Happy Easter!!

• Upcoming Membership Service: if you have been considering becoming a member and would like more information, please reach out to Charlotte                                                  
• Discussion Circle is on the last Sunday after Church; this month we will look at the Sermon on the Mount. These discussions are here to to inspire, teach, guide, and challenge us–all are welcome to join us (this is an exploration of sacred passages, poetry, and words to inspire us toward freshness, surprise, and wonder)

Visit our Calendar of Events to explore our upcoming dates and times

Our Sunday Reflection is recorded and can be found HERE (posts each Sunday late morning or early afternoon). These words are written to be spoken aloud; please forgive grammatical and other written errors.

All are Welcome. If you are uncomfortable with the word God, please feel welcome to insert your own word for the divine or Mystery in your life (Universe/Grace/Spirit/Divine).

The Easter Story sometimes feels like Jesus level two or maybe three.  It’s complicated.  It’s big.  It utterly Mysterious.  Something happened after those three days…but what…?  

What exactly happened?  

What does it all mean?  

If you think it’s simple and uncomplicated, try explaining it to a five year.  It’s said when you truly understand something, you can explain it to a five year old.  How do we explain Jesus came back from the dead?  Or that it means different things to different people?  Or…what do we say about what happened on Friday to bring us to Easter Morning?

We’re not alone.  The early church leaders have been debating all of this, well, since the beginning.  Our scripture passage today includes: “do not hold on to me”; Jesus is not fully here.  In other passages, there’s touching and holding to sense and feel that Jesus is really is tangibly here.  Alive and fully embodied.

It’s hard to explain at all.  It’s terrifying.  There’s death which is always hard.  Then, there is the unexplainable…Jesus comes back!

It’s in Mark’s Gospel, before additional endings were added to “complete it”, that we really see how terrifying it all was.  The women, including Mary Magdalene, were at the empty tomb and see a man in white robes.  They are “alarmed”.  PAUSE.  

The man in the white robe says: go tell the others that Jesus will meet them in Galilee.  What do the women do?  

“Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.”

They run away.  Terrified.  That’s it.  The end.  

It’s such an honest and true ending.  When we are confronted by the impossible, or asked the impossible, we often turn and run away.  “I’m not going to admit to that, no one will believe me.  No one will listen to me! They will call me crazy!”  PAUSE.  

They are not alone.  I believe we can all resonate with that need to run away…to stay silent…to keep what we know to ourselves…

And the greatest prophets also run away…or try to.  

Moses argues with God, saying that he can’t be the one to speak on behalf of God.  He’s got a stutter.  He’s “broken”.  No one is going to listen to him.  

God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh, to a violent people and tell them they have displeased God.  PAUSE.  Jonah runs so far away in the other direction that he has to be swallowed up by storms and a giant fish before he turns around and finally does God’s will.  

Even Jesus asks for the burden to be taken away.

This running away is nothing new.  It’s very real.  It’s very true.  It’s very human.  

Just like the prophets, the truth-tellers, the terrified women will do God’s will. Perhaps like trembling butterflies, they just need rest before they spread their new and sodden wings to fly with truth.  That God’s Love is so powerful it can overcome even death.  

Trembling butterflies. Maybe because it is so complicated, we use the “butterfly metaphor”, especially for our young ones.  The cocoon is absolutely fascinating.  A butterfly comes out of that?  How?  It’s a mystery.  A resurrection.  A rebirth.  It’s exciting and it’s impossible. But it’s true.  Just looking at a cocoon, it is hard to believe that something like a butterfly can come out of it.  

As kids get older it gets even more fascinating.  The cocoon is its own tomb of death.  The caterpillar melts.  It becomes primordial goo.  It becomes something impossible to be reborn.  And yet…it is.  A little vulnerable and delicate (perhaps a bit like Jesus in this scripture passage: “do not hold on to me”), but alive.  Perhaps trembling, but with wings to fly!!!

From the darkness we get wings and new life.  

It’s a miracle.  

One that can help us to understand the Mystery of the Resurrection.  The rolling away of the Stone and all of the meanings that it can bring into our lives.  

One that can help us to understand our own dark nights of the soul.  Knowing that beyond the darkness there are wings and new life.  That within what seems impossible there is the possible.  

I’m not sure it’s really Jesus level two…or three. I think it’s all part of one great Story.  One that all fits together into wholeness.  Sometimes we get caught up in parts that we lose the wholeness. 

I’ve heard the Gospels described as Passion Stories with a long prologue.  As if the other parts of the Story don’t matter.  

That prologue is pretty important.  

That prologue tells us how to live our lives.  In the here and the now.  It tells us how to meet, and see, God in our own lives.  Day to day. It teaches us how to live well and with one another.  How to build communities that are held by Love.

Perhaps if more of us followed these foundation stones laid out for us, there would be peace on earth.  

Before the Story of destruction and the beautiful Story of Resurrection, there’s another great and beautiful Story of living well with and for one another.  Of single voices giving way to collective voices at a Table of Welcome.  

In the middle of it all is Jesus saying: Love.  Love one another.  

It’s easy to forget that for the miracles.  But, perhaps, Love IS the miracle.  Perhaps Love is the ministry that tells us how to live.  

And really, it’s simply:   

Love God.  

Love your neighbors.  

Love your enemies.  

Love.  

This is all scary and mysterious stuff happening.  But it’s also simple really.   And in this Gospel of John, Mary says it all. 

I have seen the Lord.  

I have seen the Lord.  

It’s simple really.  

This is the first sermon of the resurrection.  

There’s no explanation. There’s no: …and this is what it means.  …and this is what we should do.  …and this.  …and that.

It is simply: I have seen the Lord.  

It speaks to all of the Story.  It speaks to our hearts.  It speaks of Love itself.  I have looked up and seen the face of God. I have fallen into Love.  I have surrendered to Devotion in fullness.

To see and love God is to see your life unfolds its wings to fly and spread love and healing to all the once impossibly broken places.  

Eventually, this simple sermon, I have seen the Lord will become We. We have seen the Lord. 

We have seen the Lord.

We. Inviting all of us to be holders of the Story and ministers to one another.  To bring to a single love of God, a wholeness big enough to hold everyone and everything at one Table of Welcome.  

Because the resurrection is about miracles that happen when we Love God and love our neighbors as our selves.  The resurrection is about the Miracle of Love.  

We have gathered together as one people and with a communion of flowers that reminds us of spring, resurrection, and possibility.  We gather all of it into our lives and take it out into the world.  

Holy One, we stepped into the garden uncertain and afraid, we leave rejoicing.  Holy One, our hearts are so filled that when we meet the stranger, we encounter You.  Holy One, we are nourished through your undying Love that we have the courage to be your hands and hearts in your world.  

This morning we too have been resurrected and renewed.  Amen