There are so many strange and intriguing things
in this powerful story of Mary meeting the resurrected Jesus in the
garden. This story and the picture it paints through its replay
of words and images, raises so many questions – not the least of
which is that of the Resurrection itself.
Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb – a cave in the side of the hill
-- to anoint and care for the dead body of Jesus. She finds the
heavy rock that covered the entrance rolled away and the tomb
empty. She runs and get Peter and John who race up and also find
it empty. And then they leave. Only then, do the two angels
appear. I wonder where they were. Why did they wait?
And only after the two male disciples leave does Jesus appear.
Why did he wait for Mary to be alone? Why not appear first to the
men or to all three at once? After all, in the Jewish legal
system of that time, only men could be legal witnesses. If
someone had invented this story, they would have had Jesus first
appearing to men, not to some lowly woman whose testimony would be
questionable. But, as every single Gospel writer agrees, Jesus
chose Mary of Magdala to be the first witness to the resurrection. Why,
I wonder?
Staying power – I think that’s at least part of the answer
– staying power! Mary Magdalene stayed, faithful and loyal
to the end. She began following Jesus after she was healed
by him of who knows what kind of demons, and she never left. She
stayed faithful – she stayed even at that dangerous moment of
criminal execution, at the cross. She stayed and endured the
terrible, unimaginable anguish of watching the one she had chosen to
stake her life on, the promised one of God, the Messiah, the beloved
Rabboni who had pulled her out of despair, die slowly and painfully as
he hung on slabs of bloodstained rough wood. She stayed
when his now breathless, cold body was taken down from the height of
cross and followed to see him laid in the depth of the
stone.
And early that Easter morning she came back, and she stayed.
After being the initial messenger to the disciples about the missing
body, she came back to the tomb and stayed some more, weeping, her love
and anguish so deep that she could not bear to leave the last place
where she had seen him. And Jesus responded: first by
sending two brightly clad angels and then himself. Mary mistook him for
a gardener, only recognizing him when he called her by name;
“Mary!” he called. And thus Mary, the faithful one,
the one with staying power, became the first witness to the
resurrection, hearing, seeing, and touching the Resurrected One.
And Jesus gives her a commission, he sends her out, a herald of this
unbelievable and amazing news. In Greek, in the Bible, the word for a
herald is “apostollos.” Mary became the first
apostle, sent by the Risen Lord, to tell those who were to become
apostles, Peter, John, and the other men. The Easter Orthodox
Church calls her “the apostle to the apostles.”
It’s her staying power of faithfulness.
That, by the way, is why Dan Brown, the author of the DaVinci Code, is
so mistaken. Mary Magdalene is indeed extremely important, but
not as a mistress or wife. She is the first witness, chosen by
Jesus, the first apostle, the one who, out of all, had the most faith
and the most staying power.
What about us? Do we have staying power? Do we stick to our
faith and follow Jesus, the Messiah, the beloved Teacher and Savior? Do
we stay by him to the end? How was your faith tested this last
week as you pondered his journey that ended in a shameful and painful
execution as a criminal? How is your faith this morning as you
reflect on an ancient story that sounds so mythical and unreal: can you
stay in the garden for a few moments and meet the resurrected Christ,
the risen Lord? For the hardest question of all is the question
about the reality of the resurrection. Is Jesus really
alive? Has he called your name?
It’s not easy to be a believer and a Christian in this day of
rationalism and pragmatism. God seems to be neither
rational nor pragmatic by modern human standards. God’s
extravagant act is so outrageous, so impractical, that it is hard for
us to grasp it, much less to stay faithful to it. Why would the
Force that created the entire expanding universe and its spinning
galaxies choose to become a mortal in the form of a human?
That’s extravagant folly indeed! Why would this
divine-human man then allow himself to be the innocent victim of a
torturous execution by an oppressor government? It’s not
logical or at all practical! It’s too hard to believe all
this in an age where we know more and more about the physics of this
universe, about atoms and quarks and neutrinos, about molecules and
cells and DNA. It’s too hard to believe – and the
only place that we often place God is in what we don’t
know. If we don’t understand it, then God must be there.
