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Easter to you. Today, we affirm together that Christ has risen. He has risen indeed. Well done. Over the last two years, we lost a couple cycles of these big celebrations.

We had quieter Christmas eaves, fewer Easter food truck feasts, but we are coming back to life. Back to shared rituals like the Eucharist and baptisms, back to sitting next to each other in a room, of course, only when we're healthy, and maybe with a little more space in between each other, and we are back to big, toothy grins that we can see on each other's faces, which makes me so happy. But do not worry. I'm not all bad jokes and big smiles up here. This Easter message will not ignore loss, the loss that we carry in our bodies.

Because when you carry loss, you know that the sting stays. Easter makes space for that. I promise you. Through Lent this year, we traced seven signs in the gospel of John meant to shape belief. And the writer lays out these signs for all who follow Jesus after the first disciples as if to say, I know Jesus will feel far from you, and you won't be able to picture his face or the songs he taught you around a fire or know that he laughed constantly.

But says the writer of John, there are ways for you to encounter the teacher and find the fullness of life that he taught us about. When you experience the ritual of shared food and great drink, when your expectations are challenged and it is for your own good, when you are empowered to participate in healing, when you are given more than you can ever give back, when calm finds you, when you are afraid, when hope materializes after you thought it was lost for good. When any of these seven signs happen to you, they are signs of things to come, a world that makes and remakes itself as if by design. So here we are, seven signs later, ready for something extraordinary. Today, we are in John 20, the great resurrection story, and we'll talk about the real Mary Magdalene, the beloved disciple sign number eight, and a fifty day project.

But first, let us pray. Loving God, we take a moment even with all this energy around us to be still, to notice our bodies in this place, to sense our breath in and out of our lungs, to feel the breath through our nose and on our lips. This Easter, may bring with us a different self, a year that changed us perhaps with loss or dreams come true or just some change. And we trust that in all of these transitions, we are held in you, the source of our being. Jesus, in the story of your death, new life returns, and we want to notice the ways resurrection matters, just in some far off future, but here, today, together.

So spirit, urge us to stay open and curious, reflective, and humble. We pray. Amen. Alright. Let's begin with the real Mary Magdalene in John 20 verses one to two.

Early 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. So 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. Now I get this big Mary emotion. I've been doing something similar myself without forethought. I've been just blurting out some of the bad things in my life, some of that trauma.

I've just been like, blah. This terrible thing happened to me when I was younger or blah. Like, these core relationships are irrevocably fractured or blah. Like, this is the pain that I know in my bobby body, and it's embarrassing. Maybe you can relate.

We do this. We blurt out what hurts us or shocks us or what circles back around from the memories of our past. You blurt out hard parts of your story. Maybe you don't do that all the time, but it happens. And Mary's story, it starts in the dark after trauma.

She was at the cross when her beloved teacher was murdered right in front of her. She saw Joseph and Nicodemus heave Jesus' limp body down from the cross. And later, she stayed at the tomb until it was sealed. And sitting on the ground, hugging her legs into her chest, I imagine she mutters, I'll I'll never hear Jesus say my name again. I'll I'll never look into his lively eyes.

I'll never know teaching that makes me feel so free. And so before we get to good news, we follow Mary Magdalene running and blurting out her confusion in the dark. But there is more to Mary than devastation. Mary Magdalene was a woman Jesus rescued. We're told in the gospels that she had seven demons trapped in her body.

And once she was set free from that scattered inner life, we're told that she used her wealth to support Jesus and the 12. And maybe we don't count Mary in that number, but not long after Jesus, her reputation was that of a leader named first on special lists called the disciple in the truest form, revered in a text from early Christianity as a woman who understood completely. Unfortunately, history has been cruel to Mary Magdalene. In the sixth century, Pope Gregory the Great framed Mary as a woman with a sex a shameful sexual past, and that stuff sticks. It stuck for centuries.

But on the whole, Mary's story is one of inner horror and feeling trapped and doing something helpful with what she was given, following her friend into the cruelest moment of his life, feeling her feelings, and venturing out by herself. If we are to be like Mary Magdalene, and you have to trust that her prominence in the gospel story demands our emulation, then we can show up today on Easter morning exactly as we are with our full complexity. You don't have to control what happens next or know when the pain will end or feel that hope is even for you anymore. Bring your trauma. Blurt it out if you need to.

