Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

Easter Sunday, April 4

By President Phil Amerson

1Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!" 3So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 4Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. 8Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. 9(They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) 10Then the disciples went back to their homes, 11but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb 12and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. 13They asked her, "Woman, why are you crying?" "They have taken my Lord away," she said, "and I don't know where they have put him." 14At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. 15"Woman," he said, "why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?" Thinking he was the gardener, she said, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him." 16Jesus said to her, "Mary." She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, "Rabboni!" (which means Teacher). 17Jesus said, "Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, 'I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.' " 18Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: "I have seen the Lord!" And she told them that he had said these things to her.

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Easter Day, 2010
Text: John 20:1-18

"i thank You God for most this amazing day: for leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes." -- e. e. cummins

Easter! We stand in awe before the events of this day and the complexities of our world. During Lent, we have been seeing a great mystery story unfold. Charles Dickens' book The Mystery of Edwin Drood was never finished and since then many have attempted to complete the story... without very much success. This is the way we receive life -- a story unfinished, clues all around, yet to be understood. Harry Emerson Fosdick once said, "I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small my mind could comprehend it." The question for us becomes, where is our place in this wonderful mystery we call Easter?

Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early on the first Easter morning and found the grave clothes neatly folded in an empty tomb. She is greeted by the gardener... you know the story. "Where have they taken my Lord?" She asks, beside herself with fear and concern. As she looks for an answer, she baptizes the mystery of this empty tomb with her tears. But there is no logic to it, no explanation. There is no Sherlock Holmes solving the puzzle; no, "Elementary, My Dear Watson." Ken Gottman, former pastor of the Mayflower Congregational Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan writes: "Easter is not a left-brained season... Easter is an expression of the wild, passionate freedom of God that cannot be captured and held and which is better described in the praise of poetry than in polished prose. Because Easter is a divine mystery we must rely on signs and symbols, rites and rituals, musical instruments and melodies to carry the freight of feelings too deep for full expression and truth too immense to imagine."

Mary hears these words when she steps into the garden, "Why are you weeping? Who is it you are looking for?" She turns and the mystery is gloriously, profoundly and ultimately deepened as Jesus welcomes her into a new reality - a breakthrough to the already! At the first of this story all Magdalene saw was the empty tomb, by the end baptized by the glory of the resurrection she goes to the others shouting, "I have seen the Lord."

At Easter, Christians around the world celebrate the mystery of the resurrection through the ritual of baptism. New believers are baptized thereby reenacting the death and resurrection of Jesus, yes, and also their own commitment to God's renewing purposes for our world. Each time we celebrate a baptism, the community is saying together, i thank You God for most this amazing day. Each day offers the opportunity to practice resurrection. Each day, we respond to mysteries around us through acts of justice and mercy, through the building of community and the life of faithful discipleship. Each day, immersed in the mystery of God's world we are reminded to say yet again "yes!" God continues to call us from places of death to the glory of life beyond death. Baptism is our Easter sign and symbol. We are plunged headlong into this mystery and rising again we give thanks.

 

Saturday, April 3

By Dennis Adams (G-E, 2007), Pastor St. Peter's & Faith UMC, Evansville, Indiana

3 Or don't you know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death?4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.5 If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin 7 because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. 8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him.10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. (Romans 6:3-10)

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Reflection for Holy Saturday 2010

A week before Christmas in 2007, after a four-year struggle with cancer, my 27-year-old son Matthew died. He was at home with his wife and family around him. And if such a thing is possible, he died with great dignity. Matthew had left instructions that the music at his funeral was to be "church music" from the hymnal, the songs he loved to sing on Sunday mornings when he was a teenager. We opened the service with "How Great Thou Art." When we began to sing the third verse - "And when I think that God, his Son not sparing, sent him to die, I scarce can take it in," - I was overwhelmed by my own pain and for the first time began to comprehend God's pain on that dark Saturday in Jerusalem.

Matthew was baptized as an infant and was confirmed in the faith as a teenager. As an adult, however, he had little time for church. But his faith and hope endured. When, near the end of his life, his sister challenged him, "How can you believe in a God who is doing this to you?" he said, "I just do."

From time to time on Sunday mornings, the pastor asks us to, "Remember your baptism and be thankful." Reading Romans 6:3-10, I remember Matthew's baptism and I am thankful to the very core of my being, for in his baptism, Matthew was united with Christ in death and I know he will be united with Christ in his resurrection. We ended Matthew's funeral with "Hymn of Promise."

