Amateurs - The Love of the Two Mary's

"As so often happens, the great discovery in the drama that is Easter was the work of amateurs.” An amateur is, in the primary sense of the term, a "lover." Our favourite amateur sleuths on TV are lovers – lovers of people, of intrigue and of little hints, the nods and winks that break what seems to be unbreakable alibis and stories. They stumble almost by accident onto the truth and discover the truth.  Our history is full of amateurs who have discovered new stars, new formulas and new ways of doing things the experts would be, and are, jealous of.

 

“…the Mary's went to the tomb out of love”, love for Jesus, love for the truth, love for hope... “. If we know anything of human nature, we know that love was the primary force that drove them there.” Not inquisitiveness, not fear, not a need to confirm that their worst nightmare had happened. They went out of love, a passionate heart called them forward to stand near and with the one who had held all their hopes and dreams.

 

You see, “Love is a more reliable alarm clock than Faith or Hope - more likely to get you out of bed and get you going early in the morning.[1]” Love, a word we use much but understand little. Love is a term that has been emasculated of it’s power and it’s beauty in a world were words have only an utilitarian use. 

The Mary’s get up early, and get to the tomb before everyone else. Maybe they wanted to see if they could further care for the body, maybe they hoped they could see him for one last time, maybe…… maybe… they just had to be near him. They had loved him, he them, and love and the memory of that love was all they had left.

 

“And their love was rewarded: “⁹Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him.”

 

Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski relates a discussion with a young boy who has a plate of fish in front of him. The young boy says, “I love fish.” The Rabbi asks, “You love fish?”. “Yes”, the boy replies, “I love fish.” The Rabbi replies, “ Is it love for the fish that makes you catch it, kill it and boil it?”. He continues, “It is not the fish you love, but you love yourself. You love how the fish makes you feel. You do not love the fish. You love yourself.” He finishes with, "So much of what is called love, is fish love."

 

So much of what passes for love of Jesus the Christ is indeed fish love. We can love Jesus for what we believe Jesus can do for us, from fire insurance to a superman rescue, from rags to rishes, for healing and redemption. There is much of ourselves in this love. We love Jesus as long we are not made uncomfortable, challenged with ideas and opinions that turn our world upside.

 

We love Jesus if we can still  have our overseas holidays, our big houses and our fancy cars. We love Jesus if everything goes our way. We watch politicians invoke God to support ideas God would never entertain. We have sport men and women who thank God for winning a medal or trophy. We love Jesus if our privileged lifestyle continues and suggest others need to love Jesus like us if they are going to get out of the mess they are in. Our love for Jesus can be little more than self love, love of self, and the church is not exempt from such love. Love of liturgy, music,  existence and fancy clobber all smack of self love.

 

What the world and the church need is the love of the Mary’s, that simple love that goes to the one they love despite a broken heart, tear filled eyes and tired bodies, people who are finding the silence of God to be like a black hole into which they may very well disappear. Yet they go to the one they love.

Here in this parish I watch this love happen week in week out. People come with broken hearts, broken bodies and carrying great burdens but they come and they participate in the liturgy or they carry out their small and seemingly insignificant acts of love and they see Jesus. They do the flowers, polish the pews, tidy the candles, prepare the elements for the Eucharist, play the organ, prepare the choir, sing in the choir, make palm crosses, do the pew sheets, count the money, balance the books, run the book sales, manage the website, mentor a student, tidy the church for events such as this, and more, much, much more, and they see Jesus.

 

Being at the tomb and experiencing the resurrection of Jesus the Christ is not the task of the professionals, the clergy, the studied alone; it is the gift of love. Love that makes the journey to the place where mysteries are revealed, and the love that responds with the beauty of grace. And this love is the domain of the amateur, the ordinary person who sees beyond the mechanical actions of the tasks they carry out into the wonders hidden from those who are more learned and studied.

In the midst of a dark world where we name weapons of destruction with sexy names like Mother or Father of All Bombs, what is the response of love? The response is the love of beauty, mystery and wholeness of the ordinary. Someone said to me when asked this question, I just try to do beautiful things in the ordinary everyday acts of my life and hope that will help. It is the only thing that helps.

 

The two Mary’s remind us this Easter by their act of beauty and love, that such acts will never be denied no matter how dark the morning maybe, that beauty and love are their own own reward and only rewards those who let them loose in the world, making no claims of ownership. While I am sure the two Mary’s loved fish, their love for Jesus was no fish love. Amen

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[1] John C. Purdy. Chapter 12 of God With a Human Face (1993), republished at Religion Online.Fish Love

An Encounter with the Living Lord!

