Easter Day

April 8, 2007

The Rev. Thomas William Blake

Empty, open, and transformed

John 20: 1-18

Yesterday at the Holy Saturday noonday service, while silently reflecting on the lessons read, I felt an aura of emptiness within this space that seemed unusual. There we were, only a few of us, sitting a few feet from a rough, awkward, wooden cross, (the usual one was veiled), before an altar stripped of its linens and topped instead with a crown of thorns. The prayer desks and credence table were gone; there were no immediate tasks to complete; no words came freely to mind; there was emptiness.

And I was startled? I mean, what are we supposed to do with emptiness? I am more familiar with occupied space. Papers pile up on my desk more quickly than I can sort through them. Upon walking into my house one of the first things I do is to run to the computer and check my email, but before I can get to all of it either to respond or to delete, in comes more and the cycle repeats itself.

As a priest I have to balance very carefully the professional demands of the week just ended with opportunities for my own spiritual edification. Holy Week can easily begin to feel not-so-holy without my being very intentional about establishing and following some boundaries: setting some substantive time aside for myself.

The same is true for any liturgy at which I officiate, balancing the mechanics of the service with openness to spiritual conversion. When I pray, it is so easy to turn my prayers into a list of wants and desires: “God please do this and this and that,” while only occasionally it occurs to me, maybe God has something to say to me.

Busyness can seem exhausting, but emptiness can be discomfiting. Often we would prefer busyness over emptiness. Mary Magdalene in her grief over the loss of Jesus didn’t stay at home that morning. She needed something to make her feel less empty. She needed something she could touch, something by which she could remember him, even if that something seemed lifeless and unresponsive.

If your emotions threaten to overwhelm you, find something to do, someplace to go, something to occupy your time. So she went to Jesus’ tomb, almost certain of what she would find. Only, she didn’t find what she had set out to find.

The stone had been removed from Jesus’ tomb, and there was just what she had tried to run away from by coming to the grave in the first place. There was emptiness. And what do you do with emptiness? Most of us, like Mary, would jump to the conclusion: there is something wrong.

The first time I ever heard silence within liturgy, it had never occurred to me that the silence could be intentional. A lesson ended and there was silence. Bread was broken and there was silence. I thought to myself, someone has forgotten something. There has been a glitch. There ought to be music, or speech, or something. I wasn’t accustomed to silence. It made me uncomfortable at first, though it has since grown on me.

When I was completing my Clinical Pastoral Education in preparation for ordination, I would go into someone’s hospital room, try to strike up a conversation, and then try to keep the conversation going. Some people gave me blank stares as if to say, who are you and why are you here? Some people had nothing to say back to me. Some people couldn’t say anything back to me.

In my mind, if there was a pause in the conversation, if there was silence, then I felt I was doing something wrong. Something more needed to be said or else I needed to move on.

Part of my growth that summer was giving my self permission to be quiet in the presence of others: a comforting, non-anxious presence, and without necessarily doing something. Sometimes presence can be more edifying than words. Sometimes there are no words.

Mary Magdalene seems to turn hysterical upon discovering the stone rolled back and the empty tomb. She runs away from the tomb and goes to tell Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”

Then Peter and the other disciple turn hysterical themselves and leave at once for the tomb, both running, with one even outrunning the other. They find linen wrappings in an otherwise empty tomb, but they don’t know what to do with emptiness any more than Mary did. Their instinct is to escape the situation, to return home. Sometimes it’s just easier to run the other way.

I, and I suspect you as well, can identify with all three of these people. Sometimes I feel empty inside or emptiness around me and I am bothered. Something or someone is missing who I expect or want to be there. Someone dies; someone gets sick; a significant relationship ends; people struggle to reconcile for whatever reason.

There is brokenness and incompleteness about which often there is nothing I can do. Sometimes I react with hysteria. Sometimes I run the other way. Sometimes I try to fill up my calendar with other things so I don’t have to think about what’s bothering me.

Ultimately, however, as we have heard this morning, Mary Magdalene chooses to do none of these things. Ultimately she simply stands there by the tomb and weeps. Maybe that is all she can do. Something, perhaps a feeling of numbness or some sort of heaviness or whatever else, leads her to do nothing, but only to be. Nothing distracts her from the emptiness in the tomb and in her heart. She stands and weeps.

And that’s when it happens. There, somehow, mysteriously, unexpectedly, in the midst of her emptiness, she encounters Jesus. Jesus is there even before she realizes who it is or what is happening. And with that encounter there is conversion and transformation and a profound sense of peace. Mary doesn’t try to explain the occurrence, but simply lives into the glory of the moment.

We don’t usually ask for emptiness, but sometimes we get it regardless. I once said I would never want to become a priest and was determined to set my own path in life. God had other plans. It was only when I stripped away my agenda, though, when I allowed myself to enter that place of emptiness that God’s plans came into full view.

I think of people like former South African President Nelson Mandela, who spent so many years of his life in an empty prison cell. The emptiness must have felt overwhelming at times; I wonder whether I could have endured it. It would have been hard not to lose hope. Then the unexpected happened. Apartheid came to an end and a new day came for the people of South Africa. Something new emerged.

Everything doesn’t suddenly become rosy for Mary Magdalene because of her experience at the empty tomb; her life doesn’t turn into a fairytale. Jesus tells her, “Don’t hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to my Father.” There will still be issues of grief and experiences of darkness and places of emptiness. There will still be temptations to become hysterical or run the other way or create distractions.

But paradoxically, in the midst of her brokenness God has begun making her whole again; somehow, mysteriously, God intrudes into that empty place and there is new creation, new life, and resurrection. And what she experiences is very real. It is not in her mind. It is real. It is physical. I have experienced it, too. God is at work in the world.

Within our culture, it is increasingly in vogue to challenge and discredit the Christian faith. Resurrection doesn’t fit neatly within the bounds of natural law, the church is far from perfect and has made some inexcusable mistakes.

Within the church, many of the loudest voices representing our faith do not always represent it accurately. They turn good news into gloom and doom. And what’s more:

too much energy is being expended trying to tame God, to mold him into our way of life; to read biblical texts as if they were written for science books, or to market ourselves as if we were just another business.

Do you recognize a familiar pattern here? There is all this busyness we insist upon because the thought of emptiness frightens us. If we acknowledge this resurrection event, this mysterious act of God, we might have to give up control or let ourselves be vulnerable or admit we don’t know as much as we think.

I can’t help but to wonder, would Mary have encountered the risen Christ even sooner had she not gone running hysterically to Peter and the other disciple to tell them about the empty tomb? Could the risen Christ have been waiting patiently for her to stop filling up her time and space with distractions and open her heart to receive this most amazing gift?

Could such questions be asked of you and me as well? Amen.