Acts 10.34-43, Matthew 28.1-10
Austwick, Clapham, Keasden, Easter Day, 9 April 2023
I wonder if you have ever welcomed in Easter on a hilltop at daybreak on Easter Morning? Some Christians love it - until Covid hit, people from the Bentham Churches got together at the Big Stone on Tatham Fells to celebrate together in that way; in my Somerset parishes twenty-or-so of us would make our way up to Corton Denham Beacon, the high point of a ridge straddling South Somerset and North Dorset, and as the sky slowly lit around us we would share bread and wine, the wind whipping at the edge of the cloth on the makeshift communion table, lambs skipping around us as we sang Thine Be the Glory 650 feet above the Somerset Levels, early morning traffic on the A30 London to Cornwall road twinkling as it passed by a couple of miles away below.
I guess that many of the people who attend these sunrise services would say they were Morning People - people who habitually enjoy getting up and out at the very start of the day; for others though, those not normally up anywhere near as early, this would be quite hard, but, huffing, puffing, stretching, yawning, nevertheless they too become honorary Morning People for that occasion: Morning People, that is, people keen to celebrate the new beginnings which Easter is all about.
Mary Magdelene was a morning person, when she rose before dawn on the first day of the week to visit the tomb where she had seen Jesus laid to rest two days before.
You would imagine that she got up early simply because she couldn’t sleep - for anxiety, a sickness of her heart and mind. You would imagine Mary had been restless throughout the Sabbath, as she recalled the terrible events of the day before, sleepless for fear of what may have happened to Jesus’ body.
There’s a deeper sense in which we can say that Mary was a morning person: because way before her Easter garden encounter with her risen Lord, Mary had seen God’s resurrection power create a new beginning in her own life and in the new community of believers to which she belonged.
This happened at the time when Jesus cleansed Mary of "seven demons" [1]. She was suffering some form of mental or physical illness - an illness which would have caused her to be ostracised by the rest of society, because in her madness or sickness people would have dubbed her ‘unclean’. When Jesus healed her he revealed the nature of the kingdom of God - that it was a way of life in which the excluded ones are always included. As Luke later put it, “God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” [2]
When Jesus healed Mary she felt his resurrection power change her life. He had made her whole in body, mind, and spirit. He had restored her social status too, fully restored her to society - and in that moment her life began again; she became a morning person. Then on that Easter morning she came to see his resurrection power at work more clearly than ever - she understood that this was a power which could even overcome death.
Morning People are those who have been resurrected to a whole new way of seeing themselves and the world. Rejoicing that God has shown no partiality against them, they no longer feel constrained by their gender or state of health or social status or nationality; but instead, resurrected to a whole new way of being in the world they are able to love themselves, and to embrace everybody as their brothers and sisters, even those who they would previously have avoided, or demonised, or fought.
Morning People create communities where all the old tribal barriers have disappeared, where all the old anxieties raised by our grasping at the things we feel necessary to keep our place in the tribe have disappeared, to be replaced by a generosity of spirit which is based on nothing in this world except the way of Christ’s kingdom breaking in by the power of the resurrection.
Following her healing Mary became one of Jesus’ closest followers, becoming part of a group of women who travelled with him and his twelve disciples, “proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God.” These women, Luke tells us, helped support Jesus’ ministry "out of their resources”. This suggestion that Mary was probably wealthy means that those nasty tales later told by Pope Gregory I that she had been a brazen hussy just don’t add up. [3]
Mary was a morning person from the day that Jesus healed her; because something new dawned in her life which transformed her. From the day that he spoke her name and opened her eyes to his rebirth, she never stopped proclaiming the truth of his resurrection and its power to change the world for the better. Every day brings new beginnings for those who trust in the life-affirming power of God.
This is the good news of Easter: it happened to Mary and it can happen to us. We can be Morning People too. Halleluia!
Notes
A rewrite of The Morning People preached at Queen Camel and Weston Bampfylde, Easter Day 2014.
[1] Luke 8.1-3
[2] Acts 10.34-35
[3] Wikipedia: Mary Magdalene
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