Easter Day, 2024: John 20:1-18

 At the end of the fifth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy sacrifices herself in place of her sister. Buffy jumps from a tower, causing a portal to another dimension to close, and while her sister lives, she dies. Notably, that episode is not called “The Sacrifice”, it’s called “The Gift”. But in the beginning of the next season, Buffy’s friends decide to magic her back to life. They go to her grave and do a spell and, when nothing visibly happens, they assume they’ve failed and leave. But they haven’t failed, they just didn’t dig her up, and Buffy, with her superhuman strength, digs her own way out. But Buffy wasn’t resurrected. She was simply resuscitated; forced back into her old body and thrown back into the fight. And through the following episodes, Buffy tries to figure out why she feels so wrong, so off, so empty. And finally, in the best musical episode in all of television, Buffy is forced to honestly sing her discovery to her friends. She sings: “there was no pain / no fear no doubt til they pulled me out of heaven / so that’s my refrain / I live in hell ‘cause I’ve been expelled from heaven / I think I was in heaven.”

One of the struggles I often hear with the Easter story from the Gospel of John is how Mary Magdalene doesn’t recognize Jesus. After all, she was close enough to Jesus to be with him at the crucifixion and is among the women who did not desert him. She was constantly in his presence. So how could she not recognize him? I am not moved by the argument that it was still dark, so she couldn’t see him properly. It wouldn’t have been worth John’s time or paper to include so much just because Mary simply couldn’t see in the darkness. There’s more to it than that. This isn’t a story about how hard it is to see at dawn. This isn’t a story about resuscitation, like Buffy’s. This is a story about resurrection.

Many people today, both Christian and non-Christian, use the word “resurrection” loosely, to refer to things like life after death or reincarnation or, simply, resuscitation. But resurrection is deeper and bigger than all of those things. The resurrected body possesses both continuity and discontinuity with the originally existing body. After all, Jesus’ hands and side still bear the marks of the crucifixion, but clearly a marked enough change has occurred that those scars are the means used to identify him. Enough has changed that in none of the Gospels is the risen Jesus recognized upon first glance even by those closest to him.

When I visited Rome, I had the opportunity to tour St Peter’s Basilica under the guidance of an art historian. When we saw Michelangelo's Pieta, the sculpture of Mary cradling the body of Jesus, our guide pointed something out that has stuck with me. That is, how alive Jesus looks. You can see his veins in some places like they continue to have blood flowing through them, and his legs almost look like he’s lifting them himself, like he’s helping his mother to hold him. And what Michelangelo is accomplishing through this piece of visual theology is the reminder that, even when Jesus has died, God is continuing to work in him. After the crucifixion, God didn’t just say, “oh no, what now,” but was already working toward the resurrected Christ. These events, beginning with Maundy Thursday and continuing through today, are part of a singular Event that changes reality.

“The significance of Jesus’ resurrection is not simply that it opens up hope for life after death for individual Christians, but that the new creation has already begun.” (NT Wright, 120) The significance of our resurrections on the last day is not that we will be our old selves. God doesn’t pick a version of our earthly bodies and stick us back in that version. God transforms us into something new. And in the same way as Jesus prepared for his death and resurrection during his earthly ministry - he said some version of “the Son of Man will be handed over to sinners and killed and on the third day rise again” many times throughout all four Gospels - we can prepare for our own resurrections in the midst of a world wherein the new creation has already begun.

How do we live as resurrection people, in the new creation that has already begun, and of which we want to be a part?

In the Acts of the Apostles, we read about how, “awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” (2:43-45) We also see, in the ministries of the apostles, the planting of the first seeds of all of the later feeding and healing ministries founded in the name of Jesus.

Later in the life of the Church, we have examples of the saints like Zita of Tuscany. St Zita was born into a poor Christian family in the early 13th century. At the age of twelve, she entered into domestic service. Scrupulous in the exercise of her duties, she embodied Paul’s advice in Colossians 3:23, “Whatever your task, put yourselves into it, as done for the Lord and not for your masters.” Through her perseverance in doing good, she earned the respect and affection of the whole household. She eventually rose to the position of housekeeper - the head of the household staff. As housekeeper, Zita demonstrated such Christlike benevolence that she came to be venerated throughout the community even before her death. Mindful of the poverty in which she had been raised, she gave away most of her income to those in need. (LFF) St Zita reminds us that, as resurrection people, no task is menial if done with the intention of glorifying God, and that whatever we have to give, if given in the love of Christ, is enough.

Today, we have the examples of saints like Oscar Romero. Bishop Romero was martyred in 1980 in El Salvador. When he was a priest, he worked among the poor, served as an administrator for the church, and started an Alcoholics Anonymous group in San Miguel. When he was appointed a bishop, radicals distrusted his conservative sympathies. However, after his appointment as Archbishop of San Salvador in 1977, a progressive Jesuit friend of his was assassinated, and Bishop Romero began protesting his government’s injustice to the poor and its policies of torture. He used his position to publicly advocate for the people of El Salvador against the abuses of the country’s leadership. On March 23, 1980, Bishop Romero preached a sermon calling on soldiers to disobey orders that violated human rights. The next day, he was shot to death while celebrating Mass. (LFF) Oscar Romero did not set out to be a political figure. But he was convicted by what he saw occurring in his own country to become a public advocate for the voiceless and, as his collect says, “to give his life as a seed of freedom and a sign of hope”.

What I love about the examples of the saints is they show us how to live in the resurrection while being human. None of these people lived without sin. But they let Jesus work in their hearts and their lives and leave us examples in their lives and works of what the world can be like when we live in the joy of the resurrection.

Don’t settle for resuscitation, be resurrected. Don’t go back to a previous “best version”, be transformed by the presence of the living Christ so that you can be the hands of the living Christ in this world that desperately needs your hands. In the words of St Albert Schweitzer, “Wherever you turn, you can find someone who needs you. Even if it is a little thing, do something for which there is no pay but the privilege of doing it. Remember, you don’t live in a world all of your own.” Amen.