As the story goes, years ago, Carlyle Marney, one of our brilliant, if not cantankerous, Baptist preachers, was speaking at a Christian college when a student asked,Dr. Marney, would you say a word or two about the resurrection of the dead?replied,
I will not discuss the resurrection with people like you: I don’t discuss such things with anyone under 30. Look at you all: in the prime of life. Never have you known honest-to-God failure, heartburn, impotency, solid defeat, brick walls or mortality. You’re extremely apt and handsome white kids who have never in all of your lives been 30 miles from home, or 20 minutes into the New Testament, more than a mile and a half from a Baptist or Methodist church, or within a thousand miles of any issue that mattered to a kingdom that matters. So what can you know of a world that makes sense only if Christ is raised?1
Happy Easter to you! As grumpy as he surely was, Marney was right about at least one thing: resurrection is not something you can talk about in a word or two. In fact, the way I hear it, what Marney meant to say was that words—no matter how many you offer—aren’t the best vehicle for talk of resurrection at all. Resurrection is first and best spoken of not in words, but in tears, and the gospels remind us this has been true since that first resurrection morning.
I.
John tells us Mary is the first to arrive at the garden tomb. She arrives early, while it was still dark, to find the stone rolled away and the tomb empty, and runs to alert the others. Peter and another race to get there. They look inside the tomb to see the linens lying where he once lay, and the cloth that had been on his head rolled up just so, and in their confusion, leave the scene and return to their homes. But Mary stays. She stands, we’re told, weeping outside the tomb, and as she weeps, she bends to look inside, and where the other disciples saw only linens and darkness, Mary, her eyes wet with tears, sees angels.
Now, did the angels appear only to her, or was it that the other two simply did not look closely enough? Or was it how Oscar Romero, the Salvadorian priest and martyr, once said, “there are many things that can only be seen through eyes that have cried.”
Which is to say that our tears change us. Our grief, our loss, our pain. These things change how we see the world. How we feel it. How we see and feel each other. Things that were invisible before are suddenly alive with color: the pain in another’s eyes. The burden they carry, the story they haven’t told but might if someone trustworthy asked.
Which is why, with apologies to Dr. Marney, as I look around the room, I know you’re just the kind of people with whom I’d discuss such things. Because I know that you know something of this world—this world that makes sense only if Christ is raised. You know some small but essential thing about this world, because you, too, have wept. It’s these tears that have prepared you to speak of resurrection, and more than likely, with Mary, it’s these tears, as much as anything, that brought you here this morning.
II.
Frederick Buechner writes, “As much as it is our hope, it’s our hopelessness that brings us to church on a Sunday.”2 We’re drawn out to the deep waters of life not as much by joy as by sorrow, not fulfillment, but our restlessness, our longing for something more, and our sensing that it’s out there, somewhere. And in the same way, we’re not led to the truth of resurrection—the moment of catharsis, of great release, in God’s drama of love that unfolds in the pages of scripture and the moments and days of your life and mine and our common life together—we’re not led to the empty tomb by our successes, we’re led there by our failures. Not as much our comforts as our pain. Not as much our gain as our losses. Not as much our laughter as by our tears.
Mary, through her tears, sees these heavenly messengers sitting where Jesus’ body had been lying. And they ask her, Why are you weeping? She begins to answer them, and as she does, she senses a presence behind her, turns and sees Jesus—though John tells us Mary didn’t immediately see that it was Jesus, mistaking him for the gardener—had he been there all along, too? Did the disciples rush past him as well on their way to the tomb? In their rush—to where? Past the pain? Past the hurt? Were they not yet prepared to see him?
Mary sees this man behind her, though she doesn’t recognize him as Jesus. And some have wondered if it was her tears that kept Mary from recognizing Christ when he first called to her. This is how it is sometimes. In time, our tears can reshape our vision to see others in their pain, but there are times when our tears do keep us from seeing new life when it stands before us.
Sometimes the sorrow is too fresh.
The pain too severe.
The loss too great.
Others have wondered if it was the darkness that kept her from recognizing him. And this, too is how it is sometimes. We can, in time, learn to walk and see in the dark, but it is a long road to get there, and so these seasons, too, can keep us from seeing the new life before us.
Which is why what happens next is such an essential part of that first resurrection story: though her tears and the darkness that surrounded them may, for a time, keep Mary from seeing the risen Christ before her, they did not, they could not, keep the risen Christ from seeing her.
Darkness be damned, and seeing her pain, Christ calls her by name, and in that moment, it was not just Jesus Christ who was raised from the dead, but Mary. And not just Mary, but anyone whose eyes have been covered with tears, anyone who has ever found themselves sitting in the darkness, unable to see. Which is to say, everyone—all of us were raised that morning.
Haven’t you known this? How joy, mysteriously, is on the other side of pain? Isn’t it true what the poet Mary Karr says, that as deep the wound is, that’s how deep the healing can be? Haven’t you known this? And haven’t you known it for some time?
III.
Some years back when our boys were very young, one of them, who will remain nameless, when even the slightest infraction had been committed against him, one of his brothers with a toy or his mother with a kiss, would throw his head back, real tears beading in his eyes, and wail, You’re breaking my heart!
And of course, we knew there would come a time for him to grow out of this and manage his emotions in an age-appropriate way. But, all the same, I would think to myself, my God, I hope he doesn’t lose all of it.
I hope he never stops feeling the world deeply. I hope his heart would never stop breaking for the right things. I hope he doesn’t unlearn what it means to cry real tears, because it’s through our tears that we see the risen Christ.
Haven’t you known this?
Years ago, some good friends of ours received the nightmarish news that their young daughter was diagnosed with a rare and very serious childhood cancer. She underwent aggressive treatments and long days in chemo and all the attendant trials, fears, and sufferings. Now, years later, she is cancer-free, a beautiful, tenacious teenage girl who’s giving them fits. But there was a moment my friend described back then, in the middle of some of the worst of it, when she crawled in his lap, her hair gone, body small and diminished from bearing the toll of it all. She looked at him and said, Daddy, I know more than you think I know.
Of course she did.
IV.
Church, you know more than you think you know about this world that makes sense only if Christ is raised. This world of full moons, crisp April mornings after a hard rain, and childhood cancer.
This world of lovers embracing, of lilies blooming, and unspeakable violence.
This world of complexity and texture, and fear that would flatten it all out.
This world of children laughing, old folks dancing, and honest-to-God failure.
This world of hope and potential and brick walls.
This world of bread and of cup and of crosses—it’s all of these things.
It’s a world that makes sense only if Christ is raised.
And to live in it—to live in this world, to breathe this air, to feel this earth, to see this sky, to cry these tears—is to know something of the final dawn that waits beyond the darkness, Something of the Christ that’s standing just outside the tomb,
the love that’s just beyond death, the laughter that’s beyond tears. Something of the God that’s behind all of it. To live in this world, truly and deeply, is to know something of resurrection.
Church, if you leave here on this morning of mystery sure of only one thing, let it be this: you know something of this world that makes sense only if Christ is raised, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
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1 As told by my friend Kyle Childress,The Christian Century(Nov. 2, 2010): 20
2 Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Comedy, Tragedy, and Fairy Tale, 55