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Both the physical world and the life of the spirit are what they are, but human understanding of them changes with time, and with difficulty. And in his recent book Big Bang, Simon Singh recounts a problem that besets our understanding of both. The problem is common sense. People have wondered for centuries about the truth of the physical world. And Singh reminds us that among the ancients it was universally accepted that the earth was fixed and stable. Common sense convinced everyone that the earth was at the center of the created world, with the sun and the stars orbiting around it. Earth was the solid rock of creation, around which everything else revolved. Common sense told the ancients that appearance is an accurate reflection of reality, that what you see with your eyes is what you get. Because the sun appears to move around the earth, common sense insists that it actually does orbit the earth. If the earth were moving, common sense told them, then we would feel a constant wind against our bodies that would blow us off our feet as the earth swept by underneath us. Common sense told them that all things are attracted to the center of the universe by something called gravity, and since everything they saw fell toward the earth, then it was clear to them that the earth must be the center. These assumptions of common sense were proved wrong, of course, by bolder thought and more exacting observation, and that is what led Einstein to dismiss common sense as "the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." So recent, and yet so established now, is the heliocentric solar system that it requires effort to remember that the first person known to have suggested that the earth actually orbited the sun was a Greek who lived five hundred years before Christ. His name was Philolaus of Croton. In the century following Philolaus, Heracleides of Pontus and Aristarchus built on Philolaus' ideas, but they, like Philolaus himself, were dismissed as crazy, because common sense had convinced everyone else that they were wrong. It was not until the sixteenth century A. D. - a mere five hundred years ago, which by historical standards is virtually in our own lifetimes - that someone again dared to insist that in reality the earth revolves around the sun. This was Copernicus, of course. But his idea, too, was dismissed on the basis of common sense. Galileo, too, was later discarded as a crank and a heretic, and it was only when the telescope made it possible for Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler to provide observational confirmation of the truth of Copernicus's and Galileo's theories that both science and the Church began to take them seriously. After Kepler, of course, the minds of others began to open, but only slowly. Some in both science and the Church began to accept that common sense had been wrong. In the following century, the seventeenth - a full 2,000 years after Philolaus of Croton - Isaac Newton confirmed the heliocentric solar system with a consistent mathematical explanation of how gravity works to keep the planets in their courses around the sun. And Newton's explanation ruled the world of astronomy until the twentieth century, when Einstein, with the observational help of Arthur Eddington, astonished the world with the news that the universe is much more mysterious than even Newton had imagined! What Einstein demonstrated, of course, is that, in reality, we live in a world in which nothing is fixed. We live in a universe of spacetime in which even time and space are relative and flexible, and where gravity causes even light to bend from its original path and where what you see is not necessarily what you get. In every case from Philolaus to Einstein, imagination led the way and observation and acceptance lagged far behind. In every case, the vision of the mind and the spirit was out in front of the physical eye. In every case, the truth was first recognized not by common sense, but by extraordinary sense, recognized by the inner sight of visionaries long before it was acknowledged by us mortals, who have since received it all on faith, of course, because, in truth, we ourselves have never seen gravity with our own eyes, but only the effects of gravity. And we have never seen light bend, but only trust the effects of its bending as reported by those who have seen it. And so reality gets "curiouser and curiouser," as Alice would say, as we follow the scientific visionaries deeper and deeper into the heights and depths of the physical world and discover that the world God has given us is more complicated - indeed, more mysterious and wonderful - than we had ever dared to imagine. As it is with the physical world, so it is also with the life of the Spirit, who blows where he will. Common sense, the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen, even the common sense of science, tells us that life is limited to what we can see and hear and touch and measure. But the visionary of the Letter to the Hebrews tells us that "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." And so we begin to wonder. We begin to wonder if we should trust the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen in religion any more than in science. Common sense in religion, for example, tells us that since God loves righteousness, God must love the righteous more than sinners. And common sense tells us that after three days in the tomb there will be an odor. But all the evangelists say that when the women went to the tomb, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. The stone had been rolled away, they say, and all the women found there were some men who asked them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 