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True Love
A sermon preached by the Reverend Dr. Stephanie J. Nagley at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Bethesda, Maryland – March 27, 2005
Easter is a love story. A story that is about real love, true love. A story of love lost and found.
Very early in the morning, on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb of Jesus. She came to tend to the body, the body of the one who had loved her and whom she had loved. She came expecting to find nothing but a body, but even if that was all at least she would have that, at least she could love one last time, if only it was a body.
The day before was Sabbath. It was probably not a restful and peaceful Sabbath for Mary. More likely she spent the day alternating between heart break and blinding anger. Heart break that Jesus was dead. And the blinding anger about what took him. She, no doubt, cursed the Romans and the Sanhedrin. She probably even cursed God, if in fact, she still believed in God. And assuming that Mary was as human as you and I she cursed even Jesus.
After all his promises, all his talk of hope, all the plans they had made how could he let this happen? How could such a smart man be so stupid? He walked right into their trap and didn’t think twice about those of us who gave up everything to follow him? You let it happen, you and your God.
In the dark, carrying her ointments and her grief Mary went to the tomb. But when she arrived the stone had been rolled away. She ran to get Simon Peter and the others. “Grave robbers,” she cried. Someone has taken him. Simon Peter and another disciple ran to the tomb. Sure enough the tomb was empty. There was nothing there but the linens that he had been wrapped in. Simon Peter and the other disciple walked away. But Mary stayed.
Scripture tells us she stood there in that empty tomb and wept. Wailed is probably more accurate, her cries piercing the darkness. You know that kind of weeping, deep, wrenching cries that come from the depths. The wailing of someone who loved with reckless abandon. The cries of someone who had loved with all her heart. The tomb was empty and she was, once again, alone.
And, then, the strangest thing happened. Her love pierced the darkness and in the absence came a presence.
This is the story of love, lost and found. Mary’s love so deep, so complete she didn’t leave the tomb. She stood there in the dark and let grief have its way with her. She stayed and let love find its way with her, the absence of the one she loved, told her how much she loved, and then the miracle. Out of the dark, twisted bowels of her grief, loneliness, pain emerged a presence. Mary’s love brought love to its fullest realization. Out of the depths of grief came a presence, a real presence.
This is a true story of love and the truth is that if we do not love, we feel no loss. Loss is the very experience that tells us about love. Loss brings love to its fullest realization. The truth is that if we do not love we feel no loss.
If we love, we will go to the dark places of our souls. We will go with our grief and tears and nothing but ointments to tend what has been taken from us, and by our risking that darkness we discover that love has a way of finding us and changing us, of helping us find our fullest humanity.
Easter is the exclamation point in a story of lost love, and the story is timeless. For what child or man or woman doesn’t know the shattering experience of loss, the kind of loss that breaks us down and breaks us open and makes us so aware, an absence that we pierce the darkness with weeping? As happy as we may be about the circumstances of our lives, who among us hasn’t felt grief? Who among us hasn’t loved and lost? Who among us hasn’t been torn apart by the grief of the greater realities of war, hunger, injustice, poverty and disease that seem senseless? Who among us didn’t feel the darkness envelope when the tsunami took so many lives in south Asia? When the photograph of dead soldiers and sailors appears in the paper from time to time, who among us doesn’t feel the loss? Because we love, we feel the sadness of love’s absence in those events that tell us the world isn’t as it should be or things happen we can’t control.
Loss tells us about love. It was loss and love that drove Abraham and Moses to plead for their people, to even argue with God. Loss and love compelled Jeremiah, and Isaiah and all the other prophets to put their lives on the line. The loss of human dignity called Gandhi to clean the latrines. The failure of love led Martin Luther King to march in our cities.
Martin Luther King wrote from the Birmingham jail that you can come for us at midnight in your white sheets, you can whip us and beat us, and we will love you. You can hang us from the nearest tree and we will love you. We will love you and by loving you will change.
That is the kind of love Jesus carried in him. The presence of his Love and his refusal to accept love’s absence put Jesus on the cross.
I often wish that Easter could just be Easter without all that leads up to it. I wish the story could be told without the sadness of a cross and tomb. But that isn’t how it happened for this is a true story — a true story about love, a love that dares to go into the dark and find a way to transform it.
True love is a risky venture. True love breaks our hearts before it heals them. True love breaks our hearts before it transfigures us.
Jesus knew the truth about true love. I don’t always understand what the church teaches about the divinity of Jesus, maybe, but we’re not meant to understand fully. As gods go, Jesus was a failure, that is if gods are supposed to be above loss and suffering. What I do trust is that Jesus was fully human. He lived as we live and confronted the harshness of life that we confront. What I do trust is that Jesus knew how to love. That made for life rough going most of the time. Love put him at odds with the religious leaders, with the political leaders, and even with his own family.
We sometimes mistake love for being nice, or tolerant or even silent. His love wasn’t sweetness and light. His love was real. And real love is fierce and it won’t put up with its absence. Real love won’t tolerate lepers being shunned or widows being ignored. And real love will crack a whip and turn over tables when God is being used as a commodity or political strategy.
Loving as he did gave Jesus a lot of trouble. But his troubles make for good company for those of us who run into our own hard times. His bad luck and his enduring ability to love give us something to lean on when times get tough and we’re tempted to throw in the towel and close off our hearts.
Real love will risk the darkness and the loss. In fact, we don’t usually know how much love we are capable of until we’ve confronted its absence, until we’ve felt the loss and sat in the dark by our tombs.
Like Mary, when we tolerate the loss and the darkness, when we are able to witness the absence, the miraculous can happen. We may throw in the towel, but if we keep our hearts open somehow Love finds us. We are changed and we see, or feel, or hear a presence, the real presence of God. We are no longer alone. We are called by name. We are the beloved.
I don’t know why it happens that way. Maybe you, like me, have had those experiences of loss and the absence of love. Maybe you have done what I’ve done from time to time when such pain comes along, and that is to rage and curse and weep with pain until you can weep no more. And maybe you have come to know that in breaking apart, breaking down, breaking open and in being present to the absence there comes a presence, a real presence. As if Love reaches out and finds you and you are changed.
That’s the way it went for Mary that Easter morning. She gave herself to the absence, to dark, to the grief and pain. And by simply having the courage to witness to all that was lost, love found her. By standing at the emptiness of the tomb came a presence. The last words were not from the cross, after all. She didn’t understand it at first. Love stood before her and called her by name. She couldn’t make out the face at first but then she knew, she knew that love was real and that love was resurrected.
Easter is a love story about a love that may be tried and crucified but will not die. Easter is the rising up of a true Love that often seems so absent in our world. Easter is a love story that gives to us our real presence. This is a true story of love and the truth is we are the love made real, that we, like Jesus, are the real and enduring love in a broken world.
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