| March 31, 2002 Acts 10:34-43 + 1 Corinthians 5:6-8 + John 20:1-9 |
| This woman, Mary of Magdala, appears in all four Gospel accounts of the Resurrection. In itself, that fact, says more than we could imagine when it comes to measuring her significance and her impact upon the church in those days of Gospel formation. She plays a central role in this last of John’s great dramatic scenes. She is at the tomb before John and Peter, and she reports that the stone has been moved away Her tum to look in that tomb comes after they have gone. Once the Gospel has gotten Peter and John out of the way, Mary takes the center stage to unfold the Gospel’smessage of Gloiy and the church’s relationship to Jesus. |
| She is, in John’s Gospel the essence of Christianity and the model of one who has found the Lord and believed. She is first of all, remember, a sinner who was forgiven by Jesus, healed and restored by the casting out seven devils (Luke 8). It is a forgiven and healed sinner who becomes the first to encounter the risen Christ. It is her transformation that is most striking. The change that faith brings about in this woman is what John puts before us today The consequences of that change are what we ponder in the heart of this Gospel proclaimed. |
| At frrst she thinks the body has been stolen. something not uncommon in those days. Graves were robbed all the time. The detail of the veiy neat folding of the burial clothes suggest that what happened there was not the usual haste of a thief, but rather something veiy planned and determined. Robbers would either have taken the body wrapped, or would most likely have left the cloth on the ground, thrown off in haste. |
| She sees this, and then John, in his usual dramatic style begins a dialogue, and I want you to notice the stage directions that keep interrupting the conversation. If they were not important, he would not have put them in the text. She keeps turning back and forth. toward the grave, toward Jesus, toward the grave, and then toward Jesus. It’s as though she doesn’t know where to look, but it’s certain that as long as she looks at the grave, she isn’t going to get anywhere, and not until she hears his voice and he calls her name does she finally tum away from the grave, from the past, from death, toward the Lord and toward Life. Yet, even then she reaches out, and he must say to her: “Let go of me.” There is no hanging on to the past, there is no hanging on even to the Jesus of this earth, he must go to glory, and she must go back to the others in order to meet Jesus in glory She is sent into the community, into the church, into relationship with others where together they shall seek the Lord and share his glory. |
| We gather here this Easter day as sinners forgiven, as people who have seen Lord and turned toward him. Yet we are also people who have turned back around a time or two for one reason or another We are, in every way, this woman who is so much a part of the Easter Story. Our faith is not perfect. We do not always recognize Jesus, and do not always face the one who calls us by name. Yet we are here in the midst of others like ourselves, like Peter and like John, drawn by faith into the church, into a relationship with others who come again to an empty tomb. |
| Her message is our message today “I have seen the Lord.” Our faith does not necessarily mean knowing a lot about Jesus, it means knowing Jesus. It does not mean arguing about Jesus, it means meeting Jesus. In its purest form, it means the certainty that Jesus is alive, alive in our midst, in this room, in our hearts, and alive in the presence of the God who has visited us in him and draws us to himself. |
| Two people in John’s Gospel rise up as lovers and the first believers. Love and Faith are indivisible when it comes to Jesus. It is love that leads Mary to believe that Jesus is risen. It is love that marked the life of John who also saw and believed. So it must be for us as well. love of Jesus will lead us to faith and love of one another will lead us to glory. |