“Stop Crying and Go Tell Somebody the Good News”

John 20:1-18

Easter 2011

As part of intentionally developing a more disciplined prayer life I am reading and praying my way through the Psalms. When I recently read Psalm 12 its final verse jumped out and caught my attention and imagination. The verse: “On every side the wicked prowl, as vileness is exalted among humankind.” This reinforced a line from the Psalm’s first verse: “Help, O Lord, for there is no longer anyone who is godly…”

Vileness is exalted. There is no longer anyone who is godly. Those words were written and prayed centuries ago, but as I read Psalm 12 they resonated within me because they describe exactly our world and our culture. Vileness in many forms is exalted by our culture. Godliness is no longer something to be prized. Children are being used to market sex. I’m not talking about pornography here; this is coming from mainstream advertisements. Morality and ethics are in the toilet. The weak and helpless are being cruelly exploited: sexually, physically, and financially. The god du jure is rampant commercialism. Yes, vileness is being exalted all around us.

This is where the imaginative part of my prayer life started kicking in. In my imagination I could see and hear the Devil and all his demons, all the powers and principalities, celebrating our culture’s vileness and godlessness. Hell is party town for the wicked.

Then my imagination took a step backwards, back to that Thursday night and Good Friday when our Lord Jesus suffered hell in our place. Now that’s when hell’s biggest party of all time broke loose. And it continued into Saturday and the early hours of that first Easter morning. Jesus was dead. The Son of God was no more. Throughout hell there was a celebration by and of all that is evil.

There’s a line from an old Willie nelson song, “Turn out the lights; the party’s over.” But in the case of that first Easter morning it is more appropriate to say, “Turn on the lights; hell’s party is over.” Jesus the Son was alive, raised from death by the power of his Father. The Devil and all his demons, the powers and principalities, were struck dumb that morning. Oh they recovered enough to still be dangerous, but within the great scope of God’s eternity they are as good as dead.

Mary Magdalene had no way of knowing that as she made her mournful trek to the tomb where the body of Jesus supposedly lay. She was on her way to do the only thing she thought she could: channel her grief into ministering to her Master’s brutalized corpse. The promise of resurrection was probably still lodged way back in the dustiest corners of her mind. But dominating her thoughts were memories of Jesus’ brutal torture and death. She’d seen his body taken down from the cross and laid in a tomb. He was dead: not sleeping, not in some drug-induced coma, not pretending to be dead, but really, really dead. I hope you noticed that I used the past tense: he was dead not he is dead.

The rest of the story is about Mary finding the tomb empty. Her first thought was that someone had stolen or moved Jesus’ body. So she ran to tell the disciples. A couple of them ran with her back to the tomb. They saw what she had seen: an empty tomb and discarded grave clothes. The text says that one of them believed. It also tells us that he hadn’t quite figured out what it was that he had seen and what he believed.

The two disciples go back home. Mary stays there crying. Then she sees two angels. They asked her why she was weeping. Then she saw Jesus but didn’t recognize him. She mistook him for the gardener. He asked why she was crying and for whom it was that she was looking. After a bit of dialogue Jesus calls out her name. The voice she recognized. Thus she knew that it was Jesus, no longer dead. Then she ran back down and told the disciples what she had seen and heard. She stopped crying and started sharing the Good News, that same Good News Christians have been celebrating and sharing ever since – the very same news that brings us here today. He is risen! He is risen indeed!

On public radio the other day Anne Lamott shared a quote describing what it is to be a Christian: “We are Easter people living in a Good Friday world.” We know that our Lord lives. We know that he has conquered sin, death, and evil once and for all time. We know that in him we too will experience resurrection. We know that in God’s own time this Good Friday world will pass away and a new heaven and new earth will be born. All of humanity’s vileness and ungodliness will be washed away. The perfect justice, righteousness, and peace of God will prevail. This we know. This we believe. In this we find our ultimate hope.

But the world in which we live, the culture that surrounds us on all sides, is still vile. Godlessness abounds. The powers and principalities are still doing the Devil’s work. To paraphrase an old Paul Simon song, they’re still evil after all these years. We can sense that there’s a party going on in hell. We know that we are fighting an ongoing and uphill battle with our culture. We know that a Good Friday atmosphere exists. And some days all of this brings tears to the eyes of even the most faithful of God’s people. And once again we cry out with the Psalmist: “On every side the wicked prowl, as vileness is exalted among humankind.”

But this morning the lament ends; this morning we dry the tears. For we have Good News to hear, believe, and share. We are to be the Resurrection people God has called us to be, modern day Mary Magdalenes who stop weeping and go tell somebody about the Good News of our Living Lord. Let’s banish all thoughts of hell’s party from our minds and hearts. Let’s concentrate on God’s party, the one that began that first Easter Sunday and will continue into eternity. Hell’s party has an expiration date. God’s party never ends. The last vestiges of Good Friday will fade away. Easter will be proclaimed forever.

I’ll close with some more words from Psalm 12: “The promises of the Lord are promises that are pure… You, O Lord, will protect us; you will guard us from this generation forever.”

We know this why? He is risen! He is risen indeed! Amen.