And so, as human science understands more and more, we make God to be
less and less. And our staying power, our ability to live in
faith following the Savior, becomes weaker and weaker.
I have no bone to pick with science – I highly value and
appreciate all that science has taught us. God gave us our minds
to explore God’s physics and to learn. But that will never help
us understand the vast mystery that is God. We have to go beyond
science into belief in order to begin to truly understand.
Thanks be to God for God’s Son, for Jesus the Christ! You
see, when I study Jesus’ life, I begin to understand who God is
and what God cares about – food for the hungry, acceptance
of the alien and the outcast, healing for the sicknesses of the body,
freedom from the illnesses of the soul. When I follow Jesus, I know
that he forgives and loves me and transforms me into a new and better
me and the world into a new and better world. When I stay with
Jesus, I understand that God is indeed Love itself. Have
you stayed with Jesus and felt his healing presence in your life?
Can you follow him as he feeds and forgives, as he welcomes and
rebukes?
And when I follow him to the cross and experience his death, I know
that God will go with me even into death. When I gaze on the
cross, I know that God took on the price of human sin and began
transforming the sinful world into a holy place. When I stand at
the cross, I know that God’s Son has held up his arms and said,
“Enough! Enough to violence and oppression and
vengeance! Enough to human sin and human death!” He
became the divine stone, a dam if you will, that stopped the
never-ending flood of hatred and cruelty that are symptoms of human
sin. He became the cornerstone of a new building, a new construction
and new creation. When I stay at the cross, I understand that God
is indeed Love itself. What do you see when you gaze on the
cross? What do you feel when you stay at the cross, your heart
kneeling at its foot? Are you open to the forgiveness and love
being poured out on you by God’s Son?
And when I go to the empty tomb, I know that God is the Creator, even
of death, and has destroyed our human death. When I stand in the
garden in front of an empty tomb and turn and see the Risen Lord, I
know that Jesus is our Redeemer, offering us again what we have always
wanted – life, filled with meaning and truth, with goodness and
beauty and love, forever and ever, true and abundant life, and eternal
life.. In addition, when I stay by the empty tomb, searching for the
beloved Savior, I hear his voice calling me by my name. And when
the Risen Lord calls me by name, I see myself clearly and
honestly. I know myself, gifted yet with so many flaws, and yet
accepted and loved, just as I am. I have met the Risen Lord in
prayer and dreams, and I know that when Jesus calls our name we are
given love beyond any love and joy beyond any joy. And he gives
us work to do!
Stay in the garden with the Risen Christ – He is speaking your
name. What do you hear? Do you hear the total acceptance he
gives, even as you see yourself with all your gifts and
imperfections? Do you hear him, with a voice filled with love,
send you out to use your gifts for him? He is sending you out, he
is sending me out, he is saying, “Go and use your gifts for my
kingdom! Tell and live the Good News! I am alive! Don’t be
afraid! Evil and death have been thrown down! ”
The prior of a monastery that I am associated with in California wrote these words about the resurrection in a recent letter:
“What would it matter if we could discover the particle physics
or organic chemistry of this core mystery of our faith but not be drawn
thereby deeper and deeper into the heart of the universe and the love
of God? . . . What does it matter if it does not in some change
everything, including us?”
The point of the resurrection is not to understand how, physically it
could happen (God after all is the Creator). The point is to
understand why it happened: it is a gift of love to transform us into
beings of love. It matters because everything is changed; we are
changed. The prior concludes: “The first witnesses of
the resurrection. . . experience not so much an encounter with a corpse
revived. . . but a series of strange, troubling, and comforting
meetings with a Jesus whom they at once both knew and did not know,
recognized and did not recognize. . . . They met again the loving
saving Jesus who drew them beyond themselves into a life larger than
they could ever have imagined.”
You know, the One with the most staying power is God in Christ Jesus.
He always was and always will stay with us. And today, now,
Christ is risen and alive, calling you and me by name, drawing us into
true life, life larger than we can imagine. Christ is
risen! Christ is risen indeed. Hallelujah! Amen.
