself is a contrast to all the scenes of Holy Week. Lush, living plants are all around where on Palm Sunday, there were only dead leaves, on Maundy Thursday there was the looming specter of death, on Good Friday there was the place of the skull. Where there are soldiers and politicians who seek death on Good Friday, Easter Sunday finds angels and a gardener, whose very job is the life of plants. On Easter Sunday Mary finds not a body but her Rabbouni, arisen and alive. Though I couldn't find it, I know I've preached about this contrast before: the stones and skulls and death of Holy Week vs. the thick, thriving life of Easter morning.

Another thing happens. Jesus sends Mary to spread the word. Jesus tells her to "go to my brothers," and tell them. When she goes, her message is "I have seen the Lord." This is, like so much of the rest of the Gospel of John's Easter story, another retelling of the old Pentateuch stories. On the first day, like the first day in Genesis, there is a garden. God breathes God's spirit into a pile of dirt to give it life, and Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit into the group of dirty disciples dead with grief, and they come alive. What's happening here is that Mary is going to the group like Moses went to the Hebrews. God chose the Hebrews and called them God's own people and made them into a nation. Jesus sends Mary to the disciples, he calls them brothers, and he makes them into a community that will become the new church.

This is a whole 'nuther scale of life. It's no longer just about individual life but life in and among a community, life AS a community. Pentecost, Luke's version of the disciples receiving the Holy Spirit, is sometimes called the birthday of the church. For the Gospel of John, that happens on the evening of Easter Sunday. The Cross was a symbol of death; the empty tomb is a symbol of life and resurrection. By the end of the first day, Jesus has created a new thing: a new community, the church. The rest of Luke and Acts tell about the growth of this new life, the spread of the Gospel and the growth of the church. This is new life. This is new friends learning about Christ, getting to know each other, living in community together, and becoming the body of Christ. Loving each other, and staying connected to "the vine" which is Jesus Christ keeps all that life new and fresh.

Mindfulness experts want us to be aware of the moment we're in as much as possible: to savor the food we're eating while we're eating it, to enjoy the feeling of the rain or sun while we're feeling it. Maybe the most important thing about that quest for mindfulness is to enjoy the people we have relationships with while they're present, and to be present to them in that moment as well. Some people can be annoying, but if you give them the benefit of the doubt, do not ascribe motivations to them, and practice being mindful of them, then you'll find you can love them and enjoy that love in the moment--in every moment. Imagine the result of a whole community doing that. Imagine a whole community where there's no fault-finding, but only encouragement in love. THAT's the lush, green garden of thriving life that Jesus creates anew on Easter Sunday. That's the lush, green garden of life that we can live in for the whole Easter season and every Sunday and every day.

Blessings,

--Chas