Mary

John 20:1-18

Easter Sunday:  April 20, 2014

It’s never easy to talk about the importance or meaning of the resurrection.   We know it’s supposed to be the most important part of our faith – the biggest day of the year – but let’s be honest, if we have given up on literalism, fundamentalism, and simplistic formulas, we’re left with a fairly elusive task.

This year, for me, it’s even more difficult – probably not what you want to hear from your pastor.  But you see, through Lent we have been reading stories from the Gospel of John in which Jesus encounters people, and we’ve been asking what difference he makes in their lives.  We’ve been asking what difference Jesus makes in our lives. 

It’s a good question – and one I think we can explore in the stories that take place before Jesus’ death and resurrection.  In some ways you can say we don’t need the resurrection to put ourselves in the shoes of the woman at the well or Lazarus, or to think about what it would be like to encounter Jesus.  I think we could argue, plausibly, that even if Jesus died on the cross and never rose, his life would still be pretty powerful.  The man would still have been given back his sight and Lazarus still would have had a couple more years on this earth.  In fact, Jesus might still – assuming the stories persisted – have an impact on many of us – much like Martin Luther King Jr., or Gandhi.

And so today, the resurrection question intensifies:  Today we have our last encounter:  Mary.  And I’m forced to ask if this encounter is any different because it is after Jesus has risen from the dead.  Is the impact on her greater than, say, on Lazarus?  Lazarus was raised from the dead – Mary heads off to talk to the disciples. 

In other words, today we ask not just what difference Jesus makes in our lives, but what difference the resurrection makes in our lives.  And it’s a much harder question – and the stakes feel higher.

To explore the meaning of resurrection in our lives, we have to stop for a minute and peel back some layers.  Our tradition, our church, our faith has grown to believe that resurrection, if nothing else, means joy, incredible music, flowers, new life, alleluias.  And in the end, it does mean all those things.  Resurrection is good news.  But the encounter with Mary – in fact all of the resurrection stories in our gospels – demand that we pause before the alleluias to see if there’s something we’ve lost in the rush to make this day as joyous and glorious as it can be.

All of the gospel accounts differ in what they say about the resurrection.  Each have their own way of telling the story.  But there is uniformity on what they do not say.  They do not say:  The tomb was empty, Jesus appeared, he said “great news..I’m back…I told you so.” – and then all the people broke into refrains of alleluia. 

In Mark, after being told that Jesus was risen, the women run away afraid…that’s it, end of story.  In Luke, the women were told Jesus had risen and they ran to tell the disciples – who, showing us misogyny was alive and well in that day, thought it was an idle tale.  In Matthew, the women were both afraid and joyful.  And in John, Mary goes to tell the disciples what she had seen, and in the very next verse we find the disciples locked in a room because they were afraid. 

I’m going up to my family’s this afternoon, and all of us will have gone to church – heard about the resurrection.  And I’m pretty sure when we gather none of the doors will be locked…and the only thing people will be afraid of is what vegetarian dish we will be bringing up there. 

The resurrection had a different impact on those who were there that day than it seems to for us.  Today it makes us feel good in the same way seeing the first flowers of spring does; it rarely reduces us to fear and trembling. 

But I find those first responses helpful, because it means I can be more honest about my own doubts, fears, and hopes.  If we can’t quite figure out what the resurrection means, we’re in very good company.

Which brings me back to Mary.  When I set aside for a moment the modern day expectations of Easter, I can more honestly step into her shoes. 

And I have no difficulty relating to Mary’s response to the empty tomb…which I imagine was not much different from her response to Jesus crucified on the cross:  Weeping.  She’s looking for something, and she can’t find it.  She’s looking for hope, salvation, life, healing…and not only was all that killed on the cross, now it is nowhere to be seen.  Absence.

I find God’s absence the most difficult to deal with.  God’s death is more helpful to me – morbid, maybe, but true.  At least with Jesus on the cross, I can imagine how that puts him in the company of all who are crucified, all who suffer, all who are victims of injustice, all who cry out in pain and thirst.  It’s terrifying, and certainty does not make me happy, but it does provide me some assurance that God is with us in our darkest moments.

Absence is much more difficult.  Now I am weeping at the world’s suffering, and God is not there weeping beside me, God is not in the faces of those for whom I weep…God is just plain gone.  I can almost imagine Mary’s weeping at the tomb… exasperated, weary, totally defeated.  How in the world can this get any worse?  She weeps for the world, and she weeps that God has exited stage right.

