“What Keeps You Running”

“What Keeps You Running?”[i]

First UMC Fort Dodge

March 23, 2008

Mark Haverland

John 20:1-18

John 20: ¹Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. ²So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!" ³So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. ⁴Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. ⁵He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. ⁶Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, ⁷as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. ⁸Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. ⁹(They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) ¹⁰Then the disciples went back to their homes, ¹¹but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb ¹²and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. ¹³They asked her, "Woman, why are you crying?" ¹⁴"They have taken my Lord away," she said, "and I don't know where they have put him." At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. ¹⁵"Woman," he said, "why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?" Thinking he was the gardener, she said, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him." ¹⁶Jesus said to her, "Mary." She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, "Rabboni!" (which means Teacher). ¹⁷Jesus said, "Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, 'I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.' “18Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: "I have seen the Lord!" And she told them that he had said these things to her.

What a satisfying week it has been for preachers. It turns out that what I say from the pulpit really makes a difference, especially if one of you decides to run for president. And here I thought no one was really listening, or listening in, at least. To think that you might get stuck defending what I say up here is a deeply scary thought, for you and for me. But some of my pleasure at being taken so seriously was undermined by Barack Obama’s speech the other day when he said many Americans “have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagree.” I suspect that might be true even here at First United Methodist Church Fort Dodge, but if it is I hope you will also take note of the fact that Senator Obama did not disown his pastor, nor leave the church. He just sits in the pews some Sundays and quietly seethes and stews. I suspect that from time to time this happens when I preach as well. It was wonderful to hear that someone who might someday be president believes that the church is far more than the pastor and that sermons are just meant to get our juices flowing and our minds in gear. He reminded the whole nation that church membership is about finding opportunities to express our compassion for our neighbors and our love for God. The real important ministry of the church is found in the pastoral activities of baptism, weddings, funerals and compassionate service. Pastors, on the other hand, including present company, are to be taken with a grain of salt, while you get on with the business of finding the blessings of God’s presence in a worshiping and serving congregation of committed Christians.

In the interest of equal time and journalistic fairness, I expect we will soon be hearing John McCain defend his pastor, John Hagee, whose support McCain solicited and received. Hagee has suggested[ii] said that Hurricane Katrina was an act of God, punishing New Orleans for "a level of sin that was offensive to God". He specifically referred to a "homosexual parade" that was held on the date the hurricane struck and that this was proof "of the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.” He credited God with the attacks on 9/11 also. Obama’s pastor has nothing on the Rev. Hagee, who seems to agree with the Rev. Wright that God sometimes is unhappy with America. I look forward to hearing John McCain deliver his speech regarding the opinions of his pastor. I never thought we preachers would loom so large in a presidential campaign. What fun this campaign is going to be after all!

Isn’t it interesting that we talk about candidates running for political office? They don’t literally run for president, I suppose, but still running is an apt metaphor since it implies extreme efforts to get somewhere. But lest I get myself in even more hot water, let’s move away from politics to some other occasions when running seems an appropriate response. For instance, when you go for a leisurely walk in the countryside and you encounter a mountain lion. Can’t happen, you say, well listen to this. Mountain lions are back in Iowa. Increasingly people see them and occasionally one is killed by traffic on, one hopes, back roads. The return of this predator means that increasingly people will encounter them, even though mountain lions are very reclusive and hunt mostly at night. These 150 pound cats are thunderously strong, agile and speedy. Even though they do not dine normally on humans, sometimes they mistake us for the small animals that do make up its diet. Any carnivore that can’t tell the difference between a child and a chipmunk is dangerous.[iii] After extensive research on the dangers of encountering mountain lions, I am pleased to give you some advice on what to do if you should happen to encounter a mountain lion on the bike trail Fort Dodge Nature Trail. DO NOT RUN! Face the critter and puff yourself up to look as big as possible, pick up any children in the area and speak to the cat as you would to a stray dog. Got it? Right! It seems to me that if ever there were a reason to run like crazy, meeting a mountain lion would be one of them. But noooo... Do not run – they say! Similar advice, by the way, applies when meeting bears, especially grizzly bears, which are also on the increase, although not in Iowa, thank goodness.

