Scripture: John 20:1-18
Have you ever felt overwhelmed with life’s tragedies, and
just wanted to be left alone to have a good cry. You don’t want to get other people involved,
and don’t even want anyone to see you lose it.
But you just can’t hold it in anymore.
Those moments can come at the most unexpected and inconvenient times –
perhaps at work, or when stuck in traffic, or when family members or friends
are visiting. Other people are around,
but you just can’t hold it together any longer, so you excuse yourself and find
a closet or a bathroom, and shut the door behind you, let loose, and hope
nobody hears you.
Grief – we’ve all been there, in one way or another. From the loss of a loved one to the loss of a
relationship to the loss of paid or volunteer work that gave meaning to our
lives, all of us have been touched by grief in one way or another. And we grieve in different ways – some by
crying, some by isolating, some by connecting, some by working and
overworking. And unfortunately, a lot of
guys still live by the code that “big boys don’t cry” and find less healthy
ways of letting go – perhaps reaching for a bottle or some form of narcotic
numbness, some other form of comfort through chemistry.
I think it’s safe to say that Mary and the two disciples –
Peter and the other disciple who would go on to write John’s gospel – were
beyond overwhelmed. The teacher with
whom they’d traveled, in whom they’d invested all their hopes and dreams and for
whom they’d left behind all the comforts of home, had just been tortured and
executed. In fact, one of their own
number had set Jesus up to be arrested, and most of the others, when Jesus was
arrested, decided it was a good time to get out of Dodge City, to head for the
hills. Jesus was put to death, and a
wealthy man sympathetic to their cause, Joseph of Arimathea, donated a family
tomb as a resting place for Jesus’ brutalized remains.
Mary just wanted to go to the grave to mourn, to weep, and
to remember, to go over in her mind all the good and meaningful times they’d
shared, so she could keep her memories of Jesus fresh in her mind. When she
arrived at the tomb, she found the stone rolled away and the tomb empty, with
just Jesus’ grave clothes remaining as evidence he’d been there. Who
would do such a thing – undress the body and take it away? A fresh wave of grief and perhaps anger swept
over Mary. Perhaps she thought that even
after Jesus had been arrested, lied about by false witnesses, beaten to within
an inch of his life, nailed to a cross and mocked while he hung there, it would
seem those who opposed Jesus weren’t finished with their vendetta. Having harassed him throughout his ministry
when he was alive, they wouldn’t leave his corpse alone even after he’d died. Or perhaps it was just common grave robbers
hoping to loot any personal items of Jesus that had been laid in the tomb with
his body. So Mary might have thought.
She runs to tell Peter and John that “they have taken the
Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid them” – again,
Mary has no idea who the “they” might be who had apparently done all this. The
two men run to the tomb and find it as Mary said – stone rolled away, grave
clothes lying there, and no Jesus. It
was certainly odd that whoever took the body had unwrapped the grave
clothes. Peter and John don’t know what
to make of it, and we’re told they just scratched their heads and went home.
At this point, Mary just lost it, and broke down
crying. Those who opposed Jesus had
taken his life, and now someone or multiple someones had even taken away his
body from what was intended as a final resting place. Even in death, his opponents wouldn’t leave
Jesus in peace, so she might have thought.
She took another glance into the empty tomb, and this time she saw
angels, one where Jesus’ head had been, and one where his feet had been. They said to Mary, “Why are you weeping?” What a question? – after all that had
happened, why weren’t they weeping?
She turns away from the angels and sees a man standing there
that she didn’t recognize. The man asks
her the same question, “Why do you weep?”, and in addition, “Whom are you
looking for?” She thought he was the gardener and said to him, “Sir, if you
have taken him away, show me where you’ve put him so that I can take him
away.” And then the man called her name
– “Mary!” – and suddenly her grief turned to – what? I can’t even begin to imagine…..shock, joy, and
more questions than she knew what to do with.
“Rabbouni!” – “Teacher!” – she responds.
And apparently Mary went to grab onto Jesus, because Jesus
told her “Do not touch me, for I am not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and tell them, “I am
ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” And, we’re
told, Mary carried the news to the disciples, saying “I have seen the Lord!”
Mary came to the tomb to grieve and to mourn, to remember –
and it would have given her pain to consider that all she had to show for her
time with Jesus was memories, or so she thought. Jesus
appeared, and at the sight of Jesus, all thought of grief vanished. In the words of Christian writer C. S. Lewis,
Mary was “surprised by joy”. She was
surprised, not only by joy, but by life itself, in a place which promised only
death.
As we hear this passage, we may be puzzled by Jesus’ words
to Mary “Do not touch me, for I am not yet ascended to the Father.” This is perhaps especially puzzling because
in just a few verses, we’re told that Jesus invited Thomas to touch the nail
prints and the wound in his side from the spear. The Greek word in the original texts that
were translated into English as “touch”, haptou,
can be translated in a few different ways.
A translation using a stronger word than “touch” might have Jesus
telling Mary, “Don’t hold onto me” or “don’t cling to me” or “don’t latch onto
me.” Jesus is telling Mary that while he
was indeed the same Jesus she had known and followed, and very much alive, yet,
he was different, and their relationship going forward was going to be
different. Jesus told Mary not to cling
to his body – but perhaps he was also telling her not to cling to her past
memories of Jesus – because Jesus was not an icon or a statue, but alive and on
the move, apparently preparing to returning to God the Father. Instead of letting Mary cling to him, Jesus
gave Mary a mission: to go to the other disciples and tell them the good news
that Jesus was alive. Remember that
while all this was happening, Peter and John were making their way home. As far as they were concerned, while the tomb
had been opened and the body of Jesus had gone missing, they had no clear idea
what had happened to Jesus. So Mary
ended up being the first evangelist, the first messenger of the good news of
the resurrection. In effect, Mary was an
apostle to the apostles. In a world that
to everybody else still looked and felt very much like Good Friday –
oppression, torture, death - Mary was the one who brought the message of
Easter, of resurrection.
“Go to my brothers and tell……” The mission on which Jesus sent Mary is also
our mission – to go and tell. As
Christians we are to be messengers of life in a world that is captive, addicted
even, to the ways of death. Put another
way, we are Easter people in a Good Friday world. It’s much easier to do what Mary wanted to
do, to cling, to stay in a holy huddle.
But Jesus has sent us on a mission.
Certainly, where we are, most people have heard the message
– Christian or not, most people know who Jesus is. Even as fewer and fewer connect themselves to
a church, most have heard at least some of the stories of Jesus. Our
neighbors have heard and heard, and yet, often, it hasn’t sunk in – even among
some who identify as Christians. Their
words speak of Easter, but they still live in Good Friday – oppressing or being
oppressed, threatening or being threatened, stepping on others or being stepped
on. Their words speak of life, but their
actions serve the powers of death and indeed lead to death for themselves or
others. They claim forgiveness, but
resist transformation. And so we need to
go and tell the message of the resurrection in new, fresh ways. And
lest we be deceived, as we hear the various voices of others around us, we need
to listen to what they say and ask ourselves:
where is this leading? Who or
what does this serve? Is this a message
of death, or a message of
resurrection? Does this message proclaim
the finality of Good Friday, or the triumph of Easter?
In the midst of her grief, Mary was surprised by joy. May the Risen Christ surprise us with joy as
well, turn our mourning into dancing,
lead us from the despair of Good Friday to the joy of Easter. Amen.
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