I remember taking a group of students to Sydney on an art excursion. We visited many places including the NSW Art Gallery where we saw the best art has to offer. But the place, which took their breath away, was St Mary’s Catholic Cathedral. These were non-churched students who had barely stepped inside a church of its type before. Something truly remarkable happened. As they entered through the open door, the beauty, the silence and the sense of the holy transformed them. Students crossed themselves with holy water, went to pews and sat down in silent ‘prayer’, others knelt, others just respected these acts of piety and sat quietly soaking up the scene in front of them

I have witnessed similar in other places, for example after students have walked the Sandakan to Ranau Death March where almost 2 and a half thousand Australians died, only 6 survived. The visit to the war cemetery on Labuan Island takes on the aura of an encounter with something beyond the normal.

Easter day, today, was that kind of event for Mary, Peter and the other disciple who ventured out to the tomb. She had watched as they processed into Jerusalem in direct competition to the annual military parade of power and might. She watched as Jesus took himself out of the city, and often during that week, off into a place of solitude to pray, contemplate and reflect on where he had come from and what he had to do.

She was close enough to Jesus to understand that he accepted that his actions, words and presence tormented the political and religious powers and could only end in one way – death on a cross.

She stood on the hill outside the city and watched them nail him to the cross and she felt every nail, every jeer, and every tear. She stayed until they took him down and away to the tomb. She had died with him. Now she was back, resigned that it was over, but hoping she can see him one more time.

What happens next is more than she can hope for and, almost, more than she can believe. She is confronted by the risen Jesus, the Jesus that came again into her life and enlivened her faith, hope and purpose. Whatever happened outside that tomb, Mary was resurrected. She was alive again and so was Jesus. He was alive in her life and in the imagination of the world.

In Mary’s case the encounter with Jesus was mystical, transforming and loving, an encounter based on a devotion that could not be shaken by the events of the last few days.

Mystical experiences cross the thresh hold between the real and the mysterious. They are full of wonder, seem real and, at the same time, one questions if they actually occurred. Ronald Goetz suggests that "Maybe the various Gospel accounts are best read as innocent attempts -- decades after the first Easter -- to provide some historical hook on which first-century believers could hang their experiential faith." Mary had an experience that was outside what seemed possible. Yet he encounter seemed real, concrete, visible. Had she not hugged Jesus? Had he not looked like the Rabbi she loved?

Experience is often a questionable quantity in this scientific age. Unless it can be weighed, measured, hypothesised and fits in with all proven theories (is that an oxymoron?) it is deemed to not have happened. Yet experience is the only thing a person has to judge the world by. What happens to me; how it makes feel, know and see, and how it changes me for the future is essential to our development as a person. We are not a package of theories, formulas and research papers wrapped up in human flesh. We experience, and what we experience determines who we are.

Mary and the disciples experience a risen Jesus, how they had that experience and how the ‘saw’ Jesus is not as important as what that experienced did to them.

It transformed them. It transformed Mary, the disciples and the world. Mary was longing for Jesus to return and to be and do just as he had been and done before. Craig Barnes writes "What we long for, what we miss and beg God to give back, is dead. Easter doesn't change that. So we cannot cling to the hope that Jesus will take us back to the way it was. The way out of the darkness is only by moving ahead." Transformation takes what was there before and infuses it with new meaning, a new sense and a new sensibility. Transformation rarely occurs on a bright sunny day – when life is rolling along and all is well. Transformation occurs when we disappear down the rabbits hole, to quote Alice in Wonderland or disappear into James Cameron’s Abyss. When we are in the deepest black place is when we have the greatest possibility of transformation.

Mary and the disciples were indeed in such a place. Their world had collapsed, there was nothing left of the previous superstructure to patch together and begin again. Something completely new had to occur. And it did. Some of us know that story personally. Life is rolling along fine and then along comes relationship breakup, a major illness, financial ruin, tragedy or an unexpected death. Everything we had is no more, or seems to no meaning any more. We wander in the wilderness, we feel like we have fell down the rabbit hole or into the abyss, and we can see no way forward. Then something happens. A word, a thought, an encounter with someone, prayer or something and we begin to build a new life for ourselves and move forward. That is transformation. Mary experienced such an experience. Where does it come from?

Love. In our case our love for self, for others or for life itself kicks in and we begin to live again. Without love life is a drudge, with love it wriggles it’s back to vitality. Mary’s transformation was based on love. It was love that introduced her to Jesus in the first place, that kept her going during what we now know as holy week, it was love that helped her stand while Jesus was crucified and it was love that brought her back to the tomb.

And it was love that allowed her to transform herself through her mystical encounter with Jesus. She didn’t understand what had happened. She didn’t have to. She loved Jesus and that was all that mattered. She grasped the idea that love and transformation, mystical love and transformation, have no need to be understood. They are as real as the experiences they embody and are to embraced as such.

Love is the key rational ingredient in the Good News that found its ultimate expression in three days in the life of Jesus. For Mary and those of us who have encountered Jesus mystically and been transformed, love is all we need. Barbara Brown Taylor ."What happened in the tomb was entirely between Jesus and God. For the rest of us, Easter began the moment the gardener said, "Mary!" and she knew who he was. That is where the miracle happened and goes on happening -- not in the tomb but in the encounter with the living Lord.”

