John 20:1-18
April 5, 2026
She came to the tomb empty-handed;
not with burial spices to properly anoint his body. She came to the tomb alone,
not in the company of other women. She came in the darkness before dawn. Why
did she come? Maybe she had spent the last two nights sleepless, pacing the
floor or tossing fitfully in her bed. Or perhaps she did sleep, only to dream
that everything was the way it was before … he was alive, they were all
together, the trauma of his execution nothing but a fiction, a terrible figment
of her imagination. But when she would awaken, the cold reality that he was
dead. that nothing was as it was before and would never be that way again would
unleash fresh waves of grief upon her. Maybe she could not stay inside her home
one more second. Maybe she could not remain hidden from the world another
minute. Now that the Sabbath was over and the night still covered her, she
could make her way to stand in the place of death, the place where she believed
he abided forever. So, she crept through the shadows to keep watch over his
death. She came to the tomb empty-handed; but she was overflowing with grief.
But she was not prepared for what
waited for her, or more accurately what did not. She was not prepared to see
what she saw. Instead of a tomb blocked by a stone, the stone was rolled away. There
was no lifeless body resting inside. He was gone. His body must have been taken
or moved, one more way to punish his memory and to terrify those who loved him.
This was more trauma heaped upon trauma. It was more than she could bear. She
turned and ran, stumbling back through the darkness, to find Peter and the
other disciple. When she reached them, Mary Magdalene cried out,
“They have taken the Lord out of the
tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”
Peter and the beloved disciple ran
through the growing light to see what Mary was talking about. The other
disciple reached the tomb first and looked inside but did not cross its
threshold. From where he stood, he could see the linen wrappings, the graveclothes,
lying abandoned. Peter caught up with him, and moving past the other disciple,
he went into the tomb. He saw the abandoned wrappings, and he saw the cloth
that held Jesus’ head rolled up and left apart from the others. Peter stepping
into Jesus’ burial place must have encouraged the other disciple, because he
followed Peter into the tomb. The text tells us that “he saw and believed,”
even though they did not fully understand the scripture, and they did not
understand what Jesus had told them while he was still with them – that he
would rise from the dead to new life. But he saw and believed. Jesus was not
there.
But this was as far as the two
disciples went. They saw the tomb was empty. They saw his death wrappings lying
abandoned. They understood that something had happened, but they did not yet
understand what it meant or its implications, so they returned home. Why bother
staying by an empty tomb? They left and Mary was alone once more. But she could
not leave. She could not walk away so easily because she still believed that
his body had been moved or stolen. Her grief drove her to be near him, but if
he was not there where could she go? This was the last place he had been, so
she would stay. She would persist, even though the tomb was empty.
With
fresh tears of sorrow streaming down her face, she peered into the emptiness.
But now it was not so empty. Where the disciples only saw discarded cloths, she
saw two angels. They were dressed in white and sitting where Jesus had lain. Her
tears must have been falling fast and furious because they looked at her and
asked,
“Woman,
why are you weeping?”
“They
have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”
Before
they could respond, before she had processed what she was seeing, she turned
around and almost bumped into another man standing behind her. It must be the
gardener, the caretaker of this place. Who else would be out so early in the
morning?
He
asked her the same question the angels did. “Woman, why are you weeping?”
Every
time I have read this story in the past, every time, I have heard
the angels’ and Jesus’ question to Mary with an almost dismissive tone, a
condescending intonation. As if they were surprised she was weeping because
didn’t she get it already. Didn’t she realize what had happened? Jesus was
risen from the dead! He was resurrected from death to life. But now I read it
differently. I hear their question differently. I hear compassion instead of
condescension. I hear care instead of scorn.
“Woman,
why are you weeping?”
Something
about the risen Jesus looked different, because many of the people who were
closest to him did not recognize him at first and Mary was no exception. Mary
could not see past her own grief. She could not see who stood in front of her.
She only saw a man who might know where her teacher had been taken, and she
needed to find him. She needed to find him because she was drowning in grief
and if she could just know where he was she might be able to survive. So, she
pleaded with this man to tell her if he knew where her Lord had been taken. She
begged him to help her.
And
then he said her name. Mary! Now she knew him! Now she could see clearly.
Rabbi! Teacher! He was alive and standing right there in front of her. Rabbi!
Teacher! Jesus! Of course she ran to hug him. Of course she wanted to hold onto
him and not let him go again. Whatever this miracle was, he was alive. He was
alive! He was alive! He was alive! But Jesus would not let Mary hug him. He
would not let her cling to him. I admit to not understanding this part of the
story. His response to her joy sounds harsh, but this is John’s gospel, and I
suspect that once again there is more happening here than we understand from a
surface reading. It could be that Jesus wasn’t just telling her not to try and
hold onto his resurrected self, but to not hold onto her past ideas about him
and who he was, who he would be. Jesus wanted her to let go of what she thought
she knew and step into a future that would be radically different from what she
had once envisioned.
At
our Sunrise Service this morning, Chris Williams told us that sometimes it is
our unanswered prayers that we should be most grateful for. If we got
everything we prayed for, our lives might look and be radically different from
what they are, and not necessarily in a good way. Chris pointed out that the
disciples and Mary Magdalene certainly prayed for something very different than
what they got. I imagine they prayed for someone who would overthrow the oppression
they lived under. They prayed for someone who would take back from their Roman
occupiers all that had been stolen from them, from Israel. They prayed that Jesus’
predictions about his death would not come to pass.
When
Mary went to the tomb that morning, she may have believed that God did not hear
her fervent prayers. But when Jesus called her name, she understood that her
prayers were answered in ways too wonderful for her to have imagined or
believed.
Jesus,
the risen Christ, called her name and then he called her. Because that is what
this story is about after all. Mary is called to go and tell the others, the
ones she knows, the ones she doesn’t, that she has seen the Lord. This is her
call story. This is her new beginning. And it is ours.
I
read recently that every gospel really begins with the resurrection, but each
one has an extended prologue. When we shout our alleluias this morning, when we
proclaim that Jesus is risen, he is risen indeed, we are not just referring to
something that happened sometime in another country a long time ago. We are
proclaiming that we believe the resurrection is happening now, in our midst.
When we declare our belief in our resurrected Lord and Savior, we are stating
that resurrection is not just reserved for the eternal by and by. This isn’t
just about a heaven far away, but God’s kingdom right here and right now. This
is our new beginning.
But
when we proclaim the resurrection, we also must accept that resurrection has
consequences. To state that we believe in Jesus’ resurrection means that we are
people of hope. We live in hope that God is still creating, still pulling life
from chaos. We live in hope that Jesus is not only resurrected but resurrecting
all that seems dead in our lives, in our world. We live in hope that our
relationships with God, with one another, with all of creation will be restored
and made new. We live in hope. That is a consequence of resurrection.
We
are changed and we are called. Those too are consequences of resurrection
faith. We do not leave here this morning the same as when we came. Mary was
called in that garden, by that empty tomb. She was called from her grief into
joy, from her tears to laughter. She was called to tell the others. She was
called to share what she had seen, what she had experienced, what she now knew
in her mind and in her heart. When we leave here this morning, we are called to
tell someone about the gospel. We are called to share with someone that we too
have seen the Lord. Because this is just the beginning. Our unanswered prayers
are answered in ways we could not imagine. Our old understandings are left
behind. Resurrection is the beginning of a new story.
So,
tell the world, shout it from the rooftops and proclaim it in the streets. We
have seen the Lord! We have seen the Lord! We have seen the Lord!
Christ
is risen! He is risen indeed!
Let
all of God’s children say, “Alleluia!”
Amen.
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