I guess the rule is: Do not run when encountering dangerous animals. Save your running for other occasions. Like coming to church, perhaps? I’m sure I am safe is saying that none of you came running to church this morning. I’m going to hazard a guess that hardly anyone runs to church – unless they are late, maybe. More likely if they are late, however, they just stay in bed. We don’t run much anymore to or from anything and, unfortunately, it shows, even or maybe especially toward church. Did no one run toward Easter this morning? According to John’s Easter Gospel, there was a great deal of dashing about on the first Easter. In fact, the empty tomb caused a virtual stampede and at least one actual foot race.

First, Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb and seeing the stone rolled away and the tomb empty, starts running – away, as it turned out, not so much because she had seen a mountain lion, but more to alert the others. In the predawn darkness, she runs to tell the rest of the disciples that Jesus’ body is gone. Interestingly, she does not leap to the conclusion that Jesus has been raised from the dead. Instead, she assumes that someone has stolen the body.

Her shock and fear remind me of the time I ran from the classroom during a fire drill as a sophomore in high school. We were in a makeshift classroom because of an overcrowded building and the nearest outside door was down a narrow hallway and not always unlocked. The teacher, Mr. Cosgrove, had assigned me the duty of racing down the hall at the first sign of a warning siren to be sure the door was open so the class didn’t get trapped in a narrow corridor. One day, by surprise, a fire drill siren sounded and with hardly a thought, I bolted from my chair slammed through the door and raced to the end of the hallway, as instructed. Everyone in the room was amazed and astounded at my apparently panicked response to the siren. They remembered my assignment only when I returned to announce that the preferred route was safe. I was pretty proud of myself. “How great that you could think so fast,” Mr. Cosgrove said to me later. “We thought you were just scared out of your wits.” “I wasn’t thinking at all,” I said. “I was just running out of fear that the fire would trap us all at the end of a blind hallway.” Fear makes runners of even the frail among us.

Mary Magdalene, in her fear and panic, ran also. Jesus was crucified, dead, and buried. Now someone had taken his body. So she ran. It was a pretty good time to be in a hurry.

On her sprint back to town, she meets Peter and the beloved disciple, whose name we never learn. When she tells them what she saw, or didn’t see, they also break into a run. She ran from the empty tomb. They run toward it. And they didn’t just run toward the tomb, they raced against one another toward the tomb, competing to see who would get there first, rushing - -now one gaining on the other, and then falling behind, gaining again – toward what?

Why did they race? What did they think they were running toward? Mary Magdalene interpreted the empty tomb as further tragedy. Not only had they killed Jesus, someone had stolen his body. Perhaps they were running toward that awful, terrible, last insult.

People tend to run when something horrible has happened. I remember watching the panic on the streets as the planes crashed into the twin towers on 9/11. People were running everywhere, mostly away. But some people were running toward the scene. The rescue workers, for instance, ran toward the tragedy. They ran up the stairs, to their deaths as it turned out, because they were trained to run toward danger. Others ran toward the collapsing building to check on relatives and friends who were thought to be in danger. Those who ran were reacting to the bad news of the horrible event of 9/11. Something awful happened and some people ran away from while others ran toward the catastrophe. We call those who ran away victims. We call those who ran toward the catastrophe heroes. In either case, their running was perfectly appropriate.

