Searching for Sunday, Part 7: Marriage

 

Service of Worship

Eastern Parkway United Methodist Church

Easter Sunday, April 4, 2021

Rev. Natalie Bowerman, Pastor

 

Let us pray:

Sing aloud, O mothers and sons!
Fathers and daughters, sisters and brothers, folx and friends,
rejoice and exult with all your hearts!
Let us offer our prayers and thanksgivings with one voice,
calling out the good news —

The tomb stands empty!

We look for our Savior among the living.

Jesus Christ is alive and in our midst today.

We pray for all faithful people —
for every human soul that turns to God in longing and in love.
Today and every day, pull us out of our graves and into your life.

The tomb stands empty.

We look for our Redeemer among the living.

Jesus Christ is alive and among us today.

We pray for the nations of the earth —
for those in authority, and for those under authority.
Come from the four winds, O Breath of Life,
and we shall live together in peace.

The tomb stands empty.

We look for our Mediator among the living.

Jesus Christ is alive and within us today.

We pray for this world, our garden home —
for the rain and the snow, the seed and the sprout —
for the birthing room and the last place of rest —
for every new creation.

The tomb stands empty.

We look for our Gardener among the living.

Jesus Christ is alive and beside us today.

We pray for those who are sick or suffering —
for anyone who needs extra help just now.
We pray especially for those named here today,
aloud and in our hearts
Living Lord, renew them in Your love.

The tomb stands empty.

We look for our Sustainer among the living.

Jesus Christ is alive and with us today.

We pray for those who have died, and for all who mourn.
We pray especially for those named here today,
aloud and in our hearts
Eternal One, bring them home and gather them in.

The tomb stands empty.

We look for our Beloved among the living.

Jesus Christ is alive and in the midst of us today.

With joy and exultation,
we give thanks for the triumph of life over death,
offering special thanks for those joys, sorrows,
challenges and delights named here today,
aloud and in our hearts
We are amazed at what has happened.

The tomb stands empty!

We look for our Creator among the living.

Jesus Christ is alive and in our hearts today.

Holy One, even before we call, you answer;
while we are yet speaking, you hear.
We offer up these prayers in the name of the Risen Christ —
our Savior, Redeemer, and Friend.

Amen.

 

John 20: 1-18

The Empty Tomb

20 Early 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. ² So 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!”

³ So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. ⁴ Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. ⁵ He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. ⁶ Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, ⁷ as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. ⁸ Finally 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.) ¹⁰ Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.

Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene

¹¹ Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb ¹² and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

¹³ They 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.” ¹⁴ At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

¹⁵ He asked her, “Woman, 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.”

¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).

¹⁷ Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

¹⁸ Mary 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.

 

 

A Message

Searching for Sunday, Part 7: Marriage

 

Christ is Risen!

 

Friends, it’s Easter Sunday! We’re not at the seventh and last part of this sermon series that I based on Searching for Sunday by Rachel Held Evans. Since Evans titled this last section of her book “marriage”, I have a story for you.

 

In the late 1950s, an engineer in San Francisco by the name of Harold Egbert Camping first felt a calling to the ministry. His calling was to do something really big, and he knew he couldn’t see it through on his own, so he began collaborating with friends at other nearby churches. In 1958, Camping and his friends purchased a radio frequency, and launched their own station called “Family Radio”. Over the next decade, “Family Radio” began simulcasting on thirteen other stations, and by 1961 Camping began hosting a nightly call-in program called “Open Forum”, in which he imparted his theological beliefs on his audience.

 

By the 1970s, Camping became extremely interested in the historical timeline of the Bible, and published a book titled The Biblical Calendar of History. The more Camping attempted to date very specific biblical events—like the Creation, and the great flood—the more dedicated Camping became to one specific date: the rapture. He believed that every existing church in the world was perpetuating false teachings, that God’s wrath was growing, and that Jesus planned to come back very soon to annihilate the entire world and all but the most faithful Christian people. Soon, predicting the day Jesus was coming back became Camping’s highest priority.

 

By the early ‘90s, Camping felt confident enough to make his first official prediction of the Eschaton: September of 1994. But when that whole month came and went without any word from Jesus, Camping conceded that it was possible his math was off and began recalculating. Seventeen years later, Camping calculated another date for Jesus’ second coming, and this time felt so sure about it that he committed to a nationwide campaign of radio announcements, bumper stickers, internet announcements, and highway billboards. Be prepared, he said, because only the most faithful would be raptured at 5:00pm on May 21, 2011.

