William H. Willimon - "Thinking about Easter" (April 3, 1994)

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-	The gospel for this Easter is from the Gospel of John.	0:08
	Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark,	0:14
	Mary Magdalene came to the tomb	0:18
	and saw that stone had been removed from the tomb,	0:21
	so she ran to Simon, Peter and the other disciple	0:25
	and said to them, "they have taken the Lord out of the tomb	0:29
	"and we do not know where to find him."	0:34
	Then Peter and the other disciples set out	0:37
	and went toward the tomb.	0:39
	The two were running together but the other disciple	0:42
	outran Peter and reached the tomb first.	0:44
	He bent down to look in and he saw the linen wrappings	0:47
	lying there, but he did not go in.	0:52
	Then Simon Peter came following him and went to the tomb.	0:56
	He saw the linen wrappings lying there	1:00
	and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head,	1:02
	not lying with the linen wrappings,	1:04
	but in a place by itself.	1:07
	Then the other disciple who reached the tomb first	1:09
	also went in and he saw and he believed.	1:11
	For as yet they did not understand the scripture,	1:17
	that he must rise from the dead.	1:20
	Then the disciples returned to their homes.	1:23
	But Mary stood outside weeping and as she wept she bent over	1:28
	and looked into the tomb and she saw two angels in white	1:33
	sitting there at the body of Jesus where the body of Jesus	1:37
	had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet.	1:40
	They said to her, "woman, why are you weeping?"	1:44
	And she said to them, "they have taken away my Lord	1:48
	and I do not know where to find him."	1:52
	When she said this, she turned around	1:56
	and saw Jesus standing there,	1:58
	but she did not know that it was Jesus.	1:59
	Jesus said to her, "woman, why are you weeping?	2:02
	"Whom are you looking for?"	2:06
	Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him,	2:08
	"Sir, if you have carried him away,	2:11
	"tell me where you have laid him and I will take him away."	2:14
	Jesus said to her, "Mary."	2:19
	She turned, she said to him in Hebrew, "rabboni",	2:25
	which means teacher.	2:29
	Jesus said to her, "do not hold me because I have not yet	2:32
	ascended to the Father, but go to my brothers	2:37
	and tell them I am ascending to my Father and your Father,	2:40
	to my God and your God."	2:44
	Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples,	2:47
	"I have seen the Lord."	2:51
	So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow.	2:59
	Thus begins a poem by William Carlos Williams,	3:04
	so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow.	3:08
	And don't you think that sort of sums it all up?	3:12
	We're modern folk who began and end	3:16
	with hardcore stuff.	3:21
	Stuff which can be seen and touched and tasted and tested.	3:24
	No metaphysical flights of fancy for us.	3:29
	Seeing is believing.	3:34
	The red wheelbarrow.	3:37
	Art like that of Williams' will take a red wheelbarrow	3:40
	or a Campbell's soup can	3:44
	and by focusing steadily upon that object,	3:46
	renders it noteworthy, forces us to face it for what it is,	3:50
	for what we can see,	3:55
	since what we can see is all that there is.	3:56
	Everything depends upon a red wheelbarrow.	4:03
	And though here at the university we may pick apart	4:08
	that wheelbarrow into its various chemical components,	4:12
	we may do intensive analysis of its metallic parts,	4:15
	we can eventually tell you which organisms	4:18
	are rotting its wood away.	4:20
	We always end as we begin,	4:23
	with a red wheelbarrow.	4:27
	Although after the school of engineering is finished poking	4:30
	away with your wheelbarrow, it's now a broken pile of junk.	4:34
	A red wheelbarrow in the hands of a physicist,	4:39
	rather than a poet, is a dead wheelbarrow.	4:42
	Sophomores, beware.	4:46
	Don't ever let the faculty fool with your wheelbarrow.	4:47
	Now, for Peter, this was Easter.	4:52
	Running out to the cemetery with Mary Magdalene,	4:57
	she got there first. To her horror, the tomb was empty.	5:00
	Peter came to the cemetery, it was still dark,	5:05
	peered into the tomb and what did Peter see?	5:08
	A napkin, folded neatly by itself.	5:14
	The linen shroud also folded and that was it.	5:19
	The other disciple arrived, he looked, he saw, he believed.	5:24
	He believed what?	5:31
	Not that Jesus had been raised from the dead.	5:34
	Nobody thought that.	5:38
	The text explains they knew nothing about the resurrection.	5:40
	So, having seen,	5:46
	having processed what they saw, they believed.	5:49
	Believed that Jesus was dead.	5:53
	And now they believed that Jesus' body had been stolen	5:58
	from the tomb.	6:02
	And now these two men went home and had breakfast.	6:04
	And that, as they say, was that.	6:09
	And on the way back home, they said to themselves,	6:12
	well, it was a good campaign while it lasted.	6:14
	We didn't get him elected Messiah.	6:16
	Somebody else said, "You know, I will never forget the time	6:20
	"where we were at the wedding, where was the wedding?	6:23
	"Cana, Galilee, turned the water into wine.	6:24