I like it when people run in response to something. When my wife calls, for instance, I come running. It is always something important and sometimes something very good. Doesn’t it seem good to you when people approach life with a certain drive as if they are in a race to get somewhere? I’m always surprised when I encounter young people with no sense of urgency to get on the road to someplace bigger. The young have always demonstrated a healthy impatience with the status quo. It’s a good thing when they are in a hurry to grow up and get on with their life. My biggest fear for my teenage daughter was that she would never develop a sense of urgency to press on, run toward a goal that will take her somewhere. Sometimes young teenagers seem so shy and hesitant that you wonder if they will ever accomplish anything. But for most young people, the lassitude and jaded insouciance of youth gets left behind as they grow up and begin to actually run toward goals that have real value. Before long, it’s hard to keep up with their rush to embrace life in all its fullness. There’s comes a time when parents become spectators because they can no longer run fast enough to stay ahead of their children. This is a very good thing.

John says that these two sprinting disciples came to Jesus’ tomb just like young people pursue their dreams, not knowing for sure, but hoping and trusting they were running toward some new, strange event which could change them forever: something worth running for, worth pursuing, worth having. I’d like to think we would join the two disciples and run to see what had happened to Jesus. John says that the beloved disciple outran Peter, won the race, got there first (20:4). Not only that, John says that he was the first one to peer into the empty tomb and believe. The beloved disciple had to run hard, but he was the first to believe in Easter – certainly worth a little effort. I’d like to think that we would run, too, to find proof that Jesus is alive. I’d like to think that we would run until exhausted to catch up with the Jesus who is always out in front of us.

The writer of John wants us to notice that the beloved disciple ran to get to the empty tomb. And, although he ran as fast as he could, overtaking his friend in his haste to find Jesus, he doesn’t get there in time. He arrives only to discover that Jesus is somewhere else. The anonymous, beloved disciple finds an empty tomb and knows at once that Jesus lives. Others came to Easter in different ways. Mary needs more than an empty tomb, she does not believe until she stands face-to-face with the risen Christ and hears him call her name, “Mary.” Thomas doesn’t believe until the risen Christ offers to let Thomas touch his pierced hands and wounded side.

But the beloved disciple comes to Easter by running to an empty tomb. He believes without seeing. He doesn’t hear Jesus. He doesn’t see the risen Christ. He doesn’t touch the wounds. All he does is run to peer into the dark, empty tomb and believe. The beloved disciple, unlike the others, believes in the resurrection in the light of Jesus’ absence. There is nothing there, no evidence. No Shroud of Turin, no photos, just an empty place. But “He saw and believed” (20:8).

Now you can see why John went into all that about the footrace. The very first believer in the resurrection, the first to believe in the triumph of God, came there by the same path that you and I do… by not seeing the risen Christ. To almost no one here, I suspect, has the risen Christ personally appeared in a garden and called you by name as he did to Mary. No one here has touched his wounds and believed. We have believed on the basis of the words, “He is not here.”

“Blessed are those who have not seen,” says Jesus, which means all of us here, “and yet have come to believe.”

And so you have. Blessed are you who, having not seen, yet have you believed. It’s amazing to me that so few people run to church – not literally, of course, but you’d think that the promise of an empty tomb, victory over sin and death, eternal life, true spiritual riches would cause all of us to hurry to learn that Christ has risen, Christ has risen indeed!

Lord Jesus, on this grand day you gave death the slip and rose to new life. The tomb could not hold you. Nor could our limited lives and truncated imaginations. You not only rose from the dead but you also came back to us. You not only kicked open the door of your tomb but you also forced open the closed doors of our cold hearts. You came back to us, spoke to us, and empowered us to be witnesses of your resurrection.

This is our only hope, in life and in death, that you will continue to overcome our cowardice and reservations, that you will keep kicking open our locked doors, and that you will come to us and show us your glory, making every dull day of our lives an Easter. Alleluia! Amen.

God of wonder, we stand amazed at the earth-shaking truth that fear and death are overcome, for Christ is risen, and we are raised to new life with him! There is no offering of resources sufficient to express our gratitude for your gracious gifts of forgiveness, love, and eternal life. But we now present these symbols of the giving of ourselves to you, and of our commitment to sharing the resurrection news in the world. Use us, and these, according to your holy will and purpose, we pray. Amen