by The Rev. Dr. Max Lynn
SCRIPTURE READINGS 1 Peter 2: 1-12, John 20: 1-18
Transcribed from the sermon preached on MARCH 31, 2024
Just the old clothes they wrapped his dead body in. That is all Peter and the beloved disciple saw that first Easter Sunday Morning. The stone rolled away, and a tomb with nothing but the clothes. Mary didn’t even go in to see that much. She saw the tomb rolled away and bolted to tell the others his body had been stolen. The body was gone, but why would robbers take off his clothes? And why fold them? It was tough to understand all this, as John noted, because, among other things, they didn’t yet understand the scripture that he would rise from the dead. Still the beloved disciple believed right then and there. That was enough. Barbara Brown Taylor in her sermon Escape from the Tomb goes on with the story:
The rest of the story belongs to Mary. She is the one who saw the angels. She is the one who saw the risen Lord, who had gotten himself some new clothes, incidentally. Someone recently pointed out to me that there is a naked gardener in this story somewhere. Either that or Jesus found the extra set of work clothes down by the fertilizer and the rakes. Peter and the beloved disciple saw none of this. They saw nothing but a vacant tomb with two piles of clothes in it. They saw nothing but emptiness and absence, in other words, and on that basis at least one of them believed, although neither of them understood.
Any way you look at it, that is a mighty fragile beginning for a religion that has lasted almost 2000 years now, and yet that is where so many of us continue to focus our energy: on that tomb, on that morning, on what did or did not happen there and how to explain it to anyone who does not happen to believe it too. Resurrection does not square with anything else we know about physical human life on earth. No one has ever seen it happen, which is why it helps me to remember that no one saw it happen on Easter morning either.
The resurrection is the one and only event in Jesus’ life that was entirely between him and God. There were no witnesses whatsoever. No one on earth can say what happened inside that tomb, because no one was there. They all arrived after the fact. Two of them saw clothes. One of them saw angels. Most of them saw nothing at all because they were still in bed that morning, but as it turned out that did not matter because the empty tomb was not the point.
https://www.religion-online.org/article/escape-from-the-tomb-jn-201-18/
Back in 2013 a group of us from the church went to Israel and Palestine. It was pretty amazing to see many of the places I had been studying and reading about in scripture all my life. Inside the great cathedral in Nazareth, we saw an excavated home that would have been something like the home Jesus would have grown up in. We went to the ancient city of Capernaum where many miracles were witnessed. We went to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher which is built around a rock slab where it is said, while Jesus was carrying the cross, he fell down on that stone on his hands and knees. We went to the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed and was arrested on Maundy Thursday. And then walked up to the cemetery and visited a tomb that might have been the tomb, or was something like the tomb Jesus was buried in. These were powerful experiences that gave substance to these old stories, and along with thousands and thousands of pilgrims from all over the world, we were inspired and prayed.
And yet our hope and faith came alive in another way. We waited in the long line to cross the giant wall that runs between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. And after visiting the Church of the Nativity we went just outside Bethlehem to visit Tent of Nations on the Nassar Farm.
We were greeted by Daoud Nassar, and amazing man with Christ risen in his heart. His grandfather came to Bethlehem in 1916 and purchased the land to begin a farm for his family. Every time the land's authorities changed, the Nassar family went to re-register their property. It was purchased under the Ottomans, then registered with the British during the 1918-48 British Mandate in Palestine. After the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, the area was under Jordanian control, so the Nassar’s have papers from the Jordanians. During the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel annexed the West Bank, and the land became part of Israel. So even though the West Bank is to be the land that would become a Palestinian State, Israel maintains control of huge portions of it. They registered with Israel, and yet Israel has intensions of taking it from them. Even though it is in the West Bank, even though they were recognized as owners by three different empires, Israel refuses to recognize their ownership.
