John 20 – Grits and Grains

The first Easter began with people who weren’t sure of anything. They were running, confused, and grieving… until they noticed that what they thought was sealed had been opened.
This sermon explores how resurrection begins not with certainty, but with the slow, surprising discovery that God is already at work — breaking open the boundaries we thought were final.

There’s a quiet pressure around Easter …
that this is the day you’re meant to be sure.
Sure about what happened.
Sure about what it means.
Sure what you believe.

But the strange thing is –
in the very first Easter story …
nobody is sure of anything.

John paints a picture of that first Easter morning.
Everyone seems to be rushing around.
They’re all running.

First there is Mary Magdalen,
then the so-called “beloved disciple”,
then slow-coach Peter.

All running around like headless chickens,
not quite knowing what they’re looking for,
or what they’re going to find.

That’s the risk for the preacher
and for all of us,
running around Easter Day
pretending we’re sure,
pretending we know what we’re talking about …

when the truth is,
the first Easter began
with people who didn’t.

The first thing they didn’t understand
wasn’t an idea, or a belief, or a theory.

It was something much more concrete than that.

It was a stone.

The stone was supposed to settle things.

To close the story down,
To seal it.
To make it final.

This is how the world works:

when something is over,
it is over.

We know about stones like that.
Moments that feel sealed.
Doors that don’t reopen.
Relationships that don’t come back.
Hopes that have run their course.

And Mary arrives …
not expecting a miracle,
not looking for resurrection …
just coming to a place that would have been closed.

And the first thing she sees is this:
the stone has been moved.

The very first sign of Easter
is not that Jesus appears,
nor that anyone understands

but that what they thought was sealed
isn’t sealed anymore.

And they don’t know what it means.
They don’t suddenly become certain.
They just know this:
something they thought was final …
has been opened.

And that is how resurrection begins.
Not with explanations,
but with boundaries giving way.

The boundary between life and death.
The boundary between what we think is possible
and what God is doing.
The boundary between who we think belongs to God
and who God is already calling.

It will take Peter a long time to understand that.
Years in fact.

Before this moment, he had been confronted with strange visions.
Voices telling him to let go
of what he had always been sure about.
An invitation to enter the house of people
he never imagined God could use.

Step by another stone step, another stone was being moved.
Not at a tomb this time …
but in Peter’s own heart.

And finally he says:
“Now I understand …
God shows no favourites.”

And what he realises is this:

that Gd has been moving stones
that he, Peter, didn’t even know were there.

Stones he had lived with all his life.

Stones that had quietly built walls –
about who belongs
and who doesn’t.

Because Peter had grown up in a world
where there were very clear boundaries.

Between Jew and Gentile.
Clean and unclean.
Inside and Outside.

Lines you didn’t cross.

People you didn’t eat with.
People you didn’t enter the house of.

People you certainly didn’t imagine
were part of what God was doing.

And it’s as if, step by step,
another stone is being moved …
not at the tomb this time,
But in Peter’s own heart.

Peter’s world is not so very different from ours.

We have our own ways of sorting people.

Our own quiet lines
about who fits …
and who doesn’t.

Our own assumptions about
where God is likely to be at work …
and where God couldn’t possibly be.

Isn’t it funny that Jesus called Peter the rock?
The solid one, the dependable one,
the one we might think would always have it together.
And yet here he is, confused, unsure and learning
that God’s work doesn’t obey the walls he’s built.

The rock … is still learning to listen.
And in that, he becomes truly solid –
not because he knows everything,
but because he has learned where God is really at work.

Just as Mary had to learn
that resurrection wasn’t where she expected it …
Peter had to learn
that God wasn’t limited
to where he expected.

This morning, Gary and Brittany were confirmed in Coventry Cathedral.
Not because they’ve worked it all out,
not because they are completely certain,
but because, like Mary, like Peter
they are learning to listen for a voice that calls them by name.

And that’s what Easter invites us to do:
to pay attention, to listen,
to notice where God is already at work
in ways we didn’t expect.

The stone at the tomb
was only the beginning.
Because once that stone moves
all the other stones
we’ve built around us –
and within us –
begin to shift as well.

Just as they had to for Peter.

The stones we place between ourselves and others.
The quiet assumptions about
who belongs,
who counts,
who could possibly be part of God’s life.

Easter begins not with certainty,
but with a stone that refuses to stay in place,

with confusion,
with running,
with not quite understanding what we’re looking at.

And then – slowly –
with learning to listen.

Because in that garden,
everything changes
not when Mary works it out
but when she hears her name.

“Mary.”

And that is perhaps where Easter begins for us.

Not when we are finally sure.
Not when we have all the answers.

But when, somehow,
in the middle of everything that feels closed

we hear God calling our name.

And we begin – slowly,
sometimes hesitantly,
to realise
that what we thought was sealed …
including our fate …

is already being opened.

It turns out –
God has always been in the business
of moving stones.