You are welcome at the center of this story. So next, the scene shifts to focus on these two disciples. Peter and the disciple known as the other disciple whom Jesus loved. And they start for the tomb and they're running, But the other disciple outruns Peter and gets to the tomb first. He bends over and looks in and sees strips of linen, but doesn't go inside.

And Peter gets there next. He's huffing and he's puffing, I imagine, because running is hard. Right? And Peter sees the linen and the burial cloth that covered Jesus's head. And finally, the other disciple goes into the tomb, and we're told he saw and believed.

The author notes that they didn't yet understand from scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead, which is interesting. And the scene ends with verse 10. The disciples went back to where they were staying. So while Mary is off to the side, we have Simon Peter and this figure of the unnamed disciple. Who is this person?

Well, the biblical scholar Caroline Lewis argues that you are. You are meant to read yourself into the beloved disciple. I love that trick of the pen. Without a name, the beloved disciple is you. You are the disciple who rests on Jesus' chest at the last supper in chapter 13.

You are the disciple who stood near the cross in chapter 19. You are the disciple who runs to the garden tomb here in chapter 20. But let's consider what it means that the beloved disciple believes even if he doesn't understand from scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead. Because guess what? There's no verse in the Tanakh, in the Hebrew Bible that says Jesus had to rise from the dead.

Sure. You can stretch a couple of passages to fit. Daniel 12 paints this picture of an angelic figure who rises to power and multitudes rise from the dust. Psalm 16 speaks of a body not abandoned to the realm of the dead, and that's all fine. But John's gospel doesn't point to either of those of passages because I don't think that's the point.

The point is not to proof text belief as if the right bible verse will make all of life make sense. The bible can't do the work of belief for you. Sure. It can point the way, offer you stories and metaphors and parables, heroes, visions, and prayers, but the bible can't do the work of belief for you. You have to live belief for yourself.

You have to run toward the mystery and put the jagged pieces together. Race your friend to the truth. Put yourself to the point of breathlessness, strain, struggle. Take it all in. Even though the beloved disciple hasn't put all the pieces together, he believes.

How could he put it all together? There is no easy way to make sense of life in the aftermath of death. So Peter and the beloved head back to where they were staying, and Mary Magdalene, she comes back into view. Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white seated where Jesus's body had been.

One at the head and the other at the foot. They said to her, woman, why are you crying? 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. He asked her, woman, why are you crying?

Who is it you are looking for? Thinking it was the gardener, she said, sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him and I will get him. And Jesus said to her, Mary. And she turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, Rabboni, which means teacher. Now the author of John is trying to tell us that Mary Magdalene can't actually see what's going on.

Her vision is obstructed. First, Mary rocks up to the tomb in the dark. Second, the Greek word for crying is, and it means to sob and to wail loudly. The writer says that her grief clouds her vision. And third, Mary has an exchange with angels, and they don't faze her.

Just like heavenly beings there where the body should be, big whoop. So we've got obstructed vision, messy grief, angels who hardly matter, the classic party game. Is it a gardener or is it Jesus? And finally, this surprise of a lifetime. What is going on here?

Well, to know, we need to go back to the beginning. A long time ago, there was a poem. It said that God made the world. On day one, the light. On day two, the sky.

On day three, the sea and the land. On day four, the sun and the moon. On day six, day five, did I get it? Day five. Day five, all living creatures.

Day six, humans. On day seven, naps. And so in John's gospel, we are spinning, spinning out of the center of a seven day creation cycle. And John one one even references the creation poem with the opening line, in the beginning was the word, and through the word, all things were made. The angels guarding the tomb are the angels from Genesis left to guard the Garden Of Eden after Adam and Eve were banished.

Put a pin in that. John's seven signs track with seven days of creation. Cool. Cool. Cool.

We get that. Only now we have an eighth sign, a new kind of garden. What on earth is the writer doing throwing in an eighth sign? Well, in Jewish awareness, eight symbolizes eternity, infinity, the never ending partnership with God. In Jewish imagination, they know this number eight in bodies.

It's on the eighth day that Jewish boys are circumcised. The bread or circumcision represents the eternal covenant with God. Resurrection or the eighth sign is something we know embodies too. The word resurrection is from the Greek word anastasis, and it means the return of life. And Gregory of Nyssa thought about resurrection as reconstituting our diverse elements back together.

