“Never in my life have I wanted resurrection to be real like I do right now.”
I don’t think it’s too far off to imagine Mary Magdalene praying words like this on that first Easter morning.
Just days before, she had stood underneath the cross.
She watched it all happen.
She cried.
She followed the men who took Jesus to be buried. She watched as his body was laid in the tomb. She saw the stone rolled in front of it. She went home to rest, and I imagine she cried some more.
She returned on the third day to anoint and bless his body with oil. She found the tomb open, the stone rolled away, and Jesus’ body gone. She ran and told the disciples. They ran to the tomb and saw it all too, then ran back to the others.
But Mary stayed.
She sat outside the tomb in the garden.
And she cried again.
And I can imagine her praying to an empty tomb and a missing body: “Never in my life have I wanted resurrection to be real like I do right now.”
That prayer is one a friend of mine from Minneapolis found herself praying earlier this year.
Over the course of just a few weeks, one-by-one, several homes on a street in her neighborhood emptied out. Sometimes by force. Other times people fleeing out of fear.
She found herself walking down on this street that used to be alive with running kids, smiling neighbors, and barking dogs.
And she said that now it felt like a cemetery.
It felt dead.
The closed-up homes were like closed-up tombs.
The people she knew and loved were gone. And she had no idea where they went, or if they were OK, or if she would ever see them again.
So, she prayed: “Never in my life have I wanted resurrection to be real like I do right now.”
She wanted the people she loved returned to her.
She wanted her neighborhood to come back to life.
It is a perfectly reasonable and normal thing when people are taken from us and our world is turned upside down to pray for a quite literal resurrection. Because that would be the most beautiful thing.
Maybe you’ve prayed that prayer. I know many of us are longing for life to come back like it was. We see corners of this world that feel dead or places where it seems like goodness is gone or evil is winning. Some of us may even have witnessed something similar to my friend in Minneapolis.
It is all very real, and it hurts, and it makes us ache.
And our Easter story aches with us.
This story begins with humanity at its absolute worst. People turning their back on someone who was loving everyone he met back to life, and showing folks that life was worth living. That they belonged. That they mattered. No matter if they were a friend, a stranger, or an enemy.
And yet, the people said no to that.
It was too much, too difficult.
So they put all that in a tomb.
And closed it up.
But people like Mary—those who had experienced that real and full love for themselves—they wanted it back and prayed: “Never in my life have I wanted resurrection to be real like I do right now.”
And in our story, God says, “OK. You got it.”
Mary turns around.
And through her teary eyes, she sees a man in the garden.
It takes awhile for her to figure it out, but she sees Jesus standing there.
I don’t know quite what she was feeling in that moment.
Certainly shock.
A bet a lot more tears.
But I also wonder if there was a quiet smile of relief when she realized something she’d always heard about God was true because she was seeing it with her own eyes: That God doesn’t give up on us—no matter what we do.
Mary saw the worst of humanity thrown at God
and thrown at love
and justice
and goodness.
But then, God turns around to humanity and says: “I forgive you and I love you. We’re gonna keep going, and this world will get better. Let’s start again.”
God didn’t give up. Mary saw it with her own eyes, and she ran to tell everyone she knew.
Easter is God not giving up on us.
It is grace beyond grace beyond grace.
And because God refuses to give up on us, we cannot give up on this world and on each other.
My friend still hasn’t seen her neighborhood come back to life yet. The homes still feel like tombs. But, I asked her, “Is there anywhere you’ve seen resurrection?”
And she said, “My neighbors. I have never realized how important neighbors are until now. They are the ones who see you everyday, who know your life, who know if you’re home, who know your name. And I have seen neighbors come back to life and look out for each other like I have never seen it before.”
She told me about grocery runs and phone check-ins and text chains and school drop-offs and emergency babysitters.
She told me about neighbors not giving up on each other.
And isn’t that… Isn’t that all that Jesus did?
He knew people’s names.
He fed people.
He cared for them when they were sick.
He cried with them.
He laughed with them.
He drank wine with them, too.
He did it all for these people that were right around him, as he walked and moved from place to place to place: his neighbors.
He loved them with all his heart.
All of these little things that Jesus did and calls us to do, they are untouchable by power, by violence, by destruction, by even death. Nothing can stop these things. They live on. They are the future.
In this difficult days when we sit with Mary who prays “Never in my life have I wanted resurrection to be real like I do right now,” may you know that it is. Loving your neighbor is resurrection made real, every little act of love.
This is the resurrection life that Jesus showed us, and it continues to be how — in the face of great danger and evil and pain and challenge, in the face of anything — we can still bring this world back to life.
God never gives up on us.
May we never give up on each other.
He is risen indeed.
Amen.