Easter Sunday
John 20: 1-28

He is Risen! He is risen indeed! Hallelujah!

The miracle of Easter has shocked us out of our "No-name Saturday" sadness, and filled our broken hearts with joy, our souls with hope, our mouths with praise. Even after two thousand years the resurrection still packs a powerful punch of awe and astonishment every year we're privileged to celebrate Easter.

Try and imagine then, if you can, how utterly mind-boggling and adrenaline-pumping that very first Easter morning must have been for the men and women who suddenly found themselves confronting the most unexpected of scenes.

According to John's gospel it's Mary Magdelene who first trudges out to the barren, cold tomb of her master even before daylight had managed to warm the ground or adequately light her way. But in that dim first-light of day, Mary can see well enough to discern what she interprets as a disaster: the stone has been rolled away from the mouth of Jesus' tomb.

For Mary this was a sure sign that someone has been tampering with the tomb and very likely emptying it of all it contained, including Jesus' body. Even without the presence of any jewels or decorations, the body itself was well worth taking. Wrapped in fine linen clothes that themselves were filled with exotic, expensive spices, thieves would find Jesus' body a valuable commodity. Devastated, Mary runs off to bring this final piece of bad news to Simon Peter and the Beloved Disciple. Not only have Jesus' followers lost their living master. Now they have lost his dead body, and thus any chance to honor and tend his grave-site.

Racing to the tomb to see for themselves, Simon Peter and the other disciple now have enough daylight to see into the gaping tomb. Peter bursts right in, intent upon seeing firsthand the extent of this tragedy. Sure enough, Jesus' body is gone.

But strangely, both Simon Peter and the Beloved Disciple notice that the expensive linen wrappings and the head shroud placed over Jesus' face are still present. Both men also seem to fixate on the fact that these remnants are left in two separate locations -- the head cloth rolled up in one place, the linen body wrappings pushed off into another corner. Here we're in the midst of the greatest text in all of Scripture, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, and a significant number of verses want to tell us about dirty laundry.

The story of Jesus begins and ends with swaddling clothes and burial clothes. Priestly undergarments worn under the robes no longer used were cut up and used for swaddling clothes and burial clothes. They were considered too holy to burn. Swaddling clothes were often used to wrap the scroll that the child would read from at the bar mitzvah.

If you've ever gone clothes-collecting on laundry day, you know you can pretty accurately track the movements of a child or spouse in their room by the trail of discarded clothing they leave behind. Socks fly off in one direction, pants and shirts get dropped later, pajamas and underwear end up in one heap by themselves. The clothing trail makes its own kind of perfect, if messy, sense.

Knowing the end of the Easter story helps us to think about what the two separate piles of clothing may have indicated to Peter and the Beloved Disciple. A head shroud, plucked off by a living hand, would be taken off first, then laid down by itself where the head had reclined. The linen wrappings, unwound, pulled and kicked off by living arms and legs, would end up in a heap somewhere down where the feet had rested. The living body is gone -- only the telltale laundry remains to show its actions.

Perhaps the Beloved Disciple had done more picking up after others in his life than Peter. He seems to be able to read correctly the laundry signs left in the tomb and come to the astonishing conclusion that these are signs of LIFE, not death. He saw and believed.

The disciples now depart. It's Mary Magdalene's turn to look into the tomb. But for Mary there are no piles of laundry. Instead, there are angels!

Where the disciples see dirty linen, Mary sees angels.

Again with great care, John's gospel reports in detail the physical location of what's found in the tomb -- two beings dressed in white. Like the laundry piles the disciples saw, these angels are placed one at the head, one at the foot, of where Jesus' body had rested.

In the exact place where the disciples saw only discarded cloth, Mary sees instead heavenly messengers!

But does Mary get it? The angels, with whom she seems utterly unimpressed, ask her "Woman, why are you weeping?" If Mary were tuned in to what was now before her eyes, instead of to the pain that was in her heart, she might have heard the gentle chiding tone in the angels' comment. These messengers were not wondering why tears. They were asking why tears? Why sorrow on such a joyful, miraculous day?

The angels decry mourning because their very presence, which points to Jesus' obvious absence from the tomb, announces, "He is not here. He is Risen!"

Rejoice, don't cry! Celebrate, don't mourn!

For some of us, like Simon Peter and Mary Magdalene, the only thing powerful enough to shake us free from our self-absorbed despair is nothing less than the Risen Christ himself. That's what every new Easter Sunday is for the entire stubborn, self-centered, foolish community that's called the church -- a personal experience of the living Jesus once again in our midst! Unmoved by angelic messengers, blinded to Jesus' presence before her, it's not until Jesus calls Mary by name -- like The Good Shepherd calling his sheep -- that she snaps out of her gloom and awakens to the miracle of Easter morning.

How many cues and clues have you missed in the last year? How many telltale signs that Jesus is a living presence in your daily existence have you missed? How many abandoned shrouds have you mistakenly assumed were just dirty laundry? How many angels spoke the truth to you and you shut your ears because it wasn't what you wanted to hear or expected to see? How many times have you failed to see Jesus in a gardener's guise? How many times have you failed to rejoice in his voice?

Maybe our perpetual inability to catch the cues and clues about Jesus' presence with us is what really helps Easter Sunday to be such a genuine surprise. Sisters and brothers . . . He really IS alive!

He really isn't in the tomb.

He really appears to his disciples . . . then and today.

And he calls us by name!

Which will it be that you see? Grave clothes or angel's robes?