'The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified, and on the third day be raised.' Then," says Luke, "the women remembered his words." What are we to make of these reports? Common sense tells us, as it told Mary Magdalene, that probably someone had stolen his body. Common sense tells us that in any case, after all that had happened this past week - after Judas betrayed the Jesus, and after Peter denied him, and after all the others ran away in fear - Jesus would not have wanted to have anything to do with the likes of them, or with any of us miserable sinners. But the visionaries report that Jesus told the women that he was going on to Galilee, and that they should tell his friends that he would meet them there. Also, among the words of Jesus we remember are these: "Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they are doing." And, like the disciples and the women at the tomb, we begin to wonder. We begin to wonder just what last Thursday night was all about. And we begin to wonder what last Friday was all about and what today is all about. We begin to wonder what this One we loved and betrayed and denied, this One who died and whose body we cannot find, is all about. Mary Magdalene, one of life's castoffs - possessed, the Bible says; a sinner, tradition insists - witnessed Jesus' death. She was at the Cross on Friday, so she knew that he had died. No doubt about that. So in her grief, Mary went to the tomb as early as possible, to weep perhaps as much for herself as for him, because her loss was great. For she had loved him, as he had loved her. And there at the tomb her tears were as great as her loss. Her tears were so great that she could not see clearly, so she did not recognize Jesus at first. She saw a man, but when he asked her, "Why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?" she thought he was the gardener. And she said, "Sir, if you have taken him away, please tell me where you've put him, so that I might go to him and find him." And Jesus said, "Mary." And when he called her by name, she recognized his voice and turned to him, and with tears of joy now pouring down her cheeks she said, "Master!" At the empty tomb Mary hears the voice of her beloved, who calls her by name. It is the recognition of a presence and a reality that no logical argument can accomplish, the recognition of love. And with it Mary of Magdala becomes the apostle to the apostles. She runs to those who are not here and reports with assurance, "Alleluia! Christ is risen! He has called me! He has called me!" Mary's sin - her sin and her love - were all Mary had had to give to Jesus when they were on the road together. And her sin and her love were all she had to bring to the Cross on Friday. And her sin and her love are all she has to bring to the empty tomb this morning. She simply brings herself, one of the least and the lost whom Jesus loves. And he calls her by name, and her tears of grief turn to tears of joy. And here we are this morning with Mary at the empty tomb, and with Jesus, whom we cannot see with our eyes. Here we are, God and the lost, God and those of us with no way out of our world of common sense. Common sense tells us that Jesus was a man just like any other. He had the appearance of a human being. He walked and talked like a man, he laughed and cried like a man, he bled and died like a man. He appears to be a man, so he must be only a man, common sense tells us. We come to Jesus' empty tomb today as Mary Magdalene did on that first Easter Day. We come as a world in the tight death grip of common sense. Everything that lives, dies. That's a fact. Jesus has died. That's a fact. The good get it in the end. It may be a rather somber and bitter world, we say, but at least it is our world, a world we know, a world where things stay tied down the way we know them, and where there are no surprises. Or so it appears to common sense. This was reality as it appeared to Mary when she went to the tomb. And it is reality as it appears to us as we come with Mary to Jesus' empty tomb this Easter morning, with nothing more than Mary brought on that first Easter Day. We come with our lostness, with our sin and with our grief, and with our common sense. We come expecting no surprises. We come expecting death, seeking to come to grips with Friday, expecting to come to terms with Jesus' absence. But here at his Table we find that Easter is not about common sense, but about extraordinary sense, about God. Easter is about life and truth, and the truth is that "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Here at his table we find that Easter is not a fact to be explained, but a reality to be experienced. "Mary," Jesus says to her, and to us, "God loves you. Trust him. Life is more, much more wonderful and mysterious, than you can know now, more than you have ever dared to imagine. Trust it. Trust God." We come here with Mary today realizing that none of us has ever seen the most important things in life. None of us has ever seen faith or hope or love. Not one of us. But we have seen the effects of faith, the effects of hope, the effects of love. We have seen the evidence of things not seen. And here at the empty tomb, with the evidence of things not seen all around us, we find that Easter is like the virgin womb of Christmas: It issues life, not death. It gives birth to faith and hope and love, and shatters despair. We find that Easter is about the One who makes a way where there is no way, about a world and a life that is more complicated, more mysterious and wonderful, than we have ever been able to imagine. It's about the One who raises the dead to show us who's in charge here. In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. |