An Everlasting Love

St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, Gainesville FL
The Chapel of the Incarnation, Gainesville FL
April 24, 2011

Easter Day
Jeremiah 3:1-6
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
Acts of the Apostles 10:34-43
John 20:1-18

An Everlasting Love

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

In today’s first reading God speaks through the Prophet Jeremiah to the people of Israel who were captives in Babylon. Through Jeremiah, God promises a homecoming – a restoration to the way things were always meant to be.

Through Jeremiah God says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.”

The story of God and humanity is a story of God loving us with an everlasting love. It’s a story of God reaching out to us – reaching out to us, over and over.

Unfortunately, the story of God and humanity is also a story of humanity rejecting God’s everlasting love; a story of humanity hiding in shame from God just as in the story of Adam and Eve hiding from God in the garden.

But despite all of that human rejection and all of that human hiding, through prophets like Jeremiah, God continued to reach out to us.

And, then in the fullness of time, God reached out to us in a unique and final way, in the life, death and resurrection Jesus of Nazareth.

When we look at Jesus we see God’s everlasting love.

When we look at Jesus we see what God is really like.

And when we look at Jesus we see what we are meant to be like – what we were always meant to be like.

In Jesus, we see a God who enters the world on the margins – in out of the way places like Bethlehem, born to a couple of nobodies, surrounded by shepherds and farm animals.

In Jesus, we see a God who is most easily found with the poor and the outcast – a God most easily found with the people hanging out in downtown Gainesville at Bo Diddley Plaza or waiting in line for a meal at St. Francis House.

In Jesus, we see a God who especially loves the mourners and the persecuted. In God’s kingdom they are the blessed ones.

In Jesus, we see a God who loves us enough to experience the worst rejection - a God who loves us enough to die for us.

But, God’s love for us is an everlasting love. So, death of Jesus on the cross is not the end of the story.

God continues to reach out to us.

That’s the amazingly good news that we celebrate on Easter. That’s the amazingly good news that Mary Magdalene discovered – in what is one of the most powerful and beautiful passages in Scripture.

We’re told that Mary came to the tomb on the first day of the week.

We’re not told why she’s there, but any of us who have ever visited the grave of one we love know why. It must seem to her that all that’s left of Jesus is memory - and a dead body just beyond view.

Then to Mary’s shock and horror, just when it seemed there could not be any more bad news in this whole sad story, she discovered the open and empty tomb.

Peter and the other disciple look into the tomb, discover it empty and then run back home – maybe back to hiding?

But not Mary Magdalene. No hiding for her. She stands and weeps. She stands and weeps, representing all of us who have wept over our sad and broken world, who have wept over the cruelty of the world, who have wept over a world filled with so much suffering and loss.

But, despite all of our rejection and hiding, despite all of our own cruelty and selfishness, God loves us with an everlasting love.

Mary discovered God’s everlasting love when she heard the resurrected Christ call her by name, “Mary!”

Mary discovered that not even death itself can defeat God’s everlasting love of us.

And then Mary went and told the others. She went and told them, “I have seen the Lord.”

And now two thousand years later, here we are on Easter Day in Gainesville, Florida. Here we are gathered in this place, telling and hearing these old stories of God’s everlasting love.

They are the best stories, but, we wouldn’t come here to tell and to hear these old stories of God’s everlasting love, if we can’t also experience God’s everlasting love in our own lives.

If we open our hearts, if we really pay attention, if we don’t try to hide, we also can experience God’s everlasting love.

In our baptism the resurrected Christ has called each of us by name, just as he called Mary Magadalene by name (and just as he called Eowyn by name last night when she was baptized.)

Beyond our baptism, we experience God’s everlasting love just by being alive – just by living on this beautiful planet, filled with breathtaking sights and amazing creatures – including alligators.

We experience God’s everlasting love in the love of our friends and family – those still with us here – and those whose presence we still feel in memory and more.

We experience God’s everlasting love when we come here and extend the sign of peace with one another – people we’ve known forever and people we’ve never met – people we like, and people maybe we’re not too crazy about.

We experience God’s everlasting love when we come here and gather around the table – all eating the same bread and drinking from the same cup.

We experience God’s everlasting love alive in us when we quietly visit the sick and the lonely – when we help someone with the rent or to fill up their gas tank – when we help the stranger even if we’re pretty sure we’re being scammed – when we pray for suffering people – when we pray for our enemies.

We experience God’s everlasting love alive in us when we forgive those who wrong us.

If we open our hearts, if we really pay attention, if we don’t try to hide, we also can experience God’s everlasting love.

Early on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene discovered that - no matter much we reject God or try to hide from God - God continues to reach out to us.

Mary Magdalene discovered that God continues to love us with an everlasting love – a love far more powerful than death itself.

On this Easter Day, the only question for us is how do we respond to God’s everlasting love?

Like so many do we reject God’s love? Do we try to hide from God’s love?

Or, like Mary Magdalene, do we receive the gift of God’s everlasting love in Jesus and then head out through those doors, head out into Gainesville, head out intothe world, proclaiming joyfully by word and deed, “I have seen the Lord”?

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!