Sermon by Shannon J. Kershner | April 9, 2023

Easter Sunday
April 9, 2023 | 10:00 a.m.

I Believe in Jesus Christ, the Third Day He Rose Again from the Dead
A Sermon Series on the Apostles' Creed

Shannon J. Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 118:1–2, 14–24
Matthew 28:1–10

Galilee. That is where the white-clothed, lightning-flecked angel, followed by the newly risen Jesus, tell both the two disciples named Mary as well as the male disciples to head next. Right after both the angel and the risen Jesus say those crucial words “Do not be afraid,” they also both direct them to get back to Galilee, to the place it all started.

One quick aside: Can’t you just imagine that the angel shook his head at those two guards who were so afraid that they fell out like they were dead? It might be a bit of holy humor at work here, for I can just picture the angel rolling his holy eyes, looking at the two laid-out guards, before turning back to the eyes of the women, making plain the contrast of their different reactions. “Look Mary and Mary, unlike these two guys, you all do not need to be afraid. They didn’t need to be either, but they are so wrapped up in suffering under the power of Pontius Pilate they don’t even have a clue. But the two of you remember, don’t you, that you do not need to be afraid.”

But back to Galilee. A preacher friend named Michael pointed out we should not be surprised this is where they’d all be directed. After all, it’s right there in her name: the one we call Mary Magdalene was more appropriately known as Mary of Magdala. And Magdala was the first-century Hebrew port city on the Sea of Galilee. It was a center of fishing commerce. So that tells us that Mary was from the district of Galilee, which means we can assume that she first encountered Jesus when he was rather early in his ministry, a ministry that started in Galilee, after all.

Many scholars are also pretty sure that Mary of Magdala was probably a wealthy woman who hosted Jesus and the other disciples whenever they were in the district of Galilee as well as helped to support them on the road. Furthermore, she is the only person that all four Gospels claim was present at the cross and at the tomb. She is the only one that all four Gospels place on both Good Friday and Easter Sunday. In the Gospel of Mark, the risen Jesus does not even make an appearance, but Mary of Magdala does. So one thing we might take away from that, other than her clear devotion, is that getting back to Galilee is somehow critically important for the resurrection work of Jesus.

But why? Why would the angel and the risen Jesus send Mary home, along with the other Mary and the other disciples? Why would the risen Jesus send them back to the sea where he first called many of them to drop their nets and follow him? Why would he send them back to the place where so much of their shared ministry began?

Was it because of all the other times Jesus himself went to Galilee in this Gospel? Galilee is where Joseph fled with Mary and the baby Jesus to escape the evil machinations of King Herod’s son following Herod’s death. “After being warned in a dream,” Matthew says, before narrating the holy family’s trip to settle in Nazareth, a town in Galilee. And Galilee is the place to which Jesus returned after his baptism and time in the wilderness. He preached his first sermon there.

Furthermore, as we mentioned a couple of moments ago, Galilee is where Jesus encountered his first disciples as they mended their nets. Finally, Galilee is where Jesus sought refuge when he heard that his cousin, John the Baptist, had been arrested. There is just something about Galilee, isn’t there. What might it be? Why would the risen Jesus choose to send them all back to when and where their time together began?

Now this illustration will date me, but how many of you have seen or heard the musical Jesus Christ Superstar by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Weber? If you have, you know that it is not one bit of an Easter story. Apparently, they did not want to have the show labeled as a religious piece, so they chose to end the show with the crucifixion, a kind of eternal Good Friday. But, as my friend Michael also points out, there is one song in those last thirty minutes that creates a space for Matthew’s Easter to echo.

The song happens between Jesus’ two appearances before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor with whom we spent an entire sermon last week. In the middle of all the political maneuverings, the action moves away from Jesus back to Mary of Magdala and the other disciples. Jesus is just about to face the trial that will end with his death sentence as Mary begins to sing.

The song is a simple one and one that Peter and the others soon join. It is called “Could We Start Again, Please?” Mary Magdalene sings, “I've been very hopeful, so far. Now for the first time I think we're going wrong. Hurry up and tell me this is just a dream. Oh, could we start again please?” Peter joins in: “I think you've made your point now. You've even gone a bit too far to get the message home. Before it gets too frightening, we ought to call a halt. So could we start again please?”

Do you think this might be part of why the risen Jesus tells the disciples to go back to the beginning, to the place where they all started together? Is he saying to them, “Yes, regardless of all that has happened — the betrayal, the denials, the fleeing and the fear — you can start again.”

