It was two-and-a-half weeks ago, on a wet and snowy morning in Massachusetts, when I was driving along the very famous Mystic Valley Parkway in Somerville, between Tufts and Harvard Universities. I was enjoying the day and the drive – a twisty road with lots of roundabouts. As an Englishman, it made me feel at home. As I was driving along nonchalantly pondering the beauty of the area, when suddenly I encountered two Canada geese walking down the middle of the road. I thought that I was the only Canadian during March Break north of the Carolinas, but clearly I had company! I watched them come towards me and I slowly braked and left them to elegantly cross the road. Then I looked in my rear view mirror and saw the car behind me coming along much faster. It was approaching the roundabout and the Canada geese. I had all kinds of terrible visions, but she stopped about half an inch before the geese, swerved, went over the curb and collided with the centre of the roundabout. The geese just went about their business, coolly, calmly, undisturbed, no histrionics – very Canadian, I thought! I, on the other hand, was about to give birth! I have no idea what to do, but I got out of the car and I ran over to the woman. I saw that her car has been badly damaged in the front end. I opened her door and I congratulated her. I said, “You have saved two of my fellow Canadians, and I am grateful for this!”
She looked at me with that classic New England look and a big, broad smile, and she said, “Yep, but I’ve done damage to my car, haven’t I?”
I looked around and said, “I am afraid you have, but you were very brave.”
You see, those geese had a happy ending, but it was a happy ending because someone had made a sacrifice for them.
The Canada geese might not have been aware of it. In fact, they glibly went on their way, but somebody had suffered in order that they might have a happy ending. This Easter, we are here because we have had a happy ending. We are here because we have celebrated for a whole week and for the whole period of Lent the fact that we know someone made this possible. We have sung the great hymns; we have crashed the cymbals; we have heard the drums; we have sung our Alleluias! This is a happy ending! But it is not a happy ending that could have happened without a game-changer to make the ending great. If you have a happy ending there must be a hopeful beginning. The hopeful beginning, I always feel, was captured by the prophets of The Old Testament and in our passage from Isaiah, which is about the hope for a happy ending and a game-changer.
Isaiah was writing at a time when the people of Israel were living in exile, things were very dark, they were refugees, and were being persecuted. He has this glorious vision, this glorious hope that things will change. George Worth suggests that there are three things that he hoped for. First of all, he hoped that the people would be taken out of the valley and would be placed on a mountaintop, probably Mount Moriah, probably Jerusalem and there they would have a banquet. If I am going to make you feel better today, then if you are going to have a meal with a family after this service, if you are going to gather around and have the very best there is, there is good precedence for this biblically, for that is what the people of Israel did. They wanted the finest wines and food. They were awaiting a great and a glorious day when the people could return to the mountain that they called their home. Isaiah’s vision was more than that. It was from a people who had been suffering to a people who would have healing. The very famous words that have been a source of so many great pieces of music, “their tears will be wiped away from their eyes” was his hope. No more pain! No more misery! No more sorrow! There will be healing.
Isaiah also believed that there would be a change from death to life. There is that incredible passage where he says that death will be swallowed up in victory, remove the veils and the garments that you wear for a funeral, run them off. It is not death anymore; it will be life. It will not be the end; it will be a new beginning. There will come a day when death will no longer have a hold, it will be swallowed up in victory. Glorious words! They were words that were based on the faith that God was going to do something. Isaiah wasn’t just glibly sitting around, hoping and waiting for a better day. He was waiting for God to bring a better day, for God to fulfill all that he wished for the people of Israel, for the day a game-changer would come, and they would move from the valley and the suffering of death would be transformed into the mountain and the health and the life. It was a glorious vision!
Hundreds of years later, three women go to a tomb on the mountain, Jerusalem. They go to prepare a body for its future, to anoint it with oils, to make sure that it was sacred. They go to the tomb of the friend they had buried, Jesus of Nazareth. The only thing that was on their minds when they went to this tomb was “I wonder who will roll away the stone in front of the tomb?” The tombs in those days were very large, and very big boulders were in front of the doors, and they were moved and the entrance way was stopped by these great boulders. I have been to one of these, and although you have to get down very much on your knees to get into them, they are in fact an amazing sight these burial tombs! The stones in front of them are huge! Three women – Mary, Mary and Salome – are wondering, “How on earth are we going to move these?!”
