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Easter Year A 2002

Sermon: “opening up your universe”
Text: John 20:1-18
Date: Easter 2002

John 20:1-18
1 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb.
2 So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”
3 Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb.
4 The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.
5 He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in.
6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there,
7 and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself.
8 Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed;
9 for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.
10 Then the disciples returned to their homes.
11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to looka into the tomb;
12 and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet.
13 They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”
14 When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus.
15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”
16 Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew,b “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher).
17 Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ”
18 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

The heart of our story this morning is the appearance of the resurrected Jesus to Mary Magdalene. It is a precious account of a seeking woman finding, or should we say “being found,” in an unexpected way.

She rises early on the first day of the week. Just like today. Jesus was crucified on Friday afternoon before. He was certified dead by the Centurion who stabbed his lance into Jesus’ side and saw that water and blood poured forth. Because the sun was rapidly setting and Jesus’ body could not hang on the cross during the Passover celebration, they hastily took it down and placed it in a tomb donated by Joseph of Arimathea – because as John tells us “it was nearby”. The corpse was not well prepared, it was simply sealed away. The Romans placed a guard upon the tomb, so that no one would tamper with the body.

We can speculate as to why Mary came to the tomb. The two most reasonable suppositions are these: First, she came to finish preparing the body. It still had to be anointed, and given the honors that any body should receive before being committed to the earth. The second likelihood, is that she came to grieve. Tradition, though with little true evidence to rely on, suggests that Mary was a prostitute before Jesus called her out of that life and into the life of being one of his followers. We can be certain of what Scripture tells us about her – that Jesus drove out of her seven demons. Whatever the details of the history that Mary had with Jesus it is clear that her affection for him would have the intensity of one who had been saved from a dire and dirty life.

She comes early in the morning with a heavy heart. Having lost a man who was the occasion for such positive change in her life, it seemed things could not possibly get worse. But when she arrives at the tomb, she discovers they can. The tomb has been invaded. The stone rolled away and the station abandoned. As her fears mount, she peers into the tomb to see that the body is missing.

This is not a moment of faith for her. It was never the case for any of the disciples that the absence of a body constitutes that the Lord had risen from the grave. So, let us dispel the silly notion that the resurrection can be explained away because the disciples were so eagerly hoping for it that they suffered mass delusion. Mary sees the body is gone, her conclusion is as sane as any you and I would draw: Someone has taken it. She doesn’t know who. It could have been the Romans, the religious leaders, Joseph of Arimathea. All she knows is the body is gone, corpses don’t just walk off, it must be recovered.

She runs to the disciples. And they come to investigate her story. John stops at the entrance of the tomb. He sees the wrapping lying there. We know nothing of his thoughts or feelings at this moment. He is passed by Peter, who with characteristic robustness, rushes right into the small crypt. John squeezes in with Peter and sees, then believes. Believes what? That Jesus was risen from the dead? No. That someone had in fact taken the body, just as Mary had told them. And whoever took the body also took the time to fold the burial linens neatly, even placing the head piece off to the side. The evangelist tells us plainly that the disciples did not understand the prophetic word of Scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead.

So, the disciples return to their homes. But Mary remains behind. Weeping, wondering. Not knowing what to do, it would seem, but she is not content simply to return home. She stoops to look in the tomb again, but this time it is not empty. Two angels have appeared, and they are sitting where Jesus had at one time lain.

Few people in the Bible are recorded as speaking with an angel. Seeing two angels at once is virtually unprecedented. Some are struck dumb, or are paralyzed in the presence of angels. Mary is asked a question, and she says all that is on her mind: I want to know where the Lord is. She says to them just what she had said to the disciples, “someone has taken the body and I do not know where it is.” This is the second of three times that Mary will repeat this fact. There is a three fold structure to this story: she tells the disciples, the angels and now…well perhaps the third time’s a charm…

Suddenly appearing, Jesus is on the scene. She turns to him. It would seem at this moment Mary had found what she was looking for. But has she? No. She is not looking for a living man, but a corpse. And so, supposing him to be the gardener, she begins to repeat the pattern all over again.

