April 12, 2020
St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois
John 20:1-18
They were young men still, Peter and John. Though they had
been following Jesus for a long time, more than two years, there was still more
boyish energy in them than manly reserve. So it is not surprising to see them
jump up at the words of Mary and race for the tomb. “He’s not there?” you can
almost hear them saying. “This I’ve got to see!” As if in competition they race
for the tomb, and the “other disciple” – presumably John – outran Peter and got
there first. Peter, not one to lose a race, marches right into the tomb.
What they find there proves that Mary was right, but they’re
still stumped. You can imagine them saying to one another, “Huh. I don’t get
it.” Peter presumably comes to the same conclusion as Mary, that the tomb has
been raided by grave robbers. John takes a second look. Maybe he notices the
care with which the burial clothes have been arranged. Not robbery, but
something else.
If the body was moved, to another tomb, the burial clothes
would not have been left behind. And if the body had been stolen in order to be
desecrated, why the care taken with the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head?
John saw and believed that something bigger was happening. But it would take
something more to make it sink in for them. Later that evening the Lord appeared
in a locked room and they were finally able to say: “We have seen the risen
Christ!”
Mary Magdalene’s experience is different. She too is
confused by what she finds, but in her case she is blinded by grief. She came
alone, while it was still dark, to pour out her grief before the tomb. She had
been there, at the foot of the cross, watching as her Lord had died in that
terrible way, and she was already deeply wounded. Imagine her pain when she
sees the stone has been moved away, the body missing. She runs to find Peter
and John and cries out, “They have taken the Lord.” She returns to the tomb in
anguish.
When she does finally look in, hoping to find that she was
wrong, that the body really was there, she instead sees the angels. The
implication of their presence is lost in her grief, and in her distress she
repeats what she knows, “They have taken away my Lord.” She then turns away
from the tomb, away from this heavenly visitation. Nowhere else in scripture
does someone brush aside an angel. But they are not what she seeks. Not even
angels compare to the reality of Jesus. He is not there in the tomb, so
she turns away.
Then the Lord appeared. In turning, she sees him, yet she
does not know who he is. When reality is too much for us to cope with, our
minds sometimes superimpose something rational, familiar. It must be the
gardener. Again she turns away. Only, he calls her by name. “Mary!” And
in that moment she knew: “My Teacher!” She turns around, to see the Good
Shepherd who calls his own sheep by name.
We are often like Peter and John. We’re focused on the tomb
and what happened to the body. We’re not content with mystery; we want the
facts! And how are we supposed to explain this impossible, amazing event to
anyone who doesn’t already believe? No one I know has actually seen a
resurrection. But it does help me to remember that no one saw it happen on
Easter morning either.
The resurrection was entirely between Jesus and God. There
were no witnesses. No one can say what happened inside the tomb, because no one
was there. When Mary arrived that morning, he was already gone. Peter and John
saw the linen wrappings. Mary saw angels. The rest of the disciples didn’t even
show up at the tomb; but that did not matter because the empty tomb was not the
point.
Jesus was too busy not being dead. He had places to go and
people to see. Jesus lives, and he’s not just going to hang around in the
graveyard. The Lord appeared, first to Mary, and then to the disciples, and
then to Thomas, who doubted. He even went down to the beach to have breakfast
with the fishermen.
There in the garden, the risen Christ appeared to Mary. This
was the moment when everything changed. Jesus is alive. Our Lord is the Living
God. The realm of God is here, in the heart of every believer, and not even
death can stop the Ruler of Heaven and Earth.
“He is risen!” proclaims Mary, and we reply “Christ is risen
indeed!” This is more than an historical claim. It is a deeply personal, as
well as communal, affirmation. The disciples’ experience of the risen Christ is
the same presence they knew before his death. The presence of the living Christ
has been experienced by Christians in all times and places. Just as Peter and
John and Mary each had a different experience in the garden, so each of us
experiences the risen Christ in our own lives in different ways. But the
presence of Jesus in our lives is real and powerful.
Easter is about transformation. It is the transformation of
death into life. It is the transformation of doubt into belief. But more than
that, it is the transformation of the world, and it won’t happen without us.
Encountering the risen Christ in an Easter moment is staggering. But following
Jesus after that encounter means that we must be passionate about the
kingdom of God.
The kingdom of God has been described as “the world the
prophets dreamed of – a world of distributive justice in which everyone has
enough and systems are fair.” This “is God's dream… that can only be realized
by being grounded ever more deeply in the reality of God, whose heart is
justice.”[1]
The kingdom of God was described by The Rev. Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. the night before he was assassinated. “The question is not,
‘If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?’ ‘If I do not stop
to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?’ That's the
question.”[2]
The kingdom of God is not a place, but a way of living that puts justice,
peace, compassion, and love first above all things.
There in the garden, Jesus said to Mary, “Do not hold on to
me.” We cannot cling to him, hoping that he will make everything okay for us.
Jesus sends Mary to proclaim the good news as he ascends to God, and she turns
to face the future. A future that is not bereft of the presence of Jesus, but
instead a future where the Living Lord has appeared, and all of us may follow
and be disciples. Amen.
[1] Marcus
Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week, 2007.
[2] Martin
Luther King, Jr., Mason Temple, Memphis, TN, April 3, 1968.
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