I Feel the Wind of
God Today
Reflections on John
20.1-18
RCL Easter A
16 April 2017
Saint Faith’s
Anglican Church
20.1 Early on the first day of the week,
while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone
had been removed from the tomb. 2
So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus
loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do
not know where they have laid him.” 3
Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. 4 The two were running together,
but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent down to look in and saw
the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came, following
him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, 7
and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings
but rolled up in a place by itself. 8
Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw
and believed; 9 for as yet they did not understand the scripture,
that he must rise from the dead. 10
Then the disciples returned to their homes.
11 But Mary stood weeping outside the
tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; 12 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. 13
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.” 14 When she had said this, she
turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was
Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her,
“Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are
you looking for?” 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.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew,
“Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). 17
Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to
the Father. But go to my brothers and
say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your
God.’” 18 Mary Magdalene went
and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that
he had said these things to her.
I spent the
summer of 1980 in Fort Wayne, Indiana as the seminarian intern at Trinity
Episcopal Church. Throughout my time at
Trinity parishioners went out of their way to include me in their family social
events. I think that some folks felt sad
that I was spending my summer holiday, my last real summer holiday before
graduation and ordination, hard at work in their parish.
One such occasion
has remained with me these past thirty-six years. Fort Wayne has a number of large lakes and
many parishioners had summer homes on their shores. One family invited me to come to a family
barbeque. What I did not know is that
this family were keen sailors and had a large sailboat moored on their
wharf. Shortly after I arrived, I was
asked if I wanted to sail around the lake.
And off we went.
There was a good
wind on the lake that day. I spent more
than an hour sitting forward at the bow as we sailed around the lake. We sped back and forth, the wind coming from
different angles as we tacked back and forth.
The cool spray was a wonderful antidote to the heat and humidity of a
Indiana summer day. I loved every moment
we were one the water. We never used the
engine; all was achieved through the power of the wind and the skill of our
skipper. It was magic.
Wind is a
remarkable phenomenon of nature. Changes
in atmospheric pressure cause the molecules that make up our atmosphere to move
vertically and horizontally. We feel the
movement on our skins; we see the movement in the trees and clouds; we hear the
movement in the trees. I love to take
Seren for walks on windy days; there is no more beautiful sight, to me at
least, than a Sheltie whose fur is being blown by the wind, waves of movement
like wheat in a field.
But we never
really see the wind; we only observe its effects on the world around us. Despite not seeing the wind, we do not doubt
its existence, especially when wind manifests itself in its more destructive
forms.
No one saw God
raise Jesus from the tomb on that first Easter morning. The earliest stories of that morning, written
some twenty-five to forty years after the event, tell us that the tomb was
empty. Women had visions of heavenly
beings who told them that Jesus had been raised from the dead. At various times that day and in the days
that followed both men and women had encounters with the risen Jesus whom they
recognized despite something being different about him. He entered the rooms where they
gathered. He spoke to them. He ate fish barbequed on a lake side. He allowed them to touch him.
But did it
happen? This is a question that I am
often asked by people of faith and people seeking faith. How do I know that the stories of the
resurrection are true? And from time to
time I have answered their questions with one of my own, ‘Do you believe in the
wind?’
I believe in the
resurrection because shortly after the news broke out that Jesus had been
raised from the dead, the Jewish and Roman authorities began to conjure up
‘alternative facts’ to explain the empty tomb and their failure to produce the
body. A wind that shakes empires had
begun to blow and the powerful sought shelter.
I believe in the
resurrection because shortly after the news broke out that Jesus had been
raised from the dead, a small community of women and men from the fringes of
Jewish society moved out into the world to share the story. They were belittled and ostracized, they were
arrested and tortured, but they continued to tell the story and to live the
life Jesus had shown them how to live. A
wind that changes lives had begun to blow and many people unfurled the sails of
their souls and sailed into the future.
I believe in the
resurrection because the good news of God in Christ still shakes up those who
wish to claim supremacy over the human heart and soul and body. Religious fundamentalists, whether Christian
or non-Christian, cannot accept the freedom that the resurrection brings to our
world. Despite their most oppressive
measures, not just in far-away places but even here in North America, these
powers cannot stop the wind that promises freedom for all God’s children, gay
and straight, male and female, old and young, rich and poor, aboriginal and
non-aboriginal, recent immigrant and old-time settler.
I believe in the
resurrection because the good news of God in Christ continues to be embodied in
the extraordinary choices that ordinary people like you and I make so that our
neighbours know that ‘goodness is stronger than evil; love is stronger than
hate; light is stronger than darkness; life is stronger than death’ (Desmond
Tutu).
The wind of the
resurrection has been blowing steadily since that morning two thousand years
ago when Mary Magdalene first saw the empty tomb and went to fetch Peter and
John. In every generation since then
women and men have felt that wind stir their souls and empower them to do ‘more
than [they] could ask or imagine’. ‘Things
that were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are
being made new’ despite the opposition of those whose power is threatened by
new life made known to us and in us through the resurrection.
Let us unfurl our
sails. The wind of God is blowing as
strong today as it did all those centuries ago.
If we listen carefully, we can hear that wind whispering to us, ‘Go to
your sisters and brothers. Share with
them the good news. Christ has
died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. Alleluia.’
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