My prayer this Easter is that each of us gathered here and in churches throughout the world continue to live out of and to give witness to the power of an encounter with the living Lord. It will change your life and the lives of those you meet. Amen

After the Body Was Gone!

^{Mathew 28: 8}So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples.

The noise of Friday was over. The bodies taken down. Only a few close family members and others stayed. They watched as the bodies were taken. Jesus to the borrowed tomb, the others to what ever space was available. 

The majority of the disciples had long since scurried back to a safe place, no doubt lost and bewildered by what had happened in one short, or was it, long day?

After the body was gone, the women and the one remaining disciple trudged off into the night, weary with sorrow and sadness. Grief is an extremely tiring experience, especially grief received under tragic circumstances. They walked home in the dark.

And how dark it was. Not just physically but spiritually and emotionally. You see they did not know about Sunday yet. Unlike us who leave the Good Friday service, they didn’t know Sunday was coming. They were to spend Saturday, and possibly forever, in the dark place of grief and loss of hope and a future.

Saturday would have been a long day. The day after a funeral when all have gone away and you are left on your own is a long, long day. There is no distraction, no action to keep you occupied. You sit and think about what was and what could have been. "If" only becomes something of a mantra. It is a day of no thing doing. The world has stopped and you can’t get off.

Saturday is the space in between the past and the future and as they had no idea what the future would look like, the space became more of an abyss than a short interruption.

It was something they shared with Jesus without knowing it. Jesus, too, was in the space-in-between. In the tomb he was alone, descending into the abyss that is death, without support, wisdom, love, without God, his Father. He was facing the loss of a life he had embraced willingly for a death he faced obediently. Now, what was the future to look like for him? Did he know or was this a journey into a new way of being for him? 

We can’t answer those questions. Nor should we try.

Yet the questions are answered, and as John Purdy suggests, amateurs not theologians, the religious elite or academics, found the answers. Amateurs. Amateurs are those who undertake something out of love for the task at hand. They are not professionals. Amateurs unravel the answer to the riddle of Saturday.

Purdy continues: “Surely the Marys' went to the tomb out of love...if we know anything of human nature, we know that love was the primary force that drove them there. Love is a more reliable alarm clock than Faith or Hope - more likely to get you out of bed and get you going early in the morning."

Just as love had led them to the cross, love brought them to the tomb. They could stay in the darkness no longer. They had to go and see where he lay and to hold a vigil if they could do nothing else. Their steps to the tomb would have been as heavy as those that lead them away from the cross. Their heart was no lighter, their tears no less urgent. Yet go they did.

Standing outside the tomb they experience the revelation of the empty tomb. Matthew tells the story with all the bells and whistles with the intention to get the reader to understand what a world changing experience it was. It was scary and exciting. Most scary things are exciting. One can hardly begin to understand the emotions they experienced. To say it blew their mind would be an understatement. Earthquakes, a moving boulder, an emptying and an angel!

How long they stood there we do not know but we do know, according to Matthew what they did next. ^“So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples.” What a mix of emotions – fear and great joy. One could say it scared the hell out of them! Their fear was one of not understanding what had happened, what would happen, what it meant. Their great joy was because the one they loved was back with them, although I would have probably thrown something at him if he, after he had been crucified and buried, met me with “Greetings”! Was that all he could say? Didn’t he know how they felt?

In the midst of our darkness between Friday and Sunday we now get a glimpse of the light re-entering the world. Our darkness at the loss of Jesus is to be illuminated by his presence.

We know this as a personal truth. We know this as a church to be the truth. We are to celebrate this incredible moment with fear and great joy, because once you have encountered the resurrected Jesus everything, and every shade of things is possible. It is something to fear abut it is something to rejoice in.

Melinda Quivik suggests “The sermon on this day should propel the assembly to leave worship with both awe and celebratory power, eager to see where and how the risen one will meet them in their neighbours and friends, their prayer, their advocacy for what is good and just, and in their own gratitude for life and resurrection."

This moment changed our world. If it has changed your world what are you doing to be the change Christ brings into the world and your relationships? How does this event illuminate your darkness and empower you to go and do as Jesus requests, as the Marys do, despite a sense of fear but with great joy?

This evening we move from the space-in-between towards the coming light. Tomorrow we meet Jesus for ourselves, what is that going to be like for us? Amen

Who Rolled Away The Stone?

On Good Friday we prepared a stone to be used in the Easter Sunday Eucharist. It was to represent the stone which was rolled away from Jesus' tomb. We washed and cleaned it and left it by the front door of the chapel.

When we came in Sunday morning it was gone and could not be found anywhere.

Like Mary Magdalene and the disciples, we were left wondering, who rolled away the stone?