Offered to the congregation of the First Church of Hanover Easter Morning March 2021
Text: John 20: 1-18
Mary was left alone at the tomb. John, who outraced Peter to the entrance and the impetuous Peter who just rushed in had been there, inspected the inside of the Tomb but then returned to their locked room. But, Mary remained and was left alone at the tomb.
The men had entered the tomb. What did they find there?
Peter was the first to go into the Tomb. John was hesitant but then followed Peter in. They looked around. John describes what they found. They saw the linen clothes lying there. He tells us that he saw the napkin which had been laid upon Jesus’ head…still in its folds. What does that mean, “…still in its folds”? It means that everything that they found were just lying neatly there – not in a heap or tossed aside. No, they were still in their folds; in other words, just as they had been on Jesus’ body; they remained in the tomb.
If the grave site had been rustled and the body stolen, then the linens would have been tossed aside or taken with the body. Instead, they remained “in their folds” as Jesus had risen out of them. That is what they saw. But John goes on to say, “they did not realize the meaning of scripture, that Jesus should rise from the dead. In fact, as we will hear in Luke’s account of the Lord’s Supper later, the disciples didn’t recognize him until after he had broken and blessed the bread. So, the two disciples returned to their lodgings.”
John tells us that they saw; they believed but they did not understand. So, they left. They returned to their locked room.
The one witness who came again and remained was Mary. She sat outside the tomb and wept. After a time, she looked back into the Tomb and saw two Angels at the place where Jesus had been lying.
They asked her, “Why are you crying?” As if to ask, why are you not celebrating? Mary answered, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid them.” At this time, Mary was looking “backwards” into the Tomb. It was at this moment, perhaps she was disturbed by something, she turns and sees a man; perhaps because her tears and her grief were blinding her, she could not recognize who it was. The man asks her, “Woman why are you crying? Who are you looking for?”
Now, there is a lot of supposition as to why Mary doesn’t recognize who the man is. I suggested earlier that her grief and tears blinded her. We can leave it at that. But we will see in later accounts of Jesus greeting the disciples on the road to Emmaus and in the upper room that at first none of them recognized him. There was something else going on.
Jesus had risen. But he was not simply was resuscitated or awakened, Jesus had risen into his glory. His glory is that he was now joined with the Father. This resurrected Christ was more than a human being. His flesh and bones had been glorified. His personage was somehow changed. It was Jesus but something was different. The God Head was becoming more visible. And that somehow changed his appearance.
Thinking it was the gardener, Mary asks the man, “Sir, if you are the man who has removed him, tell me where you have laid him; and I will take him away.” Perhaps at this point, Mary turns back to look at the empty tomb and with her back to the man, she hears a voice call her name, “Mary.” And in that instance, she turns again to the man whose voice she recognizes. Do you remember the parable of the Good Shepherd where Jesus teaches, “my sheep will know my voice.” As she turns, she calls the familiar name she had always called the man with that voice, “Rabbouni.”
So, let’s take a breadth and step back from the narrative and try to understand theology what John is telling us.
Mary, at first doesn’t recognize the man that for the past three years has been her teacher. Now, I have allowed the assumption that she was in grief and blinded by her tears. That is a very reasonable. But if you, for a moment, let your mind’s eye create for you a scene. Imagine Mary, in her grief turning and looking back into the Tomb. OK? Now remember and make a connection with Jesus’ question, “Who are you looking for?”
Mary is looking backwards, away from the Christ, and into the empty Tomb. She doesn’t see Jesus because she is looking in the wrong place and in the wrong direction. She is looking backwards into her grief not seeing the glory and resurrection of the Christ.
That is a very telling point for the Gospel writer, John.
He is very clear that he and Peter have entered the tomb and have inspected it but have not understood what they were seeing. They, probably fearful, of all the possible conspiracies that the Jewish authorities might have been planning, ran back to their locked room. They did not see the Christ and he might have been standing there. Perhaps, they would have seen the same gardener that Mary had bumped into. They didn’t see him because they were looking in the wrong place. They were looking backwards into the Tomb and not for the resurrection. They were expecting that there would be death in the Tomb. But death was not there. The Tomb was empty. All that was there now was resurrection.
Mary almost makes the same mistake. She is grief-stricken; her eyes are filled with tears; and, she is looking the wrong way.
Then, she hears a familiar voice call her name, “Mary.”
It is at that moment, when she is called, that she turns again and can see the risen Lord.
Now, it is the same Christ, that she was blinded to, who she can now see clearly because he has called her by name.
The writer, John, spends a great deal of time throughout his Gospel tells us that Jesus did not come into the world to condemn the world but that it is us by our actions, refusing to see Jesus for who he is, the Christ, the Son of God that condemn ourselves. That is one of the underlying themes throughout John’s Gospel.
While Mary is looking in the wrong place, in the wrong direction, we can hear John telling us that we need to be looking for God in only one place and that is in the Christ: not in a dead human form but for the risen Lord.
We will not find Jesus if we are looking in the Tomb. The Tomb represents all that Jesus has triumphed over and all that should be dead to us. If we are looking backwards into the Tomb, we won’t find him there.
We have to do what Mary does. When she recognizes him, she grabs hold of him.
Now in the text, it says that Jesus tells Mary not to touch him. But there are suggestions that this could be a mistranslation and that what Jesus might have said was, Don’t hold me. Or stop holding me. It’s all in how you read the Greek. The difference of one letter can change the meaning.
But again, using your mind’s eye, imagine Mary’s immediate reaction and that it would be one of impulse. And in that impulsive moment, she grabs ahold of the Lord once she realized who he was.
This is the reaction we should have towards Jesus. We should not have one of intellectual understanding but one of pure joy and exhilaration; a reaction in which our joy explodes, and we reach out to clutch at our Lord attempting to hold him tightly to our bosom.
Now, you might understand Jesus saying to Mary, “Stop holding onto me.” You have a task to perform. Go and tell my brothers what you have seen.
So, that is what Mary does. She runs back to the city, to Peter and John and the rest of the disciples who are still in hiding. She announces triumphant exuberance, “I have seen the Lord.” She announces to Peter and John, look at what you missed because you were looking in the wrong place. “I have seen the Lord.” He called me by my name, and I recognized his voice.
Like Mary, Jesus calls us by name. We need to listen to hear his voice and when we recognize it, we need to redirect our gaze in a new direction. We need to turn to face Jesus. Not only to know about him intellectually but to grab ahold of him and let him pull us tightly to his bosom and then experience the joy of knowing who he is – the Son of God; the Word of God that spoke Creation into existence and who has died to heal the brokenness of Creation; the Son of the Almighty who has bought our salvation with his blood; conquered death for us; and who has risen out of the Tomb for us.
The Tomb is empty. He has risen. He is Risen Indeed!