You might even say
God put the Rolling Stones on the map.

the_kiss_-_gustav_klimt_-_google_cultural_institute — The well known “The Kiss” (1907-08) by Gustav Klimt (in a garden, wrapped in gold)

I don’t count myself a “biblical scholar”. When I come to my daily reading from the Old Testament it is often as if I am reading the section for the first time. (Along with others I tend to tweet my naive responses with the #cLectio hashtag, here, here, here, here and here.) My current intrigue is with the Song of Songs, a tiny book of love poetry. And it is as if I am reading it for the first time. I guess it has always been a closed book to me – closed because of its reputation and the manner of its interpretation possibly as a consequence of its reputation. By reputation it is highly erotic and “saucy”. I’d prefer the description “absolutely delightful”. I wonder if a sense of embarrassment has led to its allegorical interpretations shared by synagogue and church which sees the poetry referring to the love of God for his people. Have such interpretations demeaned the text?

Some people will be surprised the Song of Songs is included in our scripture because there is no mention of God and the content is highly erotic. The Song of Songs is the title of the book. It is a superlative title indicating that this Song is very special. Colloquially we could say that this is the “mother and father of all song”. There are two speakers who are lovers. Later readers have named them Solomon (even David) and “the Shulammite” (someone from Jerusalem which translates as “the place of peace”). Allegorical interpreters have called one of the lovers “God” and the other “Israel” or “Church”. Personally I don’t see why we need to rush to their naming and I have preferred to leave them to themselves as two lovers. One of them, the maiden, has her confidantes. They are “daughters of Jerusalem”. They stand by. They have a view but no say. They stay as readers and celebrants. I have chosen to join them.

To me the couple are young lovers and with the Daughters of Jerusalem we are privileged to watch love building through them. My reading may have been influenced by Trevor Dennis (here is reason why we should reading him) who finds reason to call Adam and Eve children in his reading of Genesis. There are so many references to a garden in the Song of Songs that I couldn’t help going back to the Garden of Eden, to the boy and the girl we find in paradise. We have to be sorry the way they turned out (and the way they were turned out). I can’t help wondering whether The Song of Songs is dreaming a happy ending, building in love rather than falling in love.

In Imagining God Dennis imagines this “childs’ play”:

One hot afternoon Adam and Eve, unselfconsciously naked, sat on the bank of one of the rivers of Eden, dangling their feet in the water. Eve picked up a flat, round stone, stood up and flicked it in twelve graceful bounces right across to the other side.

‘Who taught you to do that?’ asked Adam.
‘God did.’
Adam turned towards God. ‘Did you really?’
‘Yes.’
‘Could you teach me?’
‘Of course. Watch.’

God stood up, chose a stone carefully, kissed it, curled his finger round it, and, with a movement of his wrist too quick to catch, sent it spinning downstream. It went almost as far as Adam and Eve could see, then swung round in a tight circle and came speeding towards them again, till with one last bounce it skipped back into God’s hand. It had hit the water two hundred times, and had left two hundred circles spreading and entwining themselves upon the surface. From the middle of each circle a fish leaped, somersaulted, and splashed back into the river.

‘Now you try!’ said God. Adam pushed him into the water. God came to the surface a few yards out from the bank. ‘That was level ten, by the way,’ he called. ‘Eve’s only at level two at the moment, aren’t you Eve?’ ‘You were showing off, God,’ said Eve. ‘You’ll be walking on the water next!’ ‘That’s level twenty,’ laughed God, and promptly disappeared beneath the surface.

So it was once in Eden. So it can be still. So it is, on rare and precious occasions. But Adam and Eve complicated matters. They grew up to think flicking stones child’s play. They turned in upon themselves, and God remained out of sight, beneath the surface. They did not sit with him on the bank any more. Now and then, realizing their loneliness and overcome with sudden longing, they would gaze out across the water and see the ripples he left behind. But these were soon gone, and the water would resume its customary smoothness, as if nothing had happened, as if he had never been there.

There are so many beautiful images in this Love Song of Love Songs. It is spring time, a time for building love’s nest. The references to spring signify love that is young, lovers for whom relationship is a novel and delicious mystery.

My beloved speaks and says to me:
“Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away;
for now the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtle-dove is heard in the land.
The fig tree puts forth its figs,
and the vines are in blossom;
they give fragrance.
Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away.”
Song of Songs 2:10-13

The song is soaked in pleasant images, images that are so sensual. They are images of body and bed, field and garden. The whole of creation seems to behind their love and a rich harvest is the outcome of their love. With the Daughters of Jerusalem and with the young lovers, we are allowed into a special world. For me, this is a creation story: the mother and father of so many love songs.

(And, of course, it reminded me of another garden, the strange meeting of two people there and the love that never goes cold between them.)

Mary stood weeping outside the tomb … As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). John 20:11-16

Love has created a world of its own – always has done, always will.

The text of the Song of Songs is laid out here.

Tag: John 20

What We Thought Was Sealed

The Mother and Father of all Song: The Song of Songs