	"You know we oughta write this stuff down	6:27
	"'cause we'll probably forget it as time goes on.	6:29
	"John's good with words, maybe he'll write a gospel."	6:31
	They came and they saw and they believed.	6:37
	And they went home.	6:41
	And this is how death gets believed.	6:44
	I know in my experience, some of the most vivid	6:48
	and painful parts of the grieving process	6:51
	are when you go back home.	6:55
	You know what I'm talking about?	6:59
	I bet some of you do.	7:00
	The funeral is over.	7:02
	Friends and family depart, leaving casseroles,	7:04
	and then everything is quiet.	7:09
	And you're at home, and you get home and you look over	7:11
	at that dining room table and you see her chair.	7:16
	You'll only need one chair now at the table.	7:21
	Oh no, there's her knitting bag.	7:26
	Put that away!	7:27
	The folded linen, the napkin folded there, it's painful.	7:31
	These tangible, physical, red wheelbarrow reminders	7:37
	that make us believe death.	7:42
	Mary stood outside the tomb weeping.	7:47
	She had come out there with Peter and the other disciple,	7:49
	but curiously she remained there frozen in grief,	7:53
	weeping at this final outrage.	7:57
	Was it not enough that Jesus had been killed?	8:01
	Now they had to steal the body.	8:03
	Where was the body of Jesus?	8:05
	She can't find the body of Jesus.	8:07
	Where should she begin her search?	8:09
	And I bet some of you can identify with Mary if you've	8:14
	been through grief anytime lately.	8:17
	Somebody you love dies and you need to see the body	8:21
	because that's part of the way we love people.	8:28
	We don't love some disembodied humanity.	8:30
	No, we love that body, those eyes, that hand, that touch.	8:33
	Edgar Jackson in studying people's grief says that	8:38
	the most significant part in the grieving process	8:43
	is viewing the body.	8:46
	That's when the bereaved look over into the coffin	8:50
	and they see: He is dead, I live, he is dead,	8:52
	I believe, I believe in death.	8:57
	And that's what Mary wanted,	9:03
	the sight of the stone rolled away, the folded linen cloths,	9:06
	the absence of the corpse,	9:09
	didn't move Mary to thought of resurrection,	9:12
	because she, like Peter,	9:16
	knew of only one conceptual possibility.	9:17
	That is, they have taken away my Lord,	9:21
	and I do not know where to find him.	9:24
	Mary's logic is faultless.	9:28
	After all, dead bodies don't just disappear,	9:30
	somebody has to move them.	9:33
	The world is a realm of cause-effect rationality.	9:35
	We live by laws of motion and mechanics.	9:40
	Things happen as they have always happened.	9:44
	All science, all human reasoning, all perception are based	9:48
	upon the pervasiveness of the familiar.	9:53
	Only that which has happened before is able to happen again.	9:57
	Find the body, Mary, then get on with the grief.	10:03
	Only then will you be able to go back home and believe.	10:07
	Get on with business as usual.	10:12
	How is Mary going to find Jesus?	10:16
	And how are you gonna find Jesus?	10:24
	Well we find Jesus the same way we might find anything,	10:29
	the way of the red wheelbarrow, through science or history	10:33
	or whatever manner of thought holds privileged place	10:38
	within our economy.	10:42
	Something weird confronts us.	10:45
	What does your mind do?	10:46
	Your mind immediately attempts to make sense of it.	10:48
	You look at the folded napkin, the rolled up linen cloth,	10:52
	you put the world under a microscope,	10:56
	you consult the GNP, the scholarly consensus.	10:58
	We have rules around here for what to think	11:03
	and how to think.	11:07
	No body?	11:11
	Where's the body?	11:13
	They have taken away my Lord and I do not know	11:15
	where to find him.	11:18
	Peter, the other disciple looked in the tomb,	11:20
	see the evidence of the robbery and they believe.	11:23
	They go back home, they adjust.	11:27
	Mary, a little slower on the uptake, sees the same evidence,	11:31
	but she stands there at the tomb befuddled,	11:35
	not knowing what to think.	11:37
	I do not know where to find Jesus.	11:39
	Now note what happens.	11:45
	Jesus	11:48
	calls her name, Mary,	11:51
	and the illogical, unthinkable, impossible,	11:57
	unnatural, incredible breaks in.	12:01
	The one certified as dead,	12:04
	after all, the she saw the napkin, the linen cloth.	12:06
	This one now greets her, calling her by name, Mary.	12:09
	Mary's old plausibility structure struggles	12:16
	to make sense of it.	12:20
	She takes this one who speaks perhaps to be the gardener.	12:22
	Grasping him, she pleads, "Tell me where you have hidden him	12:27
	"and I will take him away."	12:31
	She wants the body of Jesus and she might do the proper,	12:34
	conventional, respectful thing for the corpse.	12:37
	And this one says to Mary, "Do not hold me."	12:42
	He doesn't say "Noli me tangere, don't touch me" he says,	12:47
	"Do not hold me."	12:51
	Mary's perfectly logical, understandably natural need	12:55
	to pursue the body of her beloved Jesus has not yet room	12:58
	for the miracle.	13:03
	The voice of Jesus has called to her.	13:08
	Called across the great abyss of death.	13:12
