Easter
April 9, 2023
William G. Carter
But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; 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. 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.’ When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?’ 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.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher). 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.”’ 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.
For all the hallelujahs and flowers for Easter, there’s something curious about the Bible passage. You already know what it is. Mary Magdalene doesn’t recognize Jesus when he is raised from the dead. She supposes he is the gardener.
No doubt she’s in shock. The evidence is there. She sees two angels inside the tomb and doesn’t even blink. They sparkle in white; they sit where his body had been, and then they speak to her. She doesn’t seem the least bit surprised. All she wants to know is where the body of Jesus has gone. Was it moved? Was the stolen? They don’t answer.
Then she turns – and Jesus is right there, upright and alive. She sees him, but she doesn’t see him. Of course, her eyes are scalded with tears. She’s distraught. She’s confused. He’s standing right in front of her, and she doesn’t know who that is. Is this the gardener?
When he speaks, she doesn’t know the voice. He asks two gentle questions – Why are you weeping? For whom are you looking? She says, “Sir, if you did this, tell me, and I’ll take him.” She says this to his face, the same face, but that face is unknown to her.
It’s worse than one of those high school reunions, when once-familiar classmates are unrecognizable. Jesus has been gone for only a couple of days. She had traveled with him, been by his side for years. She stayed at the foot of the cross until the end. She heard him take his last breath.
And here he is again. Clothed, risen, alive, breathing, apparently not too disheveled. She supposes he is the gardener. This is one of the strangest details of the Easter story.
There’s a similar story over in the Gospel of Luke. A stranger joins two disciples as they travel toward the nearby town of Emmaus. He leads a little Bible study for them, gives them a guided tour of the prophet Isaiah’s writings, and they don’t know who he is until he breaks the bread in their home – and promptly disappears.
And it happens again in the Gospel of John. A few disciples returned to Galilee to go fishing. A stranger stood on the beach and yelled, “Hey boys, did you catch anything?” He tells them to throw the net in the water on the other side of the boat - a ridiculous suggestion – until a hundred-fifty-three fish jump into the net. Then they know who it is.
This mysterious, anonymous Savior is one of the unusual aspects of Easter. He shows up. Just shows up. His own people don’t know who he is.
I suppose the Gospel writers are giving a little elbow to the insiders. After all, John begins his Gospel by saying, “He came to his own, and they didn’t receive him.” I guess that wasn’t true only for his birth or his ministry; it’s also true for Easter.
In fact, I’ll bet there are some people present here today. They love the music. They drink in the joy. They celebrate the optimism. And they wonder if all of this is true. This Easter sermon is for them. The rest of you can listen in – but this is for them. Because I want to affirm that there’s something slippery about the nature of faith. The Easter stories tell us this is just the way it is.
You heard about the Gospel of Luke. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus doesn’t appear at the tomb. An angel says, “He’s alive, just as he said. Go to Galilee. You’ll see him there.” The women run away too terrified so say anything. According to the Gospel of Matthew, a strong angel came down to roll away the stone and two guards passed out and fell over. When the Jerusalem establishment heard about it, they paid the guards a lot of hush money and said, “Keep this quiet.” You can guess how that turned out – Matthew said the Easter story “has been disputed until this day.”
So take heart if you find this to be a slippery story. Mary Magdalene thought he was the gardener! And let’s see if there are any lessons in that for us. I can think of four.
Here’s the first lesson, and you already know it: most of the time, we see only what we expect to see. Mary expected to see the sealed grave of her friend. When she arrived, the tomb had been opened. Without even looking inside, she ran back to tell a couple of disciples, “They stole the body.” Who did? “You know, they did.” So Simon Peter and another sprint to the grave. They look inside, see there’s nobody there, and they leave.
As for Mary, Raymond Brown, the Catholic scholar, pointed out, “Magdalene is looking for the dead Jesus; (instead) she will find the living Lord.”[1] Or better yet, the living Lord found her. I can understand why she didn’t recognize him. Easter is shaped by expectations. A friend of mine expects to receive a basket full of marshmallow Peeps - Is that all you expect for Easter?
In a broader sense, the church can tell you, “Keep your eyes open.” Enlarge your expectations. True enough; yet if you don’t expect to see Christ risen, you won’t. Not yet.
