Sermon: Tell Me Something Good – Resurrection of the Lord (Matthew 28:1-10)

Happy Easter! This is the day we say together, “Hallelujah! He is risen!” He is risen indeed. That might be the appropriate response to the request made by our sermon title; tell me something good! Tell you something good? Ok, then. He is risen. This is after all, the good news of Easter Sunday. Christ is risen from the grave. We celebrate the resurrection, a key event and theological concept for our Christian faith. It is an act of love and a sign of hope that everything we do as a church revolves around. It is the promise of new life that we cling to. We are, after all, a resurrection people. Easter Sunday is the biggest Sunday of the year for Christians. It may be our greatest reason to celebrate. Yet, for a preacher is can be a difficult one to sermonize about. There is so much to say on resurrection, but not many better ways to say it then with a simple, “Hallelujah! He is risen!”

I have been reading a book on preaching called Making a Scene in the Pulpit, by a preaching professor named Alyce McKenzie. In the book, McKenzie states that good preachers should have what she calls a “knack for noticing.” This means, simply, that a preacher should be aware each day of the things going on around them and how it might speak to them. The knack for noticing is the skill of seeing and noticing things in daily life and recognizing the significance that they hold in the expression of God’s creation. Essentially, anything we notice in our life can be brought to the work of proclaiming God’s hope in the world.

This of course involves noticing when things are wrong, or unjust, or cruel, and calling it our in the name of God’s justice. It means to notice the trouble in the world. In this way a preacher can live up to the prophetic aspect of the work of sharing God’s word. McKenzie warns that sometimes preachers will turn away from the trouble, and fail to notice what’s going on. Focusing instead only on prosperity and positive thinking. However, she notes that it is just as possible for the preacher to avert their eyes from the positive things in life as well. To concern themselves too much with the tragedy and injustice in the world. A preacher cannot just notice and show a congregation the bad news while just paying lip service to the good news, they must notice and share the Good News as well. We must seek justice and righteousness, but also hope and joy.

This is important advice for preachers in preparing a sermon, but it is also useful for any of us who are trying to follow Jesus. For any of us who are seeking to live out our faith, and share good news with the world. We have to notice and share the good news. We can’t just focus on all the terrible things that happen in the world, even if we are doing it to denounce them or speak out against them. There is still more going on in God’s world than that. And this can be difficult, because on some level we are all plugged into media in our daily lives, of one type or another, and that delivers to us all the bad news we could ever want. It can be overwhelming. Fortunately, the story of Easter Sunday is a good story to help train us to notice the Good News in our daily life. And not just because resurrection is The Good News.

I suppose the important point to get across then, is that resurrection and new life are not just Easter Sunday concerns. As Christians, it is a possibility we carry with us every day. We can find Jesus in more than just the story of Easter morning.  If we would just be open to notice. We can find Jesus throughout our days, carrying out our everyday or traditional activities, much like the Two Mary’s were doing in today’s scripture reading.

Of course, these events do happen on Easter Sunday morning, but The Mary’s do not know this yet. The Two Mary’s (who some believe are Mary Magdelene and Mary, the mother of Jesus) have come to Jesus’s tomb this particular morning as part of traditional rituals around mourning the dead, where someone sits by a loved one’s grave for three days to make sure they hadn’t been buried alive. These women were with Jesus at his death, his burial, and now, they will witness his resurrection. And if one of them is Jesus’s mother Mary, she was with him at his birth as well. Imagine all the things she must have notices throughout Jesus’s life. So, perhaps the first thing we notice is that this story begins as a day in the life of two women who cared for Jesus. In noticing that we might then notice that in Matthew, as in all the Gospels, it is women that witness the risen Christ first. It is women who first spread the good news, sharing it with others. It is women who contribute to creation and rebirth. This is always a part of the Good News.

So, the Two Mary’s did not come to this place looking for a miracle or anything special like that. They simply came to pay their respects. To care for the remains of one they loved. They are there to mourn in the way people of their time mourned. To perform the rituals because they loved Jesus, the person. None of this was out of the ordinary or unexpected behavior, but this is how the Good News of Easter would be revealed to them. In these small acts of love and devotion. It is a reminder for us all that the Good News will find us in the rhythms of our daily life. What was out of the ordinary, of course, was the earthquake and the angel that came and sat on the tomb and told them Jesus was not there. That’s all a very shocking and scary way to receive news. So, at first the Mary’s may have been a bit distracted, a bit overwhelmed, and unable to take in fully the good news the angel was sharing with them, but they still follow the instruction to take this news back to the disciples.

