Acts 10:34-43; I Corinthians 15:19-26; John 20:1-18

The Reverend Paul DeLain Allick, St. George’s Episcopal Church, April 4, 2010

There is no death as devastating as needless death. We hear lately of young teenagers having been so harassed at school that they are committing suicide. Of all the death I’ve been hearing about lately, war, natural disasters, domestic violence and disease these deaths sting in a particular way. In these deaths is the heart of death. We humans are so cruel to each other. We are forever looking past each other’s human dignity and hurting each other.

Death is all around us in the literal sense and in the metaphorical sense. We kill each other comment by comment, reactive criticism by reactive criticism. While this isn’t as dramatic as actual death it serves death just as loyally.

In the 1950’s theologian Paul Tillich wrote in a sermon titled “Love is Stronger than Death.” He opens the sermon with this, “In our time as in every age, we need to see something stronger than death. Death has become powerful in our time, in individual human beings, in families, in nations and in mankind as a whole.”

Tillich points out that at the heart of all death is our self imposed isolation, “Every death means a parting, separation, isolation, opposition and not participation.” He describes what we humans always do: our souls want to be alone to nurse our misfortunes and grudges. Ironically, it is out of our own pain that we kill others. What happens in that process is that love and reconciliation are killed; we put to death any possibility of life.

Over and over we act as if this physical life was all that was ever going to matter. As St. Paul writes to the Church in Corinth, “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” In other words if we are following Christ to make our individual lives safe and self-justified only for what we know in this world, then we are not living in Christ at all. In Christ God calls us out of the temporal into the eternal; from the finite to the infinite.

St. Paul writes that Christ came to destroy every authority and power in our lives that brings death. And those powers and authorities are not only external. They often live within our own hearts. We live in death when we let our past rule our present; when we let all the fears of the future condition our life today. We live in death when we categorize each other by what we think we know about each other. These are the  powers within us that cause us to be the walking dead, separated by conflict and an underlying despair.

We all died in Adam because we all wanted to get our own way. We all wanted to know the knowledge of life and death. As soon as Adam and Eve ate of that tree of knowledge, the first thing that happened is that they became ashamed of their nakedness, their very humanity.

We all will be made alive again in Christ because Christ comes to destroy all the powers and authorities of death: our own shame and guilt which lead us to be cruel and harsh towards others.

When we have walked with Christ and destroyed all of those powers and authorities within us then the last enemy, death, will be destroyed.

Today we remember that day when Jesus’ disciples went to the tomb to anoint a dead body. They thought that it was all over. Maybe they were hoping that he would come back as he said he would but mostly they were serving the reality of death. After they find the empty tomb they scatter in some excitement and confusion.

Mary of Magdala stays behind. She is too grief stricken. Instead of seeing the resurrection she sees conspiracy. She is dead in her suspicion of others. She is confused and sad and needs someone to blame. She just knows that some higher-ups have stolen Jesus’ body. He is so wrapped up in death that she can’t recognize the risen Christ in front of her.

Then he speaks her name. He recognizes her full humanity. As she is recognized she recognizes. Death begins to lift from her. She rises out of the bitterness and suspicion which has caused her despair.

Her first response is to hold onto this physical presence of Jesus. He tells her to not do that; she needs to go and tell.

To see life in death is to go and live and to invite others to live. As Mary is loved by Jesus she returns that love. Now she must go and love others in the same way.

Love is stronger than death.

Eastertide is fifty days long. It is ten days longer than Lent because our resurrection is stronger than our brokenness. I invite you over the next fifty days to be reborn. Look for life within each other. Resist reactivity and embrace responses given in love and patience. Work with Christ to die to your grudges and criticisms and live again.

Like the budding and scurrying life outside these windows shake off the winter and rise!