	Thrown a line to her across that great cavern that expands	13:16
	between her little logic of red wheelbarrows	13:22
	and linen shrouds and all of that.	13:25
	And the power of God to work wonder.	13:29
	Like the voice that shatters glass,	13:34
	the voice of Jesus has shattered Mary's world,	13:37
	has moved it forward to new possibility,	13:42
	a new future, a new life.	13:45
	And Mary is at last able to say to the others,	13:49
	"I have seen the Lord."	13:52
	Mary has moved out beyond her preoccupation with the corpse	13:56
	to an encounter with Christ.	14:01
	Her cause-effect logic is replaced	14:03
	by a larger logic called faith.	14:07
	Mary has turned around at the sound of her name.	14:15
	She has been countered, encountered not by the dead corpse	14:20
	she thought she was seeking, but by a living Lord	14:24
	who is on the move	14:29
	and is not gonna be tied down by our little logic.	14:30
	Don't hold me, Mary.	14:34
	Don't hold me.	14:38
	Yesterday, National Public Radio's interview	14:39
	with Bishop Spong about his new book on the resurrection.	14:43
	Poor Bishop Spong, Duke PhD circa 1955,	14:46
	hasn't made it out of it yet.	14:51
	Bishop Spong sang, "All I want to do in this new book	14:53
	"is to make the resurrection credible.	14:55
	"Credible to thinking people,	14:58
	"like my daughter, who has a PhD from Stanford."	15:00
	Well, Bishop Spong, maybe after you get your PhD	15:04
	from Stanford, you just miss some things.	15:07
	You just don't know how to get your mind around some	15:10
	large things, maybe, I don't know.	15:13
	It's not easy.	15:16
	We grope for means for understanding what we	15:17
	have been encountered by.	15:21
	Marcel Proust says that sometimes	15:27
	in reading great literature, you're reading	15:30
	and maybe the writer describes some secret experience.	15:34
	Maybe some thought you think only you have had.	15:38
	Some thought that you've never dared to speak about.	15:41
	And when that thought is described, it's just like	15:46
	a hand reaches out from the text and takes your hand.	15:49
	It's a rare and wonderful moment of recognition.	15:57
	It's beyond thought, cognition as we know it.	16:03
	Mary turns around.	16:07
	Now it seems to me there are at least two ways	16:12
	to think about things.	16:13
	Cognition has at least two paths to recognition.	16:16
	And the first way to think is say when you're working	16:21
	on some tough math problem and after much effort	16:24
	you're working on this math problem and you say to yourself,	16:27
	hey, I got it!	16:30
	I got it, I got it.	16:31
	There's another way to think.	16:36
	It's like, say, when you've been to some great movie,	16:39
	and the film gets hold of you,	16:42
	and you emerge from the theater and you're changed	16:44
	and you walk out into another world.	16:47
	You don't come out of the movie and say,	16:51
	I got it, I got it, I got it.	16:53
	No.	16:58
	It gets you.	17:01
	You and I, dying as we are, have come here today trying	17:07
	to find Jesus with Mary Magdalene.	17:12
	To hold him in our brains, to search for him using	17:17
	whatever cognitive means we have.	17:20
	But you don't find Jesus, you don't apprehend him	17:24
	and hold him like a red wheelbarrow, no.	17:27
	He calls your name, he shatters your world,	17:31
	he returns, he intrudes.	17:35
	You don't find Jesus,	17:38
	the risen Christ finds you.	17:41
	(uplifting music)	17:47

Item Info

Title:

William H. Willimon - "Thinking about Easter" (April 3, 1994)

Description:

Sermon start time: 00:08. Sermon end time: 17:45.
The preacher makes a case to argue that resurrection is beyond human logic and understanding and only the voice of the risen Jesus can shatter old conceptions and allow a new cognition to break through. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r44747619

Date:

April 3, 1994

Speaker:

Willimon, William H.

Liturgical Calendar:

Easter

Biblical Book:

John

Chapter and Verse:

John 20:1-18

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 CS-0695
ref9394_vbn
uachapelsermaud
duke:321007
dcrau001447
ark:/87924/r44747619
00ff5d91-178b-4d40-be2f-f7d3e009e119

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

Related Resources:

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Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

Format:

Provenance:

The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

This recording may contain 3rd party materials, such as music or readings that are therefore not covered by the Creative Commons license indicated here. For more information see https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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William H. Willimon - "Thinking about Easter" (April 3, 1994)

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1. William H. Willimon - "Thinking About Easter" (April 3, 1994)

Duke University Archives

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William H. Willimon - "Thinking about Easter" (April 3, 1994)

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Duke University Archives

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