Luckily, Jesus is a bit more subtle in the way he approaches them. Jesus appears to Mary and Mary in as ordinary a way as possible. He doesn’t just appear to them out of thin air. He doesn’t try to surprise them or scare them by jumping out from behind a bush. “Guess what? I am risen!” Jesus doesn’t even show them his wounds or scars from the crucifixion. No, nothing so dramatic. Matthew tries to make this scene as normal as possible, as if it’s just the same Jesus as before. Matthew says simply that Jesus meets them on the road. The use of word ‘met’ in this context means that Jesus does not just intercept them on the road and chat for a bit, but he accompanies them. He joins them on their journey. He is with them, and with Jesus, the Good News finds us in our day-to-day, not just on Easter. We must be able to notice it, though.

In Colossians 3 there is a reading that is often a traditional reading for Easter Sunday. In it, the Apostle Paul is writing about how we might experience new life in Christ, and he suggests a particular type of noticing to the congregation. He speaks on a type of resurrection, saying that the Colossians have died and in Christ have risen to experience new life. However, people are not noticing, so to speak, and are missing this new life. These followers of Paul have been placing their attention on earthly things, as he calls them. Colossians 3:5 lists “impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed” as the vices distracting people. When focus is on these things it could mean that they are only noticing themselves and their own wants, their own perceived needs. Paul, however, wants them to look to “things above.” Colossians 3:12-13 list these virtues as “compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.” Paul believes that his followers will experience new life when they shift their focus, letting go of these things that our daily experience in this world, even today, makes us think are so important, and instead start looking to God as revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The reading from Colossians 3:1-4 shows that we are with Christ “behind, before, and above.” So, if we are looking for the Good News it has always been alive in the world. In other words, develop a knack for noticing the good news.

Paul tells us that if we are “raised with Christ,” that is if we consider ourselves saved from the sin and death of this life, and we have been blessed with new life in Christ, then we are called to look for things “above.” Now, this could mean heaven, or the afterlife, but I don’t think so. At Easter we do not gather to celebrate the afterlife, we come to celebrate that Christ has risen from death here and now. We celebrate the promise and the possibility of new life as part of the body of Christ. Paul suggested that what was really needed was faithfulness of purpose and adherence to traditions. This is very much how Mary and Mary came to find Jesus; they remained faithful to their friend Jesus’ memory and intended to carry out the traditions of their culture out of love for him. It was in this process that they discovered the empty tomb and the angel. It is this process that led them to meet Jesus, alive, on the road.

We may lose ourselves in the despair of Good Friday, or the bleakness of Holy Saturday, but through the resurrection of Jesus we can find ourselves once again on Easter Sunday. We find ourselves standing there with Jesus, once again given the opportunity to rise above the petty desires of our own egos, or the fears or distractions of this world that try to focus us on the priorities of others, rather than the priorities of God – which is a world of love, creativity, and abundance, where God is glorified by the flourishing of God’s creation.

At Easter we celebrate this opportunity God has given us to find Jesus again and again, and to be reminded of the constant possibility of new life that comes with him. All by finding those ways, as Mary and Mary did, to faithfully and lovingly connect with our world, to reach out, to notice, even when we feel overwhelmed by feelings such as grief, like they were experiencing. By intentionally keeping our focus on the loving world God desires we can notice and touch the new life of Easter every day.

I’ll conclude with something I noticed a few weeks ago, or rather something that was noticed by one of our youngest members. You may or may not have noticed that for a time there was a miniature figurine of Jesus, I think, sitting by and sometimes in the offering collection plate. If you didn’t notice you’d be forgiven, as I said it was very small. However, one day after church, one of the Hacker twins came running into the narthex holding that figurine in her hand and exclaiming, “I found God! I found God!” Perfect. And isn’t that just another way to say, “Hallelujah! He is risen.”

On Easter Sunday we celebrate that Jesus, the resurrected God, has been found outside the empty tomb. Let the joy and the hope of this day open us to noticing all the places we can find God each day the rest of the year.

Amen.