Easter Sunday Message
April 11, 2004
Richard L Sheffield
Text: John 20:1-18

The Lord is risen!
He is risen indeed!
The Lord is risen!
He is risen indeed!
The Lord is risen!
He is risen indeed!

And practically every Christian preacher in the whole world has spent the past week or two wondering what to say next. What do you say when what you just said is that "the Lord is risen!" Those words call for more than more words! Which is why, I think, we Presbyterians with all our emphasis on preaching and the words of the Word of God, and our Puritan and Scots heritage with all their emphasis on simplicity and plainness and a minimum of pomp – we go all out come Easter.

On the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox we strike up the band, the organist pulls out all the stops, more of us show up than on most Sundays, and we spend more at the florist than at most funerals. "The Lord is risen," we sing, and say, and celebrate. So what's a preacher to preach?

You know the story. Jesus irritated them, Roman and Jewish leadership alike, for months. Last Sunday's parade of palms was a political move at least perceived to challenge Roman authority. Politics in that day was like politics in our day – perception means everything. Jesus thrashed money changers, and trashed the Temple, declaring it a house of prayer, not a pawn shop. On Thursday Jesus told his disciples to love one another, because he knew they'd need each other, come Friday. And when Friday came they killed him.

On Saturday they mourned him. On Sunday they couldn't find him. And that's why we're here, to say again what followers of Christ have been saying for nearly 2,000 years.

"Let all the earth sing for joy; Today the Lord has triumphed. Nations give ear and be glad; Christ is alive; Sing for joy." ¹

"Lives again our glorious King; Where, O death, is now your sting? Jesus died, our souls to save; Where your victory, O grave?" ²

The Lord is risen!
As I said, what do I say after that?

One thing I might say, I don't but I might, is this. Is this a joke? Is this for real? From film to Fellujah the world seems to say the joke's on us. Empty tomb? Fine! Risen Lord? Forget it. An empty tomb you can explain. Even Mary Magdalene who, according to John's Gospel, was first at the tomb that first Easter morning had a simple explanation: ³

"They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him."

But "the body's gone," does not equate to "The Lord is risen."

Mary's song, Mary Magdalene's song, that we just sang, an old Easter hymn commonly called "In the Garden," starts with an assumption:

"I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses; and the voice I hear, falling on my ear, the Son of God discloses." ⁴

Never mind the poetic assumption, that it's a rose garden; never mind the meteorological assumption, about the dew point that day; never mind even the assumption the hymn makes about the Biblical text, that Mary was alone, ⁵ (You can look that one up!) – the big assumption in the hymn is that the Lord who was buried in that garden on Friday afternoon, was up and about and talking to Mary on Sunday morning.

And on this Sunday morning in a world that doesn't look much different from the world on that Sunday morning, that assumption seems bigger than ever. "The Lord is risen?" Then where is he? God knows we need him!

It's easy to retreat from questions like that. But even that rather sentimental hymn called "In The Garden" won't let us do that. The hymn writer reveals himself in the last stanza which I'd lay odds few if any in the room could sing from memory. Mary didn't say this, C. Austin Miles said this:

"I'd stay in the garden with him though the night around me be falling, but he bids me go; through the voice of woe his voice to me is calling." ⁶

I'm with Austin Miles. I'd stay in that garden too. But the Lord is risen, and he won't let me.

Throughout his ministry Jesus is said by the Gospels to have often retreated from the needs of this world to tend to his own needs. A good thing to do from time to time. Sometimes for Jesus it was to a "garden." It was to a garden sometimes called "Gethsemane" that Jesus retreated to pray on the night before he died. When he was in the garden, he found peace there; he found solace there; he found resolve there; he found God there – but he never stayed there.

You cannot "come to the garden," alone or not, and not return to the real world – and claim you follow the risen Christ. If you follow the risen Christ you will find yourself in fellowship with "woe."
"Through the voice of woe his voice to me is calling."

That's a rather remarkable statement – it says don't just assume it, don't just celebrate it – live it. In the real world, where real people live, and love, and hate, and hurt, and help, and kill, and heal, and hope, and despair, and die.