Virtually all the hills surrounding the Nassar farm have Israeli only settlements on them, previous owners on those hills unable to resist the relentlessness of the Israeli government and radical settlers to take Palestinian West Bank land. The Israeli government has told them they cannot have access to the electrical grid, the water system or build anything on the land. They have been in court trying to prove title and get permits for thirty years. They started the Tent of Nations to bring international attention to the problem. So, the Israeli military put up giant stones to block the road getting to their property, to make it more difficult to visit and get their harvest to market. They have apples, apricots, almonds, grapes, figs and olives.
Meanwhile, a large settlement has its own Israeli only road which requires more land to protect it, so the Nassar’s cannot plant to the edge of their property. Just after we visited there in 2013, The Israeli military came in and bull dozed an entire orchard at the bottom of their hill near the Israeli only road. Settlers have come down and chopped down trees and assaulted family members. And just in case we think Israel is the only one who doesn’t want peace, a couple years ago Daoud was stabbed by a group of radical Islamic extremists from a nearby village. He lived and continues to preach peace and non-violence.
With denial of title dragging on in court, denial of water, electricity and building permits, the Nassar family still didn’t give up. They put in cisterns for water. They recycle grey water for irrigation. They put in compost toilets, solar power for electricity. With no permit to build on the ground, they built underground. “We plant trees,“ says Daoud, “for this is hope for the future — because it takes 10 years for trees to bear fruit.“ Every year they host a summer camp with Palestinian kids near Bethlehem. Daoud says, “We want our children to focus on their gifts, their talents, to focus on the positive and to believe in themselves that they can shape their future. It is about empowerment, give them a chance to stand up and act and act differently.“ Women in the nearby villages don’t have much opportunity. So Daoud’s wife Jihan is offering computer and English classes and empowerment groups for Palestinian women.
Daoud gave us this speech which I quote extensively: “The difficulties and hardships have brought frustration everywhere in Palestine. This deteriorated situation is forcing people to respond with violence, or with resignation — to sit down and cry, or to migrate, to leave. None of these 3 options are good. We are against violence; violence creates more violence. We are not resigning. We do not accept the unjust situation the way it is. We don’t want to sit down and cry. It is dangerous to accept a victim mentality. We don’t want to leave; this is our home. We don’t want to run away from our own challenges. We want to face our challenges but in a different way. And here we are talking about non-violence.
When we talk about the non-violent way of resistance it is not easy. We need to do several things. We need to fix ourselves. We need to believe because we might not see the fruits of our work immediately. So, we have this fourth way. The Way of the risen Christ, the way of non-violence.
Four things become our principles. 1. We refuse to be victims. We decided to act rather than react. 2. We refuse to hate. We refuse to be enemies. This is easy to say and difficult to practice. And we are challenged on a daily basis. 3. We live with our faith. We are acting differently because of our faith.
We seek to overcome evil with good, hatred with love, darkness with light. We are frustrated, we are angry, but we want to invest our energy in a positive way. We don’t want to give the power to hate and violence to make us hateful and violent.
Every year religious pilgrims come to this area to visit. They go visit these old stone buildings and go to see the tomb where they laid Jesus. People forget there are people here, living Christians here. Christian, Muslim, and Jewish people — when you meet faces, in the flesh, you build up a connection with the land because of the people and not because of an old story. The stones that people visit have no life in them. They do not live. The stone over the tomb of Jesus has been rolled away. He is not there. The tomb is empty. He is risen. We are the living stones,” he finished.
When I looked at and listened to Daoud, I saw the risen Christ. And maybe if he can shine the light of Christ in his incredibly difficult situation, perhaps we need not be so afraid, perhaps we can maintain our composure and live out of love and hope, as if the Eternal God of love and peace really is powerful and alive.
1 Peter 2: 1-5, 9-10
1So put away all malice and all guile and insincerity and envy and all slander.
2Like newborn babes, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation;
3for you have tasted the kindness of the Lord.
4Come to him, to that living stone, rejected by men but in God's sight chosen and precious;
5and like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
9But you are … God's own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
10Once you were no people but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy.