The Easter account according to John, I am reminded if you’re looking for a relay partner don’t choose Peter. He finishes second in the race with the other disciple. But Peter is brave enough to go inside the tomb. We are told that Peter and the other disciple saw and believed seeing the empty tomb. But they still don’t know what God is doing in this Easter gospel.
Then we hear from Mary who we’re told doesn’t recognize Jesus and mistakes him for a gardener. Part of me wants to imagine this is a Beastie Boys “Sabotage” video where Jesus is wearing a bad wig and fake moustache. Instead John is telling us that it is Jesus who has the power to reveal his new identity to the disciples. The disciples are too busy looking for the way the world used to be, when Jesus had died. They’re not ready on their own to live in a world with a resurrected Jesus. So they see this new reality, but not fully.
Isn’t that our reality as well? We are also conditioned for to see a pre-resurrection world. The sun has come up, but unless God changes our hearts and minds, we too are like the first disciples. We aren’t ready for a Jesus who breaks the bonds of death without the power of the Word of God laying that on our hearts. Because so much of our world is made up of zero-sum games. Get that parking spot early before it runs out. Get what’s yours in this life in case there isn’t enough for everyone. There is a drive to look after ourselves first. And yet as opposed to it being a race, the Easter gospel is a reassurance of abundance. That there is enough life, enough love of God for everyone.
God is doing a new thing in Jesus that melts the competition between us. A gospel that proclaims the more all boats rise, the better off we are too. Mutual cooperation is a gospel truth. Resurrection is about God slaying our single-track minds that think the human story can only go one way. That we live in a world of scarcity and that cooperation won’t get us ahead. We can point to more than enough real world examples these days where trying to hoard resources actually makes us worse off.
An example of sharing abundance. The other day I was at the café and I ordered a blueberry muffin. On the bar was a blueberry muffin, perhaps sooner than I would have expected. But at the same time the café wasn’t that busy. As I bit in my muffin I heard, “Order on the bar for Lyndon.” Oh, if that’s my blueberry muffin, then whose is this one? Turns out there was a retiree ahead of me who had also ordered a blueberry muffin. He wasn’t angry when he discovered the mixup. He joked, “We’re not very adventurous in our simple orders are we?” And a café worker remarked, “At least you took the same item someone else ordered. Sometime someone orders a muffin and take someone’s BLT!” While I wouldn’t go as far as saying we had a kind of café communion, there was a strange exchange. There were enough blueberry muffins to go around. Which I know is making us hungry for Easter breakfast at the church after this.
Wrapping up, what is the scarcity thinking holding you back right now? What is it that causes you anxiety even if there is enough? God’s resurrection blessing to each one of us is reassurance that Jesus’ resurrection life is one of abundance. And there is enough for everyone! Amen.