They are going to see Jesus, who they believe was dead, and they get in there and are amazed. The stone has already been moved but they don’t know by who or how or when. They go into the tomb because they are now worried about their dead Jesus being exposed. They find a dazzling light, see an angelic light figure and cannot believe their eyes. They are told that he is not here. This is where he had been laid, but he isn’t here anymore. He is risen! Mary, Mary and Salome are absolutely amazed. They are in awe! They can’t even in a sense remember death, and death had in fact been conquered. Maybe as Jews, maybe as faithful people who knew their Scriptures, maybe the words of Isaiah were in their minds – who knows? Death has been swallowed up in victory, and tears have been wiped from our eyes. Who knows? They knew one thing: Jesus, who they had expected to see dead, was no longer there.
Tim Keller, the great New York preacher, has suggested that this story is far, far more than legend. It is not some sort of contrived story to create a happy ending that we can all celebrate as a myth, but rather in fact, those who were the source of this story from Mark’s Gospel, those who should have otherwise looked good in the telling of this story looked bad. The reason that Mary, Mary and Salome went to the tomb is because the disciples after the Crucifixion had fled. They got out of town. They were frightened because their faith in Jesus was dead. It was a Roman soldier who declared him to be the Son of God on the Cross, not one of the disciples. They had betrayed him, and they had denied him, and they had questioned him, and they had run away. Not only that, the tomb in which Jesus was laid belonged to Joseph of Arimathea, and Joseph was part of the Council that had actually put Jesus to death. So, none of the people who should look good in this story do. This was far more than a legend for a happy ending; this was something that had turned the world upside down. The insiders were now the outsiders.
The people who were supposed to be up were down, and the people who were down are now up. Everything has been changed! Mary, Mary and Salome see this and they are terrified, because they don’t know what they are going to do now. They have gone to this tomb to put oil on him. They have reconciled themselves to this and now he is gone. They also know that a great price has been paid for this. This wasn’t just an empty tomb, this was a man they had seen crucified, who had bled to death, who had agonized them with saying “It is finished!” This isn’t some philosophy of immortality; this is the sheer reality of someone who they thought was dead in body who is now clearly alive in some form. They have no idea what is taking place but they do know that a great price was paid, and they are afraid to tell anyone. It seems like the game is over. He was here; now he isn’t; it is over. But was it?
As many of you know, those south of the border are enthralled – especially sports fans – in the March Madness Basketball competition. It seemed when I was down there that everyone was talking about March Madness. I thought it was to do with the weather, but it was to do with Basketball. Unbeknownst to me, the Sunday that I am away, Reverend David McMaster is actually talking about March Madness, and refers to his beloved Kentucky Wildcats in his sermon and how delighted he was to support them because he went to university there. He assumed they were going to win the championship – until last night when they lost! David, our condolences! I was, however, watching March Madness with my brother-in-law, who has a doctorate from Harvard, and we were watching Harvard – of all teams! – playing in the final 32 against North Carolina. North Carolina had won the championship five times; Harvard had hardly won a basketball game ever; and here they were up against this great North Carolina team.
We thought we would see the massacre of Harvard and to our absolute amazement it was so close that with three seconds to go it is North Carolina 69, Harvard 67. The best player from Harvard has the ball, and he is right outside the circle and he can shoot for a 3-pointer and win the game. I knew he was going to do it, we knew he was going to do it, this was going to be a miracle, and we’d be talking about this for decades! He shot the ball and it went up in the air, and we went “Yes! Yes!” and he missed! We looked at each other and cried. I was not looking forward to coming home and hearing Reverend McMaster and his Wildcat story. I listened to the man who shot the basketball being interviewed. He sounded a little bit like a loser at the Academy Awards – you know,” it was nice just to be here, and it was a privilege to be part of the game”, but you could tell that he really meant it. He had actually witnessed and been part of something great. Mark’s Gospel ends with the text that we have this morning. It ends with the women saying, “It was nice to be here. We witnessed the empty tomb.” The game is over, fair enough, that is nice – he is not here – but the game goes on.
