Column by Mary Lee Talbot
Pat, a member of the congregation at Yorkminster Park Baptist Church, was visiting the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem, thought to be the place where Jesus was laid after the resurrection. She met a young Australian woman who was on walk about (traveling the world before settling down).
Pat asked the young woman, “Why are you crying?” and sat next to her. The young woman was feeling overwhelmed so far from home. She had found out a relative had died and her parents had gotten divorced. She was not sure where home was any more.
“She was a modern-day Mary Magdalene,” said the Rev. J. Peter Holmes. “Mary Magdalene had gone to the tomb while it was still dark. She was crying and she lingered after the disciples had gone. Who was she without Jesus? He healed her of her demons, opened doors, gave forgiveness to the unforgivable.”
Holmes preached at the 9:15 a.m. Friday morning worship service in the Amphitheater. His sermon title was “Alive to Hope,” and the scripture reading was John 20:1-18.
Mary Magdalene’s feelings were like W. H. Auden’s after his lover died, Holmes said, and he quoted from “Funeral Blues,” also known as “Stop All the Clocks.”
“Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come…. / He was my North, my South, my East and West, / My working week and my Sunday rest, / My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; / I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.”
Holmes said, “For Mary Magdalene there was no coffin, no mourners; just emptiness.”
Yorkminster Park Baptist Church is next to Mount Pleasant Cemetery, one of the largest in Canada. Holmes often goes for walks there, and some of his relatives — including his father — are buried there. “I think of the line from ‘Lead Kindly Light,’ a hymn by John Henry Newman: ‘And with the morn those angel faces smile, / Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.’ ”
Mary Magdalene’s prayer was the prayer of the young Australian woman and our prayer, Holmes told the congregation. Newman wrote the poem that the lyrics of the hymn come from while he was in Italy, sick, and waiting for a ship to take him back to England, Holmes said. The wind died while they were trying to get to England; for Newman, it was a dark time.
“The hymn is a prayer for dark times and we need it. Our world is in a gloomy time. When I was preparing to come here, some parishioners asked if I was sure I should go,” Holmes said. “They told me, ‘You are going to cross the border. What if you get arrested?’ I told them it would be great publicity for the church.”
He continued, “We know we are not alone. Somebody said to me, ‘You know I have never really thought about our national anthem “O Canada”; I always thought of it as the way we start hockey games. Now it feels like a prayer to me, “God keep our land glorious and free.” ’ ”
Given the whole world, our troubles are minor — they are first-world troubles, he told the congregation. “There is so much that weighs so heavily and even has us wondering what we can say in public, what we can say aloud. The whole world seems to be lost in gloom, even though we are in this beautiful garden place called Chautauqua.”
Mary Magdalene needed a place to go to in order to mourn Jesus. But when Jesus calls her by her name, she is sent in a new direction. She goes back to the disciples and says, “I have seen the Lord.” The disciples had stayed in the upper room but when Jesus appeared, saying “peace, peace,” they knew all was forgiven and death did not have the last word.
“A powerful wind came upon them and they could go out into the world without fear. There was good news to bring, even in the darkness,” Holmes said.
In the world today, dictators are rising, innocents are slaughtered in blood baths, but Christ still says, “Peace, a new day is coming.” Holmes cited Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who said: “Goodness is stronger than evil; Love is stronger than hate; Light is stronger than darkness; Life is stronger than death; Victory is ours through Him who loves us.”
“Goodness, love, light — they have the last word in this world and in this life, and they will,” Holmes said.
Early in his ministry at Yorkminster Park, Holmes was doing a funeral for a woman who had been a member of the church but had moved to London before his tenure. Pat, the parishioner who visited Jerusalem, called him and offered some details about all the woman had done in the church. The last thing Pat told Holmes was that the woman had bought an inn in London and Pat had stayed there.
As Pat was sitting in the garden in Jerusalem, she asked the young Australian woman, in all of her travels, where she had felt the most at home. The young woman told Pat about an inn in London where she had worked. (Several in the Amp audience gasped in anticipation.) Pat said, “I have a friend who owns an inn in London. Her name is …”
The young woman said that was the name of the woman she worked for.
“We are not alone, we are so blessed,” Holmes said. “We are an Easter people and every day, come what may, love wins. Life is a gift of grace and in the midst of life is God. We have a living hope.”
Pat invited the young woman to have communion with her tour group. The young woman had been lost but now she was found.
“We are an Easter people,” Holmes said again. “Do not let anyone or anything take that joy or faith away from us, for love wins the day. Thanks be to God.”
The Rev. Mary Lee Talbot, Ph.D., presided. Annie Leech, education director for the Department of Religion this season, read the scripture. Laura Smith, organ scholar, performed “Elegy,” by George Thalben-Ball, on the Massey Memorial Organ for the prelude. As the anthem, the Motet Choir sang “Spice She Brought and Sweet Perfume,” music by McNeil Robinson and words by John Newton. The choir was under the direction of Joshua Stafford, director of sacred music and Jared Jacobsen Chair for the Organist, and accompanied by Smith on the Massey Organ. Stafford played the postlude, “Toccata,” from Symphony No. 5 by Charles-Marie Widor on the Massey Organ. Support for this week’s preaching and chaplaincy was provided by the Alison and Craig Marthinsen Endowment for the Department of Religion.