And theologian Shelley Rambo talks about resurrection as the work of repair after trauma. So it's not about life after death or where you go when you die or what defines a soul. Resurrection is about how your relationships, your memories, your communities, your goals, seasons, bodies will encounter death, but then find new beginnings. Life returns. An infinite cycle unfolds.

You rise. This world is brutal, and it may take what you love the most. Your loved ones may betray you. Winter can be long and entomb you in hardship, but you can rise. A tough time can bulldoze you over.

Hope can feel lost. Your grief may last for years, but you can rise. And maybe you're like, whatever, Bobby. You don't even know. But hold on.

I do know. I know resurrection is true because I watch you rise over and over and over again. You rise to love again. You rise to form new spaces of belonging. You rise to embrace blow your hair back grace.

You rise to define identity for yourself. You rise to learn something you didn't know about someone you do. It can be tricky, so tricky to know your living resurrection when you're living it, but there is an eighth day to your story, a new garden scene. There is so much more to come. Now I used to dislike the way that this last part of the story ends, but I'm changing my mind.

After Mary recognizes that this is her teacher, Jesus says, do not hold on to me, Mary, for I have not yet ascended to the father. Go instead to my brothers and sisters and tell them, I am ascending to my God and to your God. And Mary goes to the disciples with the news. I have seen the Lord, suckers. Just kidding.

She just says, I have seen the Lord. And then she tells them what Jesus told her. And I love this ending now because Mary got it right the first time. She did see a gardener. It's a gardener of a new Eden.

If you remember back, the Genesis story sent Adam and Eve out of the garden in punishment, but Jesus does something different here, reverses it. The divine gardener sends Mary out as witness. She is to remain, and he is to go. It's time for Mary to do what Jesus knows she can do, carry on without him. And before she knows it, she's running down the footpath alone with this message just beating in her body.

He's alive. He's alive. He's alive. And maybe she is still crying knowing that nothing will ever be the same again, but she is finally beginning to see. Like, really see.

Go tell them about me, Mary. Use your own words this time. Spirit is with you. John 16. Easter is more than one day.

It's actually fifty. For the next fifty days, we are meant to celebrate resurrection, all of the ways that we rise. And maybe you're not quite ready for that. It's okay. It is okay.

But I invite you to practice small acts of new creation anyway. For the next fifty days, I am borrowing a creative project from Suleika Jawad. Suleka wrote a beautiful memoir called Between Two Kingdoms. It's about living when you think you're dying. And the memoir is about Suleka's struggle with leukemia at 23.

And the heartbreaking update is that she is fighting leukemia again eleven years later, newly married to the love of her life, Jean Baptiste. Yes. That Jean Baptiste. And just as she practiced living while she was dying by taking her doctor's advice to create something small and meaningful every day, she is doing it again with her one hundred day project. It is all over Instagram, and it's beautiful.

Other people are doing it too. Sulayka describes it as a way of organizing our lives around one small act of imagination. And I thought about participating in the hundred day project, but then I remembered we have a season to practice new creation. We're in it. It's Easter.

So for the next fifty days, no matter what horror I see scrolling through Instagram, what I dredge up from my past or how my body feels, it's aches and pains. I will practice new creation by writing little poem prayers every day. I hope they get weird. The weirder and wackier, the better. I may even share some of them on Instagram.

Welcome to the Easter fifty day project. Whether you are sick or healthy, believe or doubt, wake up singing or crying, whether you have so much or so little, whether you are alive for decades or just one more year, you are in a garden where new life grows, walks right out of tombs, and reminds you to go and to tell your story and to make something new. So let's get creative. Hey. This Easter, make a new drawing for fifty days.

Write your partner 50 little post it love notes. Practice yoga for fifty evenings. Take 50 long walks. Write 50 haikus. Journal.

Make music. Go on dates. Build a bench. Get out in the garden. Make something where there was nothing.

Brighten up a dark morning and feel yourself coming back to life over and over again. Let us pray. Loving God, how can we see ourselves in this resurrection story this time around? Are we Mary Magdalene having a hard time seeing what's changed? Are we the beloved disciple pushing belief forward even if we haven't put all the pieces together?

Can we find more space for the newness and creativity of faith if we imagine an eighth day? The shattering of what we've always known making room for more and more and more life. Jesus in us, let there be life, divine life after trauma, distress, after even the middle parts, the struggles. The spirit of the living God present with us now. Enter the places of our chaos, our hurt, our pain, and heal us of all that harms us.

Amen.