C. Austin Miles, who wrote "In the Garden," apparently knew that world pretty well. He also wrote this. It's called, "The World's Greatest Need." The World's greatest need, said Miles, is for:

A little more kindness and a little less greed;
A little more giving and a little less need;
A little more smile and a little less frown;
A little less kicking a man when he's down;
A little more "we" and a little less "I";
A little more laughs and a little less cry;
A little more flowers on the pathway of life;
And fewer on graves at the end of the strife." ⁷

That sounds like a little more Jesus to me. A little more Lord who didn't just rise, but is risen. Who isn't just with us in the garden spots of life, but in the hard spots too. Who calls us to live in this world of woe, and then walks with us, and talks with us as we do.

And I don't just assume that. I know that. I know it in the lives of so many who have lived and died in the "sure and certain hope of resurrection."

Like many of you, I was blessed to know it in the life of Betty McBride. Betty died on Good Friday – in sure and certain hope of this Sunday and all that it proclaims. Betty joined the Market Street Presbyterian Church ten years before I was born, in 1938. She was a new bride. Many of us have "Betty" stories, and there will be time to share them in the days ahead as we prepare for a celebration of her life later this month. But as Betty would be quick to point out, there are all those other stories too.

Some I heard from some of you as I called on Friday with the news of Betty's death and you shared with me about the death of other loved ones. Others I know from knowing you and many of those you have remembered with your gifts of flowers this Easter.

One of the "other duties as assigned," that goes with my job is proofreader. In that role I read every one of the listings of contributions for Holy Week and Easter flowers and music that are in your bulletin this morning – several times. In a way I guess it's a Holy Week chore. But it's also a Holy Week blessing. Because, reading all those names, many of whom I know, some of whom I have known well, is a reminder of something that's important to remember. That we are not, in this life, or in the life to come, ever alone. Mary may have come to the Garden alone, maybe not. But, in truth, she was never alone. There was always the one she mistook for "the gardener." ⁸

John Wesley, was an Anglican claimed by the Methodists, and not a Presbyterian. But we showed him we forgave him by making the first hymn in The Presbyterian Hymnal one written by his brother Charles. It's a hymn usually sung at Advent in expectation of the coming of Christ at Christmas. But it's really about the coming of Christ at all times, and in the time to come. It begins,

"Come, Thou long expected Jesus, Born to set Thy people free; From our fears and sins release us; Let us find our rest in Thee." ⁹

That's an Easter message of hope in resurrection if I ever heard one. Hope for rest in the arms of God. But there is also hope in the arms that hug us when we hurt.

John Wesley wrote, "In [his] Preface to the first Methodist Hymn Book (1739): 'The Gospel of Christ knows no religion but social, no holiness but social holiness. This command we have from Christ, that he who loves God loves his brother also." ¹⁰

You may well feel you come "alone," but even then Christ comes with you. You cannot be a Christian alone. Ours is a "social" faith. A faith found in community with each other and with the one we have in common. And when he "bids [you] go, through the voice of woe," you're in the company of saints, the living and the dead, who, Paul tells us,

"... will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet," ¹¹ at the resurrection, the re-creation, of us all. So "Hail thee, festival day! The day that is hallowed forever; Day when the Lord arose, breaking the bonds of death." ¹²

The Lord is Risen. He is risen indeed!



1. "Hail Thee, Festival Day," Hopson.
2. "Christ the Lord Is Risen Today," The Presbyterian Hymnal, 113.
3. John 20:2 NRSV.
4. "In the Garden," stanza 1.
5. See John 20:2 where Mary reports that "we do not know where they have laid him." Commentators differ as to whether this reflects the other Gospel accounts of women, plural, arriving together at the tomb, or whether this is an instance of "Galilean Aramaic [in which] the first person plural was frequently used for the first person singular. [If so that raises the question] then, why the singular appears in vs. 13." (Brown 984)
6. "In the Garden," stanza 3.
7. http://smiley00.tripod.com/poem276.html
8. John 20:15 NRSV.
9. The Presbyterian Hymnal, 1.
10. "Beyond solitary faith," Presbyterians Today, April 2004, 48.
11. 1 Corinthians 15:51-52 NRSV.
12. "Hail Thee, Festival Day," Hopson.