Easter Vigil Mass – 2018

It was over twenty Easters ago … the first time I preached on this Easter Gospel text from Mark. This was prior to the “new” Lectionary and guess what … the final line of this Gospel had not been amputated! Let me give it to you straight:

 

And the women came out and ran away/scattered/fled from the tomb 

because they were frightened [Tramos] out of their wits. And they said nothing to a soul.

 

Does that final line not change the entire atmosphere of this early Easter Gospel?

You add Mark’s final line and you don’t get a victory celebration … you get the opposite … fear … trauma … shock … soon to spread to the entire community of disciples in Jerusalem who remained behind locked doors.

Why was this?

I am reminded of a reflection from a theologian of our own day…Hans Urs von Balthazar who states: “This Easter event is, as has rightly been said time and again, without analogy. It pierces our whole world of living and dying in a most unique way.”

In a most unique way: Do you remember all the times those first disciples did not recognize Jesus when he appeared to them after Easter morning? All four Gospels (after disagreeing with one another on many points in the story) settle finally on just two identifying characteristics of the Risen Lord. In fact, the angel in the empty tomb this morning spells out both identifying characteristics:

 

“Do not be shocked/afraid … you seek 1. Jesus of Nazareth (physical body person) 2. the crucified (the wounds).”

 

There it is … the earliest Christian Easter Proclamation – The Crucified One is risen.  Notice the priority here … not the righteous one, not the victorious one … however you slice it, if it is authentic Gospel text, the Crucified One is at the center.

 

Just look at tonight’s Easter Gospel … we encounter the image of the Crucified One right at the beginning in that very early morning journey of Mary of Magdala, Mary the mother of James, and Salome.  Out of love and longing they chose to walk toward that tomb in their lives – that empty and unfulfilled place of total disappointment and failure.  They just kept walking …

 

I am reminded of the rabbinic saying that for anyone walking the path of faith … his or her feet are like two blind scholars attempting to feel their way into life’s meaning … one step at a time.  That describes these three gospel women very well, they just kept walking one step at a time … following their heart’s longing.  When they reflected only a few steps ahead they knew there was a mega stone in their path that they could not possibly roll away … and yet, they kept on walking!

 

The question is … at what point on that first, very early, Easter Sunday morning’s walk to the tomb did they begin to bear the wounds of the Crucified One in their own hearts?  Was it in making the decision to encounter the pain and darkness of their bitter life-disappointment all over again … just to be near him … just to anoint him?  We don’t know … but we know that these three women were Church before the Apostles were Church, because they willingly bore his wounds in their hearts … they could hear the Easter Gospel in all its terrifying power!  As in the words of St. Paul:

 

For if we have grown into union with him through a death like his,

we shall also be united with him in his resurrection.

 

The two Marys and Salome would get it right … The Crucified One is risen!  Risen, his life and wounds are too big for one person … we all must bear them.  So we end up with the cross among the Easter lilies!

 

My Brothers and friends, not one of us comes to authentic Easter faith without walking to that empty tomb at the center of our lives.  We desperately need to stop running away from it … to love enough … to walk right into it, looking for the Crucified One at the center.

 

The eighteenth-century poet, Goethe, got it right:

 

And so long as you haven’t experienced this,

To die and so to grow,

You are only a troubled guest

On this dark earth.

 

I end these reflections with the testament of another evangelist of the Resurrection … the senior American poet, Denise Levertov.  The daughter of an Orthodox Jewish father, her journey to faith was a lonely one.  I share with you one of her last life reflections on that journey, from her poem “On Belief in the Physical Resurrection of Jesus”:

2

It is for all literalists of the imagination, 

poets or not, 

that miracle is possible, possible and essential.  

Are some intricate minds nourished on concepts? 

Can they subsist on light, that’s not grounded in dust, grit, heavy carnal clay?  

Do words contain and utter, for them all the reality that they need?  

Resurrection, for them, an internal power, but not a matter of flesh?  

For the others, of whom I am one, 

miracles (ultimate need, bread of life) are miracles just because people 

so tuned to the humdrum laws: gravity, mortality – 

can’t open to symbol’s power 

unless convinced of its ground, its roots in bone and blood.  

We must feel the pulse in the wound 

to believe that with God 

all things are possible.

 

My prayer this Easter morning is that along with the two Mary’s and Salome we too will trust enough to walk to the empty tomb …  Love enough to feel for “the pulse in the wound” at the center of our lives … our real lives that our two feet are standing in … it is here we encounter the Easter Angel … and the Crucified One, who is risen.

 

+ Abbot Peter McCarthy