“Joy Comes With the Morning”
Pastor Randy Butler
I heard about a pastor who asked a question in an Easter children’s message. “What were Jesus’ first words after he was raised from the dead?” the pastor asked. It was silent for a moment and then a young girl raised her hand excitedly, “I know! I know his first words! He said: Tah dah!”
Of course it wasn’t like that at all. No “Tah dah!” Jesus in fact is very mysterious in his first appearances and words on that morning. His resurrection is all quite understated. There is no description of the actual event. None of the gospel writers tell us how it happened. We just read about a rolled back stone, an empty tomb and angels, and later these appearances of Jesus. And when he does appear he doesn’t go directly to Caiaphas the high priest or Pilate the Roman governor to let them know their plans to dispose of him didn’t exactly work out. He doesn’t go immediately to Jerusalem or Rome and say, “Just wanted to let you know I’m alive.” None of that; none of what he could have done. He goes to Galilee instead, an inconsequential place in the Mediterranean world of the first century. And he returns not to the rich and powerful, but to those who knew him, to people like Mary Magdalene.
John tells us that Mary sets out by herself this morning – the first day of the week, while it was still dark. What would take place in the next couple of hours would change her life, would change the world, but she started out by herself in the dark. She wasn’t thinking about resurrection, she just wanted to see Jesus’ body. It was a dark time for her as she walked to the tomb. As Dale Bruner puts it, it was like the church was down to one person on this sad and dark morning.
But that is where resurrection begins – in the dark. It has been a dark year for us. Sure we are coping, but I think this year of isolation and pandemic and economic loss, and fear has taken its toll, perhaps in ways that we don’t recognize. It has been a hard year. We have been working our way through the dark. But so has God been at work in the dark. It is precisely in the dark that God does his resurrection work, his re-creation of life. The book of Genesis tells us that the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the earth until God said, “Let there be light.” God created life from the darkness and chaos. And God does it again in the darkness and chaos of the tomb. God working the nighttime shift to create life from death. This is the nighttime work of God. God is at work in our darkness.
So when Mary arrives at the tomb, she sees the stone rolled away and concludes that they have taken the Lord from the tomb and she runs back to Peter and John, referred to her as the disciple whom Jesus loved, and she tells them, “They have taken the Lord and we do not know where they have laid him.” In her mind Jesus is still laid out flat somewhere – dead, by no means alive.
When the two disciples hear this they run off to the tomb, in a kind of footrace. The gospel reveals a little rivalry here. We are told that John outran Peter and got there first. Then Peter arrived, following him, says John, looked in the tomb saw the grave clothes laid aside, and then John, who reached the tomb first, we are told, just so we know who got there first, John goes in the tomb and it says that he believes. But then strangely, Peter and John go back home. Kind of anti-climactic, incomplete. And maybe it is no wonder that Jesus doesn’t appear to these two competitive disciples trying to outrun each other to the tomb. There are perhaps so full of themselves that they wouldn’t see Jesus anyway. They just go back home.
But Mary, who apparently ran back to the tomb with them – she stays, right there at the tomb, weeping. She is not going anywhere until she has some answers. She doesn’t budge. She has this passion to be near Jesus, dead or alive, what Dale Bruner calls “the abiding, sticking to it, hanging in there, making one’s home with” kind of faith that Jesus so loved in his followers. Perseverance, love, desire and drive to stay by Jesus’ side, no matter what.
And this reminds us that the Christ life takes some desire and persistence. Being a follower of Jesus takes some perseverance and it takes some effort. It doesn’t just come to us naturally. It helps to worship regularly, but it also takes regular prayer, reading of scripture and the stories of Jesus, good Christian spiritual books, writings that feed us and motivate us to the kind of desire and faith that Mary demonstrates in our text. It takes serving and trying to live the life of a disciple, a disciple like Mary Magdalene. She is our example this morning, not Peter and John.
She stays and she weeps but she also looks in the tomb, and she sees two angels. Why didn’t Peter and John see the angels when they went into the tomb? Again maybe only those who weep see angels. Maybe patience and love beholds angels. Angels appear to those on the patient watch of love, as someone else put it. So Mary stays and sticks with it, and sees through her tears.
But she is still confused, operating, if not totally in the dark, still in a sort of twilight. In her mind there is still only one option – Jesus dead. When the angels ask her why she is weeping, she says again, “They have taken Jesus and we don’t know where they have laid him.” In her view of things there is only room for Jesus in horizontal position, Jesus laid out. She has no place in her mind, no category, for a vertical Jesus, risen, alive and well. It simply does not compute yet. It’s like she is living in one dimension only – flat. She is not yet ready for a three-dimensional living breathing Jesus standing upright, can’t fathom it.
So when this man speaks to her, “Woman why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” She thinks he is the gardener. John tells us it’s Jesus, but she doesn’t know that yet. And her response again, “Just tell me where they laid him, and I will take him away.” She is kind of at her wits end.
Now I am kind of mystified here. I wonder what Jesus is doing. He knows full well why she would be weeping. He knows exactly who she is looking for. Why does he ask? Is it like he is teasing her? Do you know how it is when someone makes a surprise