Sermon for Easter Day, March 31, 2024

Isaiah 25:6-9+Psalm 118:1-2, 13-24+1 Corinthians 15:1-11+John 20:1-18

All it took was one person.

One person waited around, curiosity overcoming fright, to see...what?

Where others came and saw nothing but a pile of clothes, this one person saw angels.

This one person heard them ask, "Woman, why are you weeping?" as if she would not be weeping in overwhelming grief and confusion. She had seen with her own eyes the events of the past days, of her friend arrested and tortured and executed by the state. She had heard the shouts of the crowd that he should be crucified, and if they came after the one who, only days earlier, they had welcomed with shouts of hosanna, then was anyone safe?

But through her sorrow and anxiety, she still came, this one person.

And that is all it took.

Peter and John rushed in, saw white clothing lying there, and rushed out again. But Mary? She stayed, and her perseverance was rewarded, because Mary Magdalene was the first to see the risen Lord.

Customarily, Mary Magdalene has been identified as being from a village called Magdala which is on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. In recent years, scholarship has pointed in another direction. The word magdala in Aramaic means "strong tower." Mary the Strong Tower did not flee or rush off to hide in an Upper Room like the others did. She stood firm. She waited. And then she heard the man she supposed to be the gardener call her name: Mary.

            And she knew it was him.

            All it took was one person.

There are only two miracles that appear in all four of our gospels, the Feeding of the 5,000 and the resurrection of Christ. In John's telling of the loaves and fishes, a young boy - just one person - offered his lunch for that miracle to happen.

            Just one person. A small boy then, Mary now.

When you are a person from whom seven demons have been cast out as Mary was, or who has lived on the outside looking in all your life, or who have been as despised and as rejected as this man we call our savior was, what do you have to lose, really? The men could all go back to their village and take up their nets again, which, by the way, is what they did.

But for a woman like Mary who had been following Jesus and the disciples around, the options were not only limited but risky, because a woman without a man was a suspicious thing. The Gospel of Luke tell us that several women followed Jesus, including Mary Magdalene, and provided for him out of their own resources (Luke 8:1-3). Some of these women were married, but we have no evidence that Mary had a spouse. What she apparently did have was a little money which she was glad to use to support Jesus's ministry in gratitude for the healing he had done for her.

And from that moment of healing until the very end, the Strong Tower never wavered.

That one person, that one woman, comes to us as the Apostle to the Apostles, the one who went and told the Good News of the resurrection to the disciples.

            "I have seen the Lord" (John 20:18).

It only took that evangelism - that telling of Good News - on the part of one woman to spark a movement that we gathered her today are still part of.

Imagine that. At a time when women's voices counted for next to nothing, when this Good News was held in the hands of a woman from the margins, all it took was for her to stand firm, to speak up, and to persist.

            All it took was one person.

Now, maybe you are sitting there thinking "okay, sure, fine, but that was then," individual voices can't make a difference now, the world is too big, too divided, too conflicted. Who am I to speak Good News into that?

Let me tell you the story of one little boy whose dad died when he was 8 years old, throwing his fragile little life into instability and confusion. A few years later, the 70-year-old groundskeeper at the local Presbyterian Church which this child did not attend took him under his wing and gave him a job mowing the lawn. This man taught standing-room-only bible study to teenagers and also gave that boy someone to look up to. In junior high school, the basketball coach took notice of him, put him on the team even if he shouldn’t have made it because the coach knew how unsettled things were at home, and he encouraged him in his studies and watched in pride as he went off to college, the first in his family to do so. And when the going got rough and the now college-aged-young man wanted to chuck it all and come home, that coach said to him, "you can do whatever you want, but you’re staying in college." And later as career changes and challenges confronted him as he dreamed of starting a business, his mentor and friend was ready to retire and handed over everything he had learned in that field over forty years. Today, that dreamed of business is approaching its 20th anniversary this week.

It was not just one person; it was three people giving generously of themselves and their time and their talent and their voice and their counsel that led to my beloved husband sitting right there today. He will be the first to tell you that the 8-year-old boy learned resurrection firsthand from those who took note of him and encouraged him along the way.

Maybe we set our sights too high on what is required of us. Maybe we imagine that resurrection means bringing the dead back to life. That's God's job. But maybe resurrection also means giving life and hope to someone trapped in despair and death. If God's love has touched you or moved your heart in any way, you have Good News to share. And in using your one small voice, you are showing other people who Jesus is. In the way you live and care and love, you are saying, "I have seen the Lord."

            So go and tell.

            Alleluia, Christ is risen.

            The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!