Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Brother Bernard Delcourt, OHC
BCP – Easter early morning service C - Sunday 25 April 2007
Romans 6:3-11
Matthew 28:1-10
Psalm 114
Lord,
May your abiding Love guide us and enlighten us. May your joy be our joy and may your justice be our life. Amen.
*****
These courageous women of the Gospel went to the tomb early on the day after the Sabbath. We ourselves just went through Holy Saturday; we can only imagine how bitter and painful their Passover Sabbath must have been.
Now, after the Passover Sabbath, a religiously enforced time of inaction and contemplation, these courageous and perseverant women are eager to care for the body of their martyred friend and teacher.
They are worried about how they will gain access to his corpse. They are not so worried about persecution. Their society sees them as second-class citizens and to boot, as followers of a failed and discredited dissident. These women are seen as posing little threat to the established order.
But the tomb would be closed by a huge heavy circular slab that slid shut in front of the chamber –- a chamber hewn out of the rock face. How would they budge it out of place?
It is worth noting here that the male disciples have not yet gotten out of their fright and flight reaction to Jesus’ arrest, trial and crucifixion. The strength of fishermen used to hauling nets full of fish out of the water would be welcome this morning. But most probably, in their time and society, embalming a corpse is one of those tasks that gender expectations reserves to women.
*****
And here comes an important aside; sponsored by the son of a Northern European feminist…
If you have paid attention to the scripture readings of these last few weeks, you may have noticed how prominent women are in the narrative. And this, despite the narrative being edited and written by men.
Three points at least, require our attention.
Most importantly, it is a woman who first publicly recognizes Jesus as the Son of God and who symbolically anoints him accordingly. This is the woman in Bethany who anoints Jesus’ head with nard (nard worth a year’s wages, no less). Jesus enjoins that she be remembered by all generations; Matthew complies even if the woman remains nameless. Let’s note that this the only embalming Jesus will receive –- alive or dead -- at the hands of the women who follow him.
Second, women stay with Jesus to his bitter end on the cross. Among the male disciples, only John seems to be able to stay –-John who is probably a very young man issued from the elite of Judean society. As a result, he is not ethnically recognizable as a Galilean disciple of Jesus.
And finally, women are the first witnesses to the resurrection.
Is our God not giving us yet another blatant sign here? Isn’t God including all people in the Kingdom? Whether you are the under-valued, the disregarded or the despised of any society in which you live, full citizenship is yours in the Kingdom of God. May the hearers understand!
And I close this aside which was brought to you by a son of woman.
*****
And now back to the road to Golgotha or thereabouts… Our brave women arrive at the tomb.
“And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men.”
Well! That takes care of opening the tomb and of keeping the soldiers from pestering the women. But more to the point, the messenger of God is described in the same terms as those that were used for the Transfiguration of our Lord. This is one of these Gospel moments where we are transported into the Kingdom of God; it is more than breaking into our reality; for a moment, we live in that Kingdom.
And I love how casual the Angel is. I imagine her (I know, I know, we’ll restart the argument on the sex of angels another time) –- I imagine her sitting atop the circular stone, legs dangling in the air and looking at the women with a lovingly and amused look on her face.
‘Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, “He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.” This is my message for you.’
And so, off they go, not a little frightened but elated at the same time. And it is when they have turned their backs on looking for Jesus among the dead that they encounter him among the living.
The gospel offers a parallel between Jesus being the first child of Mary’s virgin womb and Jesus being laid to rest in a cave freshly hewn from a the soft rock cliff (tuff is a soft volcanic stone that surrounds Jerusalem). Jesus is no longer in the womb of earth, in the chamber of death. He is alive and on the move again.
When a child is born, we don’t dote on and cherish the womb that generated the child; we -- including the mother -- all turn our attention to the child and the new relationships that emerge.
In the same way, Matthew, our Gospel source, takes us away from the tomb, away from Jerusalem and its Temple; away from this Temple that has failed to produce the fruit of justice and peace. The old Temple has failed. The new Temple, the resurrected Jesus, has been raised in three days as he had promised.
And Jesus invites us to get going on the roads of Galilee, on the roads where he preached: “The Kingdom of God is at hand”.
It is there that Jesus will give us the Great Commission to keep his commandments and make them known to the ends of the earth.
And so my beloved Brothers and Sisters:
- having crucified the concepts of God that we need to leave behind us, just as we leave Lent behind us,
- having welcomed and traveled with the questions that have no right to go away this Triduum,
I invite you to embrace Jesus’ commandment to “Love one another as I have loved you” and take it to the next territory that’s opening in our lives. Take it away from the tombs, the mausoleums, the buildings that try to enshrine truths or to petrify laws and take Jesus’ commandment to the roads of the world and the paths of our lives. Go to the Galilee of our times and there we will meet Him who is alive and on the move.
*****
Hallelujah! Christ is risen… The Lord is risen indeed. Hallelujah!
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