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S. Easter Sunday.25 John 20:1-18

Christ is risen! Alleluia!

Yes. And… what do you get out of it?

OK. Maybe that was too quick a cut to the chase? Maybe something about “the golden sun ascending/ breaking through the gloom of night,/ on the earth his glory spending/ so that darkness takes to flight”, or some such would have been a more elegant way to ease into it? Maybe?

But, tell me if I’m wrong? It is what you’re interested in hearing about—at least a little?—how Easter is your cheat code for death, how it gets you off that horrible hook, right?

Well, if so…may I suggest that’s a bad question? Actually, I’m not suggesting. I know it’s a bad question from reading the scriptures pretty carefully for the last 40+ years.

I was fortunate to learn from my teacher Ken Klein (peace be upon him 😉 that true lovers of wisdom recognize a bad question, see why it’s a bad question, and refuse to answer because there’s no good answer to a bad question!

C.S. Lewis helped me see “What do I get out of it?” is 180*, the wrong way to go at the Easter Gospel!—he shows the problem powerfully in “The Great Divorce”, a lovely little tale about Lewis waking up in hell(!) discovering there’s bus service to heaven, and taking the day-trip, himself. 😉

His hero George MacDonald is his guide to heaven and Lewis is surprised to find that not only do few of the souls in hell take the bus to heaven, but almost none of them stay—though Jesus busted the gates of hell wide open, the cells in hell are all locked from the inside. Jesus sends no one to hell. The damned send themselves!

The damned are wispy ghosts in heaven—pitiful, not scary. One of the ghosts Lewis sees touring heaven is only concerned with personal survival. On earth he was famous for writing many apologetic texts about Christianity (he bears a passing resemblance to C.S. Lewis! 😉

His main concern with Xnity was “what do I get out of it?” and what he wanted was to cheat death, to live forever as he is. But you don’t need heaven for that! Turns out, everyone in hell has “survived”, too! Heaven’s not about living forever as we are. It’s about the quite disinterested self-abandonment of adoration.

Everyone in heaven has long ago stopped thinking about themselves, their survival, or prosperity, or happiness. They are so gob-smacked and bowled over by Jesus and his Kingdom, they think only of Him!

They are not self-interested at all! The saints have eyes only for… Jesus. Self-forgetting is the necessary first step for all the saints toward heavenly bliss. So, this apologist for Christianity, for the utility of the resurrection as guarantee of endless “surviving” ends up right back on the bus to hell. There’s nothing in heaven for him!

Heaven’s paradoxical, just as Jesus says: only those who lose their lives, for Christ’s sake, ever find IT. Only those beat Xn losers who hate their sinful lives in a godless world, who are so thoroughly sick of their sinful selves, happily die with Jesus, and find life in dying! The world’s “winners”, “survivors”, are probably in hell.

Luther captures this paradox with the resignation to damnation. He says, in his early commentary on Romans, that the highest degree of faith (perhaps the very best marker of genuine faith? 😉 is that of a love for Christ so free of all self-interest that, even upon waking up in hell, would still go: OK! Even in hell we’d still praise him for making a good call on us. I mean, I certainly deserve to go to hell! But even there, I’ll find… a friend. David says in Ps. 139 (my favorite) that: “even if I make my bed in hell, Jesus is there! and even there, his right hand shall lead me, hold me, make even the night light about me”. Pretty damn cool, right? (See what I did there? 😉

Luther says: with faith like that, even the Zombie Apocalypse sounds… really cool! For such believers, hell would be heaven. I like Luther. I think he’s the real deal. 😉

So Lewis and Luther helped me see what Jesus also shows: that asking what I get out of the resurrection, how I can cheat death, what I need to do or believe or become in order to live forever (just as I am 😉 is a bad question!

A good question is: “What does Jesus get out of his incarnation, death, and resurrection?” 3 things: 1) a body, 2) a world, 3) a people.

1) He gets a body cleansed of sin, glorious and perfected—not just like Adam and Eve’s in Paradise, but better still for having gone through death and hell—the dark background of which only makes the light of Christ shine brighter.

2) He gets a world remade, redeemed, reconciled to himself, the barrier of sin… broken! 3) He gets a people who can get him—because he now, as a man, our brother, rules the universe by the love, the mercy that made him descend to our depths of woe so we would rise to the heights of his heaven.

And how can you not be gob-smacked by such a God as this?! He can make a rock too big to lift, get crushed by it, then rise—all the stronger for his weakness, for his magnificent defeat on the cross!!!

Here’s the door to God’s Secret Garden, the self-abandoned adoration of The ONE who claims this simply by being what he necessarily is, regardless of any particular benefit he confers upon us, whom we delight to praise simply for his great and inexplicable… glory.

…!

But it’s a peculiar sort of glory, right? Mary sees him as the gardener who has taken away her old, familiar Jesus. But is she entirely wrong? Her old Jesus could be slightly… scary, sometimes—just ask Peter, James, John about Transfiguration Mountain’s Shiny Jesus! This one’s more… matte finish—more approachable, like the fatherly-friendly One Adam and Eve played chase with in Eden’s bliss. 😉

Mary tries to grab onto this resurrected gardener Jesus (full circle! from Adam and Eve’s running from, to Mary’s grabbing onto 😉

But, Jesus says: “Do not cling to me…” Why not? Because heaven’s a game of hide and seek; we hide, Jesus seeks, catches.

This is the way: like Paul, maybe… just come when he calls?; don’t try to grab onto him? Let him get hold of you and take you… wherever he wants? His hooks are the word in your ear, his baptism washing over your head, his body and blood going in your mouth.

With eyes, ears, only for Jesus… Oh! The Places you will go! The Things you will see! as Peace, surpassing all understanding, guards your heart and mind in Christ Jesus—who is Risen… Indeed. Amen.