 

Now, the rest of you may have seen bits of that campaign, rolled your eyes, and went about your day. You may have forgotten all about this business with Camping predicting the end times, especially because he passed away eight years ago. But Sean and I will remember this forever because May 21, 2011 was the day we got married. You guys, just imagine the jokes. Was Jesus coming to our wedding? I guess we could pass on the open bar since he would turn all the water into wine anyway. Would he bring a plus one? If he can walk on water then he must have some pretty sweet dance moves. And if the rapture happened that day, would Sean and I both be taken up into heaven, or would one of us get left behind (Sean)?

 

That there was a nationwide campaign announcing the world would end when we got married is certainly a story Sean and I will pass on to our grandkids, but oddly, there’s something kind of right about thinking you’ll get even the briefest glimpse into the great mystery of God’s plan for the world on a wedding day. This is what Evans emphasized about marriage in this section of the book—when two people love each other so much that they vow in front of everyone they know to commit to each other for life, you get as close as you ever will to understanding how Jesus feels about us.

 

Of all seven sacraments Evans lifts up in her book—baptism, confession, holy orders, communion, confirmation, anointing of the sick, and marriage—this one feels the most personal to our life stories. Some of us have been happily married for years, some of us had to wait for laws to change that allowed us to marry the person we love, some of us don’t plan to marry, or are partnered but don’t plan to legally marry, or are still waiting to find the right person, or chose a life partner but then it didn’t work out. Whatever you experience is with this particular institution, it is holy.

 

On this Easter Sunday, rather than seeing marriage as merely an earthly covenant between two people, I invite you to step into the greater mystery of Jesus’ love for us. And if that’s too big an idea to take in at once, then let’s start smaller with Jesus’ relationship with Mary Magdalene.

 

There was never a ceremony or anything fancy. Mary and Jesus were poor, and neither of them were looking for the finer things. In fact, Mary became such a powerful disciple of Jesus because she seemed like nearly the only person on earth capable of distancing herself from the trappings of this life in favor of something greater. There’s been all kinds of speculation about the evil that Mary could have been entangled in before she met Jesus, and many have full on assumed that she was a prostitute despite the lack of scriptural evidence. We’ll never know, and it’s not important. What is important is that Jesus saved Mary. He “cast out her demons”, in whatever way he needed to. Many of us have known Jesus’ saving touch, but none as powerfully as Mary. And once Jesus saved her, Mary never looked back. When it meant being voluntarily homeless, Mary stayed with Jesus. When it meant being the subject of centuries of rumors speculating that Mary was romantically involved with Jesus, Mary stayed with Jesus. When it meant sharing what little she still had to her name, Mary stayed with Jesus. When it meant constant confrontations with the Pharisees, or days of wandering by foot from one place to the next, or daily interactions with those on the margins of society, or mounting threats from people who resented Jesus’ teachings, Mary still stayed with Jesus. And after his arrest, after his trial, after he was sentenced to death, after he was suspended from one of Rome’s most vicious torture devices, and after all of the official disciples left, Mary stayed. She and the other women were the last at the cross, and she was the first at the tomb. Her faith was so strong that it got her through the worst day, and it allowed her to be the very first witness to the best day.

 

The easy sermon to preach today would be to tell all of you that the Church is the bride of Christ, so we have to stay faithful and serve him. It fits in one sentence, it’s an idea most of us have heard before, it rolls off the tongue quickly, and it gets all of us out of here for an early Easter brunch. But in a real life spent following Jesus, it’s a lot more complicated than that. If you’ve experienced a marriage with another person, then you might know how much learning, work, and sacrifice goes into staying together. That’s even truer for a life spent following Jesus.

 

Mary, in her unwavering devotion, was always a step ahead of what, or who, might make her stray, and she committed to always choose Jesus. This world is full of alternatives—the Pharisee types who stick with the status quo and don’t act compassionately, the Judas types who betray their loved ones for a quick buck, the Sanhedrin types who act with vengeance and stand in the way of justice, the crowd types who take out their anger and hatred on an easy target, and the Pilate types who don’t care about truth and wash their hands of the whole thing.

 

Spending your life with Jesus means rejecting rage, grudges, legalism, greed, prejudice, and self-centeredness. It means being willing to do the right thing even if you’re anointing Jesus’ body alone. And it means recognizing your teacher the second you hear him say your name, and telling everyone what his love means to you.

 

I don’t know when, or even if, Jesus is coming back. But I do know that his resurrection means he has the final word. I know that every broken thing can be mended, every injustice can be rectified, and love will win every time. And until we see those promises come to fruition, it’s our job, as Jesus’ partners in this life, to keep telling that Good News until everyone hears. Amen.

 

I invite you to receive this benediction:

May the loving power of God,
which raised Jesus to new life,
strengthen you in hope,
enrich you with his love,
and fill you with joy in the faith.

And as the people of God we say together: Amen!