There’s a second from this text, and it emerges from page after page of the Gospel of John. John tells us there is an elusive nature to religious experience. Faith can come and go. It sparks, and fades, then brightens, and might fade again. According to Jesus himself, faith blows in like the wind. “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes (3:8).” So it is with the life of the Spirit. Faith is not something you catch – rather, faith catches you.
Frankly, that’s good news for me as a professional Christian. The truth of the Gospel doesn’t depend on how big of a show we put on today. I confess a bit of jealousy that some of our neighboring congregations have booked all the trumpet players for over a year – and most of them have been on automatic contracts for over a decade. And I whine, “Can’t we get a few trumpet players for Easter?”
The real Easter is not a show. It’s a mystery. It sneaks up on us. Easter is that moment, when all evidence to the contrary, our souls are opened to the possibility if not the reality that God is here, that Christ holds everybody that he loves, that the Spirit of God does land on us from time to time. And for no obvious reason, we are surprised to discover again that everything turns out better than it should. There is grace in the world, even if it is mysterious.
A third lesson will come when Mary Magdalene compares her experience of the Risen Christ with the other disciples, and the lesson is this: everybody does not come to faith in the same way. For some, faith is a lesson to study. For others, faith is a commitment of the heart. For some, faith is something that prompts us to pray. For others, faith is something we do. Is one way better than another? No, of course not.
Here’s what happens in chapter 20 of the Gospel of John. Mary tells the disciples that the body of Jesus is missing, and the two of them run to see. One of them sees the linens that covered the body; they are folded neatly, and this disciple instantly believes. The other, Simon Peter, sees the same evidence, but doesn’t yet believe.
Mary encounters Jesus individually. It’s one on one. That night, the disciples are hiding out in fear when Jesus appears to the whole group. They come to faith as a community. Of course, Thomas wasn’t with them, so he doubts the whole thing, saying, “I won’t believe until I can stick my finger in the nail holes.” He wants physical proof, so Jesus shows up to him, saying, “Put your finger right here.” Apparently, he was listening in.
The lesson here: everybody does not come to faith in the same way. One size does not fit all. That’s why, some sixty years after the Resurrection, John remembers how Jesus had said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” That’s a blessing for all of us.
Fourth, and finally, faith becomes real when we have the sense that the Risen Christ knows us and meets us where we are. For Mary Magdalene, the last thing she ever thought she’d hear again was the voice of Jesus. And like a sheep who recognizes the voice of the Shepherd, hearing her name - “Mary” – meant he had found here. Right there, soaked in tears, worried and anxious – and he was there. Right there.
This is the promise of Easter. If you have doubts or questions, join the rest of us. Doubts don’t mean the whole thing isn’t real. It only means you’re waiting to be found. And I’ll simply say, “Here you are.” In a church without trumpets, here you are. You are in a safe place, surrounded by people who are doing what they can to love God and other people. There are no marshmallow Peeps, but the coffee’s pretty good. And you may come to discover that you are loved.
So I offer a bit of wisdom from a photographer named Dewitt Jones. He’s shot thousands of photos for National Geographic. One of the things he says, “If you want to shoot a good photo, he says, put yourself in the place of most potential.” That’s the wisdom.
If you want to see salmon fishermen on the River Tweed, go to the River Tweed. Get there at dawn. You’ll see them. And where is the place of most potential for seeing Jesus? Jesus lived out of the scriptures. So find a group of people who love the scriptures. And Jesus taught people of all ages. Why not take what you know and offer it as a gift for others to learn? And Jesus fed large groups of hungry people. So if we feed the hungry – we might see him in the breadline. And he served people in need, wherever he was. So we can step out of our own comfort and go where people need us. The place of most potential.
And in case you forgot, today is Easter. Jesus shows up outside of a tomb. It’s a place of fear, a place of dying.
There’s this woman I know who volunteers for a hospice facility. It’s a place where people pass away. She went with some anxiety, with a vague sense that she could help with some paperwork or something. It was vague. As she kept going, the busywork became respect, deep respect for the caregivers, even deeper respect for those receiving care. She stopped in to tell me about it, and said, “At this point in my life, I need to be there.”
Why?
“Would
you believe me if I told you that God is alive? And I know there is a resurrection.”
I nodded yes. Didn’t need her to explain. But it was clear to me: the Risen Christ
had called her name. She recognized the Voice.
[1] Raymond E. Brown, A Risen
Christ in Eastertime (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1984) 71.
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