Scripture texts: Isaiah 43:1-3, John 19:28-42, 20:1-18
It is never easy to know what to say in a moment like this. It’s not always easy to know what to feel. There is a certain shock to all this. It’s too quick. It’s not what we expected. It’s not the way we thought life would play out.
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.
I know those thoughts have been rattling around in my head and I’m only Millie’s pastor. I am not her child or husband or grandchild. I am somewhat detached, so if I am feeling confusion and anger and sorrow and fear at her passing, how much more must those who knew and loved her best be feeling.
On Good Friday morning, I got a phone call from Kathy. She asked if I could come over to the house and visit, share some Scripture, bring sacrament, because (in her words) “It just didn’t feel like Easter.” You were right. It didn’t. It still doesn’t.
Millie’s supposed to be at home when Ken walks in the door. She’s supposed to be sitting...right about there in our sanctuary on Sunday morning. She’s supposed to be in Bible Study and with her daughters and grandchildren and a whole lot of other things. She was supposed to get better. But she didn’t and so here we are trying to make sense of things.
“It doesn’t feel like Easter.” Maybe that’s because, in one sense, it isn’t Easter yet. We are still on Good Friday. We are still standing at the foot of the cross looking up and wondering how such a terrible thing could happen. That’s where we are.
Of course, for us, it is not a cross, but a casket. But the wonderment is still the same. The emotions are still the same. How could this terrible thing have happened? What does this mean? What will we do now?
I took Kathy up on her invitation. I came over, sat with Millie, and read to her and all those present that afternoon, the very passage of Scripture you just heard from the Gospel of John: Good Friday and Easter. It is the central story of our faith, the cross and the resurrection, and I am convinced that it wasn’t just because of the calendar that I was drawn to read that text that afternoon. No, I think the Holy Spirit compelled me to that text because it holds the answers to all our questions this day.
Three things are said over the course of those verses. Three lines of dialogue that speak most poignantly to us right now. The first are Jesus’ last words from the cross in John’s account: “It is finished.” What is finished? What has been accomplished?
Well, it’s the whole plan of salvation, drafted by God before history. The plan that brought a promise to Abraham, that he would be the father of a Chosen people and from him and his offspring would come a blessing for all the world. A plan that guided those chosen people to a chosen land and a chosen destiny, with kings and judges and prophets to keep things on course. And then, when the time was right, the plan also brought a Messiah: God incarnate, born of the virgin, into the world. Jesus himself.
Jesus came to take on the greatest foe the human race has ever faced: Death itself, the power and the price of sin. To do that, he took upon himself the sins of the whole world and went willingly to a horrific death on a cross. He did what he came to do. His words from the cross are words of triumph. It’s done. It’s accomplished. It is finished.
But for whom? The answer to that is the second bit of dialogue and for those of you here present who heard my Easter Sunday sermon, you already know where I’m going with this. It’s one word, just one amazing word: “Mary.” Jesus comes to one of his most devoted and calls her by name.
I called it a wondrously intimate moment and it is that. Here is God incarnate, the God who created the universe, the God who went to the cross and died, now come to one he loves and calls her by name. It’s hard to imagine that and yet it is so.
And who is it that he calls? Not just Mary, but Millie also and you and me and all of us. Isaiah gives testimony to that. “I have called you by name. You are mine.” God lays his claim upon us in the waters of baptism and he did so for Millie. She was brought to a font like this and God placed his mark upon her. She is his, and nothing will snatch her from his hand. Not even what we see before us now.
All this is because Christ has won. He done it. He has died. He has risen again. And Mary gives witness to this. “I have seen the Lord.” That’s our third line, our third bit of dialogue. And I believe that if Millie could speak to us now across the veil, she would tell us the same thing. She has seen the Lord because she is with him. All his promises to her have been fulfilled.
This is our word of hope on this day. This grand plan of God’s to call each of his by name, to claim us as his own, it has all come to pass for her. But one day, for each one of us, it will come to pass as well. And on that day, it won’t just be the Lord we see (although that certainly holds much excitement), but also all those who have gone before us and have received the fullness of his promises.
The story of Easter is not the story of an end, but the story of a new beginning. The cross, the casket before us, this is not where the story ends. There is an empty tomb beyond from which our God will call us by name.
“It doesn’t feel like Easter.” Well, for us, we’re not there yet. But we will be. Christ has seen to that. As an old black preacher once said, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s a coming.” We stand before the cross, but the empty tomb awaits. Millie has received hers, but so too shall we. Amen.
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