Sunday, April 17th, 2022 – Easter Sunday
USS CHOSIN CG-65, Seattle, WA
Scriptures: I Kings 19:4-13, John 20:1-18
Hymns: “10,000 Reasons”, “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today”
“It’ll be fun!” they said.
“The weather will be pleasant!” they said.
Me, being the fool I am, I had decided it would be a good idea to volunteer for a CREDO program validation that involved backpacking in Olympic National Park in April. I believed it when I was told that, because of the time of year, it shouldn’t be terrible. Maybe it would be a little chilly at night, maybe we’d get a little damp, but no big deal, right?
And yet, there I was, up to my knees in a snowdrift, fat flakes falling on my from the sky, my right ankle hurting like you wouldn’t believe, a three liter hydration pouch on my back, my winter jacket tied around my waist because, in spite of the snow, I was HOT. I was straight up not having a good time.
Looking around me, at the other three chaplains, three RPs, one career counselor Master Chief, and one combat camera Chief who were with me, it seemed like “straight up not having a good time” was the running sentiment of the group – except for Chaplain Harding.
Now, there’s a stereotype out there about Mormons in the ministry field, that they’re perpetually cheerful, but that’s not necessarily always true. I had seen Chaplain Harding plenty grumpy over the course of this trip, but in that moment, he seemed almost serene as he brought the group to a stop. “I want you to take a moment,” he said. “Reach out to the divine, see what God is trying to tell you. Listen. Just stop, and listen.”
Stop and listen. Sage advice, sometimes, and advice that all too often goes unheeded. How often in life could we have avoided trouble, heartache, extra work, if we had just stopped and listened? If we had listened to parents, friends, teachers, peers, mentors, those in our chain – maybe things would’ve worked out a little more easily the first time around.
The apostles were, to put it mildly, not very good at stopping and listening. Throughout their time following Jesus, they had questioned him again and again. They had not understood him. They had straight up ignored him. Peter even had the audacity to tell Jesus he was wrong to his face a couple of times, and for his trouble, got called “Satan” in the process.
And so these men of faith hadn’t listened when Jesus told them exactly what was going to happen to him – he was going to be arrested, be tortured, and be executed by the Roman state. Subsequently, he would rest in the grave until Sunday morning, at which point he would come forth alive once more, for the sake of bringing life more abundantly to every person ever created in the image of God, every being into whom God had breathed life.
The wild thing about it is, according to the Scriptures, he was pretty clear with them about it. He didn’t frame it in metaphor or try to talk about it in vague ways. In Mark 9, he flat out said, “The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men; they will kill him, and after three days, he will rise.”
But let’s be real. They didn’t like hearing about bad things, and they may have tried to ignore them. Who among us, upon hearing the words “WHITE SMOKE WHITE SMOKE WHITE SMOKE” over the 1MC, have pretended that they weren’t hearing it in the vain hope that it was a mistake? Who among us, upon hearing our alarm clocks, have hit the snooze buttons, praying that those five more minutes will bestow the blessings of life upon you?
They needed to just listen.
But they were in good company in not listening.
About nine hundred years before the apostles followed Jesus around the Galilean countryside, a man named Elijah had been the prophet of God, and he like to stir things up. He had this nasty habit of telling Ahab, the King of Israel, and his wife, Jezebel, that they were terrible people who God was going to smite straight to hell. As you can imagine, they weren’t particularly thrilled to hear this message from Elijah, and more than once, they threatened him with death, forcing him to flee into the wilderness.
The last time this happened, Elijah went out and threw a temper tantrum. “ENOUGH!” he yelled at God. “Smite me, almighty smiter!”
So God had him take a nap, and then an angel brought him a snack, because let’s be real, we’re not ourselves when we’re tired and hungry, and God needed Elijah to be himself, because God was about to come and see Elijah in person.
Now, to understand the gravity of this, ancient Hebrew tradition held that to see the face of God meant death, for the mind of man could not behold God and continue to function. And so, for God to tell Elijah that Elijah was going to see God in person automatically told Elijah that this was going to be a Very Big Deal.
So Elijah prepared himself for the arrival of God, standing out on the mountain awaiting the Lord. A gale force wind came along, but God was not in the wind. Then there was an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake. Then there was a great fire, but God was not in the fire.
Silence fell, and Elijah listened. He listened, and he heard a still, small voice – the voice of God, telling him to return home and continue his work of prophesy.
Elijah listened.
Nine centuries later, while the apostles may not have been listening, others were – Jesus’ mother and his friends Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Salome. They may not have understood exactly what Jesus was talking about when he said he would be raised from the dead, but they listened, and they didn’t fall away when Jesus died. Instead, they went to his tomb to prepare his body for burial, perhaps hoping against hope that his death would mean the resurrection of all the dead for which Jewish tradition holds out hope.
But when they got there, no Jesus. Just the clothes in which he had been buried. And they knew that these clothes had to be Jesus’ own – after all, the tomb that Joseph of Arimathea had given for Jesus’ burial had never before been used.
And so, Mary Magdalene went to the apostles and said, “They have taken him.”
Peter and John ran to the tomb, and looked inside, and when they saw Jesus was gone, they didn’t understand what was going on – for they had not listened. Perhaps they had heard, but they had not listened when Jesus said that on the third day, he would rise again. And so, confused, they left and went home, leaving Mary Magdalene by herself in Joseph of Arimathea’s garden.
You can imagine she was probably fairly upset, and so she stayed, weeping at the death of this teacher she had followed, and now the disappearance from the grave of his body as well. That was when a man asked her what was wrong.
She didn’t look up, just said that Jesus was gone, and imagining that this man was the groundskeeper, she said, “If you have taken him, please, tell me where he is, so I can take care of his body.”
Now it’s a common human trait to not fully hear or understand something until it is addressed directly to us. Perhaps you’ve been given an order that didn’t fully sink in until your name and rank was added to it – “LT Gawne, take care of this.” Perhaps you just didn’t realize that somebody was talking to you. Perhaps you needed to hear your name in order to recognize who the person talking to you was.
And so, when Jesus spoke Mary’s name, she LISTENED. She heard, and she realized, it was him – risen from the dead. And he told her to go back to the apostles, and tell them that he lived, and to make sure that they LISTENED as well, so that they would know that he was alive.
So she did. Mary Magdalene, the woman from whom Jesus cast a demon, the woman who tradition has held in a very dim light, was the first person in the world charged with carrying the good news of the resurrection of Christ to others, and making sure that they LISTENED.
The apostles listened. The writers of the Gospels listened. Millions upon millions of people over the last two thousand years have listened.
And on a cold, snowy afternoon in the midst of Olympic National Park, Chaplain Harding asked us to listen.
At first, there was nothing to hear – just the soft sounds of falling snow, and the rushing of the Dosewallips River. But then, we heard it.
The song of a bird. One bird, then two, then a multitude.
“The birds are singing,” Chaplain Harding told us, “because the storm is passing. They are telling the others the good news, that the sun will soon shine through and their lives will be better.”
I would’ve missed it had he not said something. I would never have heard the bird song, and I probably would’ve gotten more grumpy, even as the clouds parted and the sun shone down upon us. But knowing that the storm was passing lifted my spirits, and sure enough, not long after that, the sun broke through the gloom and illuminated what I can only describe as a winter wonderland.
So listen. Even in the storms of life, listen. Even when things seem dire, listen. Because even in the darkest of moments, even when all seems to be over, the light is coming.
For just as on that day some two thousand years ago, Christ is risen. He is risen indeed.
Amen.
A Wandering Disciple 