The Long Goodbye is behind us.

Here at the tomb where his friends had laid to rest the body of Jesus, smeared with myrrh and aloes, wrapped around with linen cloth.

Shades of night still shadow the trees in the garden, the fig and the apple. The brilliance of the blossoms on the vine smothered in dark; the flowers had not yet turned their faces to the light, nor released their mingled scents.

His beloved friend, bereaved survivor, Mary, returns to the burial place of the fallen hero, the place that some in that time, believed to hold special power. She goes to mourn him, to honor him, and perhaps even to worship.

She prays,

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?

My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, “Where is your God?”

As she stoops to look into the tomb, the angels, who mark the negative space, ask, “Women, why are you weeping?”

I’m weeping for my dead teacher, gone, for our cause that failed, feeding, healing, mending the world. I’m weeping for all my friends who are in danger, my sisters and brothers, crushed, now without hope.

Mary’s weeping echoes, resounds with our weeping, for the pain of being human, for how much love hurts, for suffering, change, the strength of sin. We weep for pointless quests, wasted effort. We weep for the warring world. For meaninglessness. For the demise of decency. Lust for power, burning, a furious pyre.

Then Mary turns. Away from the sacred empty spot where the body had lain. To the living person standing.

He asks her again, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?”

All she seeks is the dead body of her crucified Lord.

But then she hears a voice, she knows something infinitely more than a corpse.

She hears her name spoken, “Mary.”

She turns again, “Rabbouni.”

Here he is alive. A human, living speaking, breathing body.

It is the sweetest of all reunions, the most joyful of all returning. And then in an instant the physical reunion is over. Jesus invites Mary to a higher kind of knowing, another form of friendship

Go to my sisters and brothers, go to the rest of my friends, the rest of my beloved disciples, that I am ascending to the Father we share and the God we know.”

Beneath the flowering trees, among the crimson, white, violet blooms, the morning glories open, as the morning breaks, as the dawn breeze blows, and the lilies give off their perfume, she runs back find her friends and announce to them her vision,

“I have seen the Lord.”

And we have seen his glory, It is for this vision that we who have gathered every day have prepared ourselves this week. You who are baptized and confirmed tonight are initiated into this vision, given this story to interpret the world.

At this Easter Vigil we all take part in, we relive, this Passover from death to life, this ordeal of transformation, this drastic, scandalous, reorientation of power that is resurrection.

That change so complete and total that can only be described as making that perilous passage from darkness to light, from water to breath, into the world to be born again.

In resurrection we see that all that for which we weep is held in God’s comprehensive, enfolding, magnanimous, stupendous, unending Love.

To all the images for resurrection, passing over, going through the water, falling to the ground and dying, being buried with Christ, being lifted up, being glorified, we can add turning, turning to see to hear to touch the risen Christ.

The divine presence, the glory of God, will not be found at the tomb of the dead hero. It will not be located even in the body of the Risen Jesus on earth. In the temple of his body. But it will be forever present among the sisters and brothers, children of the same Father, friends of the same Lord, who abide with Christ, dwell in him and he in them.

The long goodbye of Jesus becomes God greeting us, God’s Yes, the divine Hello, the warm, warm welcome into the community of beloved disciples for those baptized and confirmed tonight, into a new body.

We are invited into a higher form of knowing, a different form of friendship with Christ. Another kind of touching, and holding, abiding close to the bosom of Christ. Not a return to life as we know it, but another kind of life, eternal life.

Here on Easter morning we breathe again the fragrance of the perfume, poured out by Mary, filling house and the whole world. We remember the morsel of bread shared at the table with Judas, the intimate enemy. We recall the touch of hand and the coolness of water upon our feet, blessed by the dying parent, by our departing teacher, washing into a community, not of slaves and masters, but of friends.

In resurrection Jesus gives birth to us, in blood and water and in breath.

We know his abiding with us in the sacrament we share at the table, bread and wine, flesh and blood.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a Father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

Alleluia. Christ is Risen!

Amen.