Mary is stuck, in her grief, in her anxiety, in her desperation. She is living in the world as we know it:
A world in which certain laws apply, without variation, without change, without compassion and without remorse.
… in which the rich get richer, because they have the power to do so.
…wherein, the evil wreak havoc upon the innocent, because they may.
…in which injuries will come, and leave behind scars and fears.
… in which dreams and relationships and people die, and do not come back to life.

As a nation we are still recovering from the worst attack we have ever suffered. Since September we have been restructuring buildings and our economy, grieving our fallen citizens and putting justice to our foes. More subtly, many of us are also engaged unsettling task of adjusting our basic assumptions about life in this world. We are re-evaluating our approach to living and reformulating how we are going to continue to be ourselves knowing that things like 9-11 can happen and do happen.

For some of us this has meant spells of anxiety, maybe even depression. Though it is not physical, it is a crippling nonetheless. We find ourselves thinking twice instead of once. The events of terror have opened our eyes to the uncertainty all around us. What if something unpredictable or catastrophic happens…there’s an accident or crime or a public scandal and everything that we have worked so hard for falls apart. What commitments can we make, what new ventures can we embark upon? Bottom line, how can we continue to live fully and confidently (even joyfully and peacefully) in such an unsafe world when the injuries we receive can be permanent?

Mary is dealing with a pain right now that she thinks is permanent. That is why she keeps repeating the same words no matter who she talks to – people, angels – and why she doesn’t recognize Jesus. The unqualified nature of her pain, the closed world in which she lives, makes it impossible for him to be Jesus; and so she says to the Lord standing before her – “where are you?”

Since September I have heard that question a lot, “Where is God?” I’ve asked it myself. I have had to wrestle with my own expectations for the future. I’ve wondered what my faith in God really means in relation to the concrete decisions I make about life. I’ve had to realize as we all have that the future won’t necessarily be just like today – whether good or bad. It is not a promise. A Tuesday could come along and take from me my spouse, or my health, my occupation. I want to cling to them. But I cannot, none of us can. But neither can we let what “might” happen in the future paralyze us from living our life today. We cannot become stuck, living a minimalized life repeating over and over again where is God? Where is God?

This inner turmoil is invaded by a single word. Not an explanation. A word. Her name. “Mary,” Jesus says. With a voice familiar but unheeded before he rips through the walls of her expectations, tears down all the reasonable reasons that keep her from knowing his resurrection, and scatters that grief that has her locked in useless pattern of seeking and not finding. “Mary” and her world is opened up, her universe is suddenly made a whole lot bigger.

She turns to him. Notice how Mary keeps turning toward Jesus. It is almost as if she is doing pirouettes. She turns toward him when she thinks he is the gardener; she turns toward him now that he says her name. John is trying to impress upon us our need to be able shift our perception, to impress upon us a continual readiness to look and see in new ways. We cannot look on the world or toward God in the same way year in and year out. To see the Lord for who he is, to know how close he is, we have to be turning to him again and again.

Mary realizes the Lord is standing right before her. Oh how nice it would be if we could cling to Jesus as Mary did. If we could reach out our hands and grasp him, if we could look upon him with our eyes. But such was not even given to Mary than for more than a minute. “Do not cling to me, Mary.” He was not coming back to her in the same capacity that he left her – to be a humble man. Mary was going to have to shift her perception of Jesus yet again. He was ascending yet to his Father in heaven, there to sit at the right hand of glory to rule over all the nations and all of history.

Today we celebrate the risen Lord, risen not only from the grave, but risen to heaven. And, just as with Mary, He wants to open up our universe. We are not here all alone with no hope of creating a better world, we are not here all alone, with nothing to do with our dashed dreams but to mourn them and give them a good burial. Jesus is Lord and he is risen. And he holds out for us the invitation to believe in more than we think is possible.


Our Lord, our risen God, invites us to believe again, to be filled with his eternal life. He invites us to look with open eyes and see what is possible in us and through us because of his power. He invites us to have hope and with that hope to continue in our world living and loving and working for all which is good and beautiful for such things are glorious because of Him. As He said to Mary, so he says to us, “Go and tell others the good news.” Christ is risen today, Alleluia!