An Easter sermon

For St. Saviour’s Anglican Church in Penticton BC — Sunday March 31, 2024

A VOICE IS HEARD IN RAMAH,
HIROSHIMA, SALVADOR,
WOMEN REFUSING COMFORT
FOR THEIR CHILDREN ARE NO MORE;
NO GARLAND OF LOVELY FLOWERS
CAN DISPEL THE ANCIENT GRIEF
OR SILENCE THE ANGUISHED VOICES
THAT ABHOR THE WAR MACHINE.

This song was written by Coleen Fulmer, a lay Franciscan working in Los Angels with displaced persons from South and Central America in the 1980s. I had cause to reach out to her in relation to a chapter in my book (copies still available) but her order has devolved back to the mother house in Cincinnati and she in no longer with the order. Coleen’s songs were hugely inspiring to me and many others though which we glimpsed the world through resurrection justice, an hope I cling to today. Taking the tune and the shape of the poetry, I have created my own updated version:

A voice is heard in Gaza,
Kyiv and Karchiv, Port au prince;
Men and women refusing violence,
As the missiles fly above;
No will to change the pathway
T’ward a never ceasing death
Clouds of hopeless, hungry victims,
Chanting now, “let there be love,”

It just makes you cry, and cry, and cry . . .

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

Sometimes, possibly all the time, we need an angel, a guardian angel, a truth-telling angel. A few years ago, the Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, David Chillingworth preached at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Kamloops when I was dean. Speaking on the feast of St. Michael and All Angels he mused aloud: “Do I believe in angels?” Living in Scotland though of Irish descent, he answered “I think so.” As Montreal-based philosopher Charles Talyor argues, we from the educated and sophisticated north have a disenchanted view of the world. Angels? Why not? Read Hebrews chapter one.

(The angels) asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?” It’s a good question. Let’s hear the answer:

“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

So often I have a similar feeling, partly due to my vision challenges. Where have I met this person before? They look familiar. Years ago at a golf course on Victoria’s west shore, someone enthusiastically said “hello” to me. I replied, “have we met?” Yes, he said: “you buried my mother.” Whoops! Remember in Genesis 18 where Abraham entertained three angels, “unawares.” Never, say never!

(The angel) asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”

John loves this curious language: “Who are you looking for?” In John 1:39 Jesus answered two inquisitive disciples, Andrew and Peter, who wondered where Jesus was staying. Jesus responds: “Come . . . and you will see.” Elsewhere in John 12: 20 we hear: “Now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks. So these came to Philip, who was from Beth-sa′ida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” In a church I served in the 1980s, this text in the King James translation was emblazoned on the pulpit desktop: “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” A friendly reminder of the purpose, gift, and discipline of Christian preaching.

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.”

A brief confession at this point: I love murder mysteries, especially British crime dramas. My first experience of the genre was through the craft of Dorothy Sayers. Typically, there is a death, and a body, and a question: “Who did it?” In this case we find, at least initially, no body and an empty tomb, but we know who did it. It’s a marvellous reversal of the usual form.

And in the end, there is an amazing kicker: Mary finds the body, ALIVE, enfleshed, so much so she thought he was the gardener. Once enlightened, she wants to hang onto him. Literally, mind blowing; love showing; a story worth telling and sharing. Yes, he is the gardener, but he serves the world, all creation, from the first garden of Genesis to the last vision quest in the book of Revelation.

Mary declares : “I have seen the Lord!” And she tells the disciples, who tell others, and well, here we are, today. The Lord is risen; He is risen indeed. Hallelujah.