We should weep for the world.  I hate to advocate feeling bad…I really do – and especially on this day.  But, at least in the gospel of John, Jesus appears to a weeping Mary.   In fact, she is weeping so hard she can’t recognize him through her veil of tears.  The risen Jesus comes to the ones who weep – the first hint of the good news of resurrection begins in the midst of suffering the loss of hope.

We shouldn’t always weep…joy is at the heart of our faith.  In fact, just hang in there with me…we’re getting to the fanfare.  But resurrection begins when we are connected to the suffering of others.   Without that…the connection, the compassion…I’ve become convinced that we cannot be touched by resurrection.  When we try to celebrate the resurrection as the thing that nullifies all else – conquers death once and for all, we say – I think we stymie resurrection. 

Think about Jesus.  He was connected to the world and especially those who suffered.  He wept when Lazarus died.  He wept over Jerusalem because it had become a lost cause.  He felt the pain of others.  He felt his own pain.   We just spent this whole week reminding ourselves that resurrection comes out of passion…the passion of Jesus.  We should weep. 

And we should weep because it does seem like God is absent sometimes.  Whether God is actually absent is a theological discussion…but it certainly feels like God is absent in some places in our world.  When Jesus cried, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” from the cross, I doubt if he was trying to solve the problem of theodicy.  For him, God was absent, and that was painful.  And I don’t have to list the places in our world that seem abandoned by God or anything good at all.  We are there with Mary, at the empty tomb, weeping.

And then resurrection comes to us…slowly, confusingly, with more questions than answers.   But finally, calling our name.  Mary.

Now, Mary’s response is so interesting.  “Teacher,” she says.  In Hebrew, apparently.  Again, part of me expects “You’re here!  You’re actually here?  Praise God eternally.  It has all come true.  Everything will be okay.”  Instead, “teacher.”  It’s almost as if she doesn’t quite get it yet.  Instead of the resurrection, it’s like she ran into her old friend that she thought she would never see again.  She’s confused and tries to keep him with her like the friend he used to be, though he tells her he has bigger things to do. 

That seems more like resurrection to me:  Looking at the world and wondering if it’s ridiculous to claim a God of life and hope.  Allowing myself to feel the pain and sorrow of others and wonder at the absence of God.  And then, the divine whispering to me – maybe in a prayer, maybe in the compassion of another – resurrection is there, asking me to believe that there is hope in the world…God is still present, even if I can barely see it through my tears.  And my response to this kind of resurrection fits almost perfectly with those first friends of Jesus:  disbelief, suspicion, joy, confusion, awe, fear.

Which, I admit, still leaves us a little bit shy of the fanfare of this day – we’re not supposed to whisper today.  But that’s just because we never read enough of the story on Easter.  Starting next week we begin the Easter season; the Easter story doesn’t end with Mary telling the disciples what she saw and heard.  We see, in the rest of the gospel of John, and especially in the book of Acts, the ultimate effects of the resurrection – the bold, amazing new life the followers of Jesus lead…once they get past their initial responses. Empowered by the Holy Spirit that Jesus promised was coming after he died, they went on to do even greater things than Jesus…just as Jesus told them they would. 

In other words, the Easter season tells the story of the disciples after Jesus is gone.  That’s our story!  We are the disciples after Jesus is gone.

The story of Mary is different from that of Lazarus or the woman at the well– but it’s because of where it begins.  It begins where we do – without the physical Jesus.  It begins where we do…weeping over the fact that suffering continues, even though God raised Jesus from the dead.

And it’s different because of where it ends – at the precipice of a new beginning.  One where Jesus is gone, and we have to decide if we will carry on God’s work with our own lives.  It ends with the promise and challenge of resurrection.

Because of our willingness to carry on the passion of Jesus – to connect with the suffering in this world – slowly, step by step, in the midst of our weeping, fears, doubts and outright disbelief, we are able to carry on his ministry as well.  In the passion and the ministry, Christ comes alive in us.  We become the living Christ – the resurrection.  It may start with weeping in the garden, but the truth is we are the resurrection!  And that’s big – and the possibilities for healing the sufferings of the world are endless...and no amount of fanfare can live up to that…but certainly we should try with our shouts of alleluia, our songs of joy and hope – maybe even with the Halleluiah Chorus.  Halleluiah; Christ is risen; amen!