That feels like grace, doesn’t it? A second chance to try and be better; a second chance to try and do better; a second chance to attempt to grow deeper in faithfulness and more invested in discipleship. After all, it is what Paul claims for those who are in Christ. We hear it in the traditional language of the assurance of pardon. “Anyone in Christ is new creation. The past is finished and gone; everything has become fresh and new.” Please, you can start again.

And yet even when we have these moments to start over again, even when we hear this Easter promise of new creation, we also always know we are not the same as we were before. Mary of Magdala sure wasn’t. She had experienced too much. She had watched as her friends turned their backs on their beloved rabbi. She had seen the way the state and the religious authorities had conspired to have him lynched. She had watched his suffering, saw him take his last breath, looked on as his body was placed in the tomb, and now encountered him as risen.

She was not the same person she had once been — back in the early days of Galilee, where it all started. And neither was Peter, or John, or Jesus’ mother, Mary, or any of the rest of the disciples. So perhaps Jesus’ call to return to Galilee was not a call to go back to the way things were, to go back to who they used to be. Rather, perhaps it was a call, an invitation, to move into a new now even when in the midst of the old familiar.

Might it be that the risen Jesus is sending his broken, complicated, betraying, denying, scattering disciples back to where it all began in order to say something like, “OK. now that you know that death will never have the last word on your life, now that you know that even though the suffering under Pontius Pilate and all the other powers and principalities will still be at work, you also now know they will not get the final say; now that you have encountered me again, just as I said you would, are you able to see the world differently now, through Easter eyes?”

Was Jesus telling them, “Now that I have promised to meet you there, back where it all started but never again the way it was, can you see yourselves differently now, through Easter eyes?” Might Jesus have been calling them, inviting them, to claim the truth that they had been changed by all they had seen, heard, encountered? A call, an invitation to claim a new kind of hope and a fuller sense of freedom? Yes, by God’s grace, they can indeed go back to where it all began, to please start again, but they can do it differentl, now. They don’t have to be the way they used to be.

They don’t have to be afraid all the time. They don’t have to cower under the power of Pontius Pilate or avert their eyes to the suffering of others. They don’t have to go along to get along. They don’t have to quiet their voices when they see injustice and oppression. They don’t have to sit down and shut up. They don’t have to make peace with the way the world is. They are, as Paul promised, new creations. They are Easter people now. The risen Jesus has changed everything, including them.

Did you know that maps of first-century Jerusalem disagree about the exact location of Golgotha and the tomb? And yet one thing those maps do agree on is that Golgotha and the tomb were north of Jerusalem, which is where Mary and Mary of Magdala would have been going to and from to get to both places. But then the district of Galilee is even further north of where the cross would have been located, as well as the tomb. That means that Mary and Mary of Magdala, along with the rest of the disciples, would have had to pass by both sites on their way back to Galilee.

They literally could not get to Galilee without having to confront again all they had been through in those last few days. To get back to Galilee, they would have to walk by the places where they had betrayed him, where they had denied him, where the men had fled from him, where the women had waited by him. There was no way to go back to where it had all started without having to acknowledge all the horror and violence and fear in which they had all participated and endured.

And yet … Jesus’ call to go back to Galilee meant they could still start again, please, as those who were forgiven, loved, and freed. They could still start again, please, with new courage and a fresh commitment to being Jesus’ living body in this world. They could still start again, please, as people with Easter eyes and Easter voices and Easter lives. They could still start again, please, because they had been changed. Changed by Jesus’ earthly ministry. Changed by their encounters with him as they watched him always move first to those who lived on the fringes of power.

Changed by his willingness to suffer and die rather than fight back with violence. Certainly changed by the truth that he made good on his promise to defeat the power of death and to return to them. Changed by the fact that the risen Lord wanted them to start again, please, and promised them the holy power to be able to do it. Each and every day. A new and fresh beginning. Another chance to be faithful, to be courageous, to stand up, to raise a fist, to make good trouble.

Where is your Galilee, dear friends? And are you ready to live your own Easter new beginning starting today, please? You, too, are not the same as you were. You, too, have seen too much, lived too much, experienced too much. But just as he did with those first disciples, the risen Jesus will meet you in your own Galilee, as well. And you, too, can start again, please. For the Lord is risen. He is risen indeed!

Note
This sermon is heavily influenced by the Reverend Michael Kirby and a paper he wrote for The Well in 2022.