The game-changer keeps on appearing! Look at the text, the angel says to Mary, Mary and Salome, “Go and tell the disciples about this” and then these incredible words, “because Jesus has gone ahead of you.” Jesus isn’t just raised from the dead; he is actually waiting for you; he is actually living. It is not just a bodily resurrection from the dead; it is the resurrection to a new life. It is a whole new beginning. Jesus will see you, and you will see Jesus. Go and tell the disciples that Jesus has gone ahead of them. These three are thinking, “Oh, mercy! It is hard enough to have seen an empty tomb when you expected to see a dead body, but now to go and tell the disciples that Jesus is going to be waiting for them, they are going to think we have lost our minds!” But they do it anyway and of course, as we know from the other Gospels they see him face-to-face. But on that Easter Sunday when they left that tomb they didn’t know that they were going to encounter a risen Jesus.
Easter is not just about the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and the conquering of death, it is more. It is about the living presence of Christ who goes before us. All of us I know are deeply upset about what happened to our Christian brothers and sisters in Kenya this week. It is a terrible, terrible thing! Whenever any group of people of any religion or any race are killed because of their identity, it is a horrible thing. For us, especially when it is Christians who are killed because they are Christians, it is an anathema. On Good Friday, the Primate, the head of the Anglican Church in Kenya gave a sermon. His name is the Most Reverend Eliud Wabukala, and there is a connection between Bishop Wabukala and Toronto, for he did his PhD at Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto, where I sometimes teach. Wabukala gave the most incredible message, a message of reconciliation and hope, but rooted and grounded in today:
Horror is fresh in our minds too. Let us not run away or deny it, but stay by the Cross. We stay with Jesus, the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. We share in the grief of Mary, and we share in the grief of those who have been so shockingly bereaved. But, as Mary was to discover, we know that this is not the end of the story. Jesus’ death upon the Cross was not in vain. By his death, death has been destroyed. The stone rolled away and the empty tomb of Jesus assures us that death does not have the last word. As we think of those dear ones who died in Garissa because they were Christians, let us remember the promise of the Lord Jesus that nothing can separate them and us from his love.
Wabukala understands that the Resurrection makes sense of the Cross, but the Cross makes sense of the Resurrection. It is not just about the death, it is not just about an empty tomb. It is about a living God that goes before us.
Lest you think we have to believe this because there is some dramatic historically moment like last week, or it is only in moments of great sadness that we need to cleave to this reality, I can assure you that it is in the daily life and in the daily things when the living Christ is real. Frequently I get letters from radio listeners and I always appreciate receiving them. I appreciate the e-mails that I receive, but I confess I don’t keep them all. One that I received a couple of weeks ago was one that I took to Boston with me and read every day. It was so profound because it is so real. It was not a letter about a sermon or a piece of music or a prayer or a program or a concert – it wasn’t very churchy at all! It was just something that this person had been moved to write after listening on a Sunday morning. This is what Evelyn wrote: a poem entitled I Spent the Day with Jesus.
When I woke up this morning I gave my husband a kiss
And wished him a good morning
It wasn’t a holy kiss, but he felt love
Then I made breakfast for my family
It wasn’t loaves and fishes, but they enjoyed it
And it gave them strength for the day
In the afternoon my child fell and scraped his knee
I bandaged it and gave him a hug and a kiss
It wasn’t a miracle cure but he felt better
At supper we ate together as a family
We thanked God his Father for our food
It wasn’t a feast, but we broke bread together
And we enjoyed fellowship
At night I put my children to bed, read them a Bible story
Tucked them in and kissed them goodnight
It wasn’t a benediction, but they felt safe and at peace
I spent the day with Jesus: I never left my home
Isaiah prayed that tears would be wiped away and death swallowed up in victory. Mary, Mary and Salome found an empty tomb. They were told that Jesus would go ahead of them, and he did, and he lived with them. For two thousand years he has lived with us. Wherever you are this day, hold on to the game-changer for He is waiting for you! Amen.