Buoyancy

Buoyancy

Easter Sunday 2026

John 20.1-18

The Rev’d Devin McLachlan

(This sermon was delivered extemporaneously, and its oral nature may be reflected in the grammar of the written text below.)

When I was in seminary — and here's my excuse, it was a quarter century ago, and so I can't remember the actual citation —but when I was in seminary, I have a distinct memory of my one of my professors, a liturgics professor, talking about one of the early church fathers, one of the great Patristic writers in a sermon comparing the resurrection of Christ to a cork exploding back up to the surface of the water from where it had been held down. That nature of the God of Love is such that death could not hold him down. That it was impossible for anything to happen other than the resurrection. Such is the power of God's love.

You know this sense memory. Clara, being baptised today, is probably about the age to be figuring it out right now. Julian and Silla — also being baptised today — are old enough to have already made this discovery. That discovery when you're in a bath and you've got something that floats and you hold it down with your hand under the water and then, boom!, it rises up.

There is a delight and a joy. It's about that sensory experience, but it is also an important and incredible moment of neurological development. It's something children go through with the whole world, which is discovering rules. And you think you've figured it out. If you've ever been with a baby in a high chair, you know they love seeing how gravity works. They like to check it on a regular basis. Then suddenly gravity doesn't work in the tub! And the universe unfolds in a whole new dimension we didn't expect.

For the whole history of humanity since the fall, we have sunk like stones. And then on that Easter day, we discovered that indeed God has always intended us to be buoyant, to come rising up above the dark waters and that death cannot hold us down.

But John and indeed the other gospels make clear this was no still, warm bathtub. This was no leadth me beside the still waters. This was a torrent and a rapid.

 I love John showing off about whoever that beloved disciple is —maybe John — boasting that he won the foot race with Peter to get there. Again and again. It feels like John's trying to score a little point here: I got there first.

What I've realised this year, and it's because folks in this congregation have taught me some things about myself, is: Oh my goodness, are those disciples guys.Mary comes back weeping and confused. And what do those disciples do? ‘We've got to do something. we're going to go and see it for ourselves,’ and they take off and Mary is like, ‘But wait…”  She has to follow them all the way back to the tomb but they've raced each other to get there. I love that detail.

But it's also that this story is not a still pool but a rapid, a cascade. One of the great aspects of the authenticity of the stories of the resurrection is that they are not simple, logical, straightforward and clear. They run back and forth and sideways they look at the tomb, they don't go in, they go back in the tomb, and then they leave again. These are swirling waters of wonder and grief and fear and confusion.

And in those swirling waters, Mary was not feeling buoyant. I've preached a lot over the Triduum about waters, including on Maundy Thursday about the anointing of salt tears at Jesus's feet. And Mary weeping outside the tomb. Mary, her heart heavy, spilling over with grief.

Mary, whose grief is so heavy, she is almost uniquely in scripture completely unfazed by the angels. It's one of the few times that angels appear and I can imagine them. They're about to say, "Do not be afraid." They get it far as like, “Do not….”

She's not afraid. She's just sad.

And they say to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?”Her grief is so enormous that even the angels are silenced by it.

This is Mary, the first apostle, the apostle to the apostles. Apostolos, meaning the one who is sent off, the messenger. Mary who brings the resurrection, who is given that news, not because she's a happy Christian.

And yet in that moment, when Jesus says her name, she too becomes buoyant. She hasn't found that buoyancy that by being chipper and cheerful all the time, or inauthentic, or always unafraid. But she is buoyant by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And then Jesus says to her, "Do not hold on to me.”

On Good Friday, during those 90 minutes of preaching, I talked about different kinds of waters. We've talked here in this sermon about these waters being whitewater rapids. One of the things I learned in the few times I got to go whitewater rafting (and I drank a lot of river water in the process), is that one of the most dangerous places in a river is just after the big rock, right behind the big rock. And they teach us that because instinctively when you're being rushed and knocked about and spun from side to side, that's kind of where you want to go. You're like, "Oh, that's going to be the lee. I'll be nice and sheltered there." But it's one of the most dangerous places. The river is rushing back in to fill the gap behind the rock and it is pulling everything down and the water is trying to cling to the rock.

So Jesus says, "Do not hold on to me.”

What a surprising Easter message. You would think from the way our faith is so often portrayed, from the outside and sometimes right from the pulpit, that it's all about clinging tightly to Jesus and nothing more. But Jesus says, "Do not hold on to me."

Because Jesus sends Mary out into the world to share that good news, to celebrate the buoyancy that she has been given through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So in a moment we're going to crown our Easter celebration with three baptisms. We've been hearing about water all through the Triduum, and here we will have the water of baptism springing to eternal life. We will rejoice with Physilia, with Julian and Clara. And through baptism by water and the Holy Spirit we will welcome them into the household of faith. Three more Απόστολοι, three more messengers, whom Christ welcomes with open arms and gentle words, and to whom he will also say, "Do not hold on to me."

Oh, hold fast to the faith. Hold fast to Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour, our friend and brother. The word of God, light from light and very God from very God. But do not stop there.

Be buoyant. Float and flow on this river of light. Hold your hands not fiercely tight. Hold them open, cupped and spread so that the water of eternal life may pour into your life and out from your heart. So that the water of eternal life may pour into all our lives and out from our hearts into a thirsty world that needs this good news of justice, of joy, of life, of welcome, of peace, of hope, so desperately. Cup your hands so that the waters of eternal life may pour into it and then out from the hearts of all believers, springing to life this day and every day.

Alleluia. Christ is risen.

He is risen indeed. Alleluia.