In our end is our beginning; in our time, infinity;
In our doubt there is believing; in our life, eternity.
In our death, a resurrection; at the last a victory,
Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

 

Friday, April 2

By Anne Ferguson, PhD Program and Dean of the Chapel

The Epistle Reading for Holy Friday

Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus,20 by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, (that is, through his flesh),21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God,22 let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful..24 And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds. Not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some; but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
(Hebrews 10:19-25)

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Have you ever considered how very bizarre intercessory prayer is?

First of all, why on earth would God listen to our requests? Presumably, God has a plan for this world and for all of the people in it. Also, presumably, that plan is working itself out by God's own power, and will inevitably end in the way that God has in mind. So what makes us think that our endless pleas will make any difference?

Second, where do we get the nerve? Who are we to suggest that perhaps God ought to arrange things differently from the way they now are? Do we not trust in God's providence? Do we really think that we know better?

And yet, scripture advises us to pray. We are invited to bring our cares and concerns and needs to God, and to ask that they be addressed, notwithstanding all of our theology about God's omniscience and omni-benevolence. The church has always prayed for the needs of the world, and for hundreds of years that ministry of prayer has been the central feature of the church's worship on Good Friday. On this day, we kneel "at the foot of the cross," and voice the pleas of the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, the oppressed, the victimized of every nation.

In his incarnation, his ministry, and certainly in his death, Christ revealed that God stands with the victims of this world: with the poor, the outcast, the forgotten, the prisoners, the subjugated, the wounded, the refugees. We do not pray to a God who is loftily above the pain and squalor of this world, but to a God who was incarnate, and experienced nearly every humiliation that human life has to offer.

The author of Hebrews says that we enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, and that the way was opened for us through his flesh. Christ did not stand at some antiseptic distance from the mortifications that flesh is heir to, he entered into them fully, and drank the cup of suffering to its dregs.

There is so very little that most of us can actually do to relieve the suffering of the world. We do not hold power in the councils of nations; we do not control vast amounts of wealth; we cannot stop a hurricane or an earthquake. But, for reasons beyond our understanding, God has promised to listen to our pleas. Never forget that you have a ministry of intercession, and never doubt that the One who hears the needs of the world from your lips understands the pain of which you speak.

 

 

Thursday, April 1

By Sara L. Isbell (Trustee, '03 Alum MDiv) Pastor, Chatham United Methodist Church, Chatham Illinois

The Epistle for Thursday of Holy Week.

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread,24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.26 For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. (I Corinthians 11:23-26)

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Do this in remembrance of me. Remember your baptism. Remember... What does it mean to remember, to eat and drink, to live, in remembrance of Jesus Christ? I, like many of you, was baptized as an infant and so I do not "remember" my baptism. I was not present at the Last Supper to hear Jesus speak those words, and so I cannot "remember" him saying anything at all.

But faith that is lived, not out of memorization or reconstruction, but out of relationship, knows what it means to remember. Living in remembrance of Christ means living with him, for him, because of him, every day. Living into my baptism means living into, and up to, the promises that were made on my behalf. It is like the way I "remember" my marriage and motherhood. I may have forgotten details of my wedding, but I live each day like I know I am married. I may have blocked out the pain of childbirth, but every day I call my children by name, and I claim them as my own. These are not just events I remember happening: these are relationships that have forever changed my life and my identity.

 

It is said that Martin Luther found hope in difficult circumstances when he stood at the basin to wash his face each morning, and looking at himself in the mirror, said aloud, "I am baptized!" Not, "I was one time baptized," or "I have been baptized," but "I am baptized!" Now, and forever. Remembering who he was, and to whom he still belonged, gave him hope and purpose.

I've been trying that recently, whenever I wash my hands. I try to imagine that the water from the tap is washing away not only dirt from my hands, but my regrets, faults and failings, as well, and I say to myself, "I am baptized! I am part of the Body of Christ!" And when I break bread, I try hearing again Jesus' words, "Whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." My daily routines become moments of re-membering and re-claiming him, until he comes again.

Holy Thursday is, as they say, "a day to remember" - a day to remember him, and to remember that we are part of him. Many of us will wash one another's feet, or hands, this evening, and offer one another the bread and cup. These are acts not simply of recollection, but of relationship. May they remind us that we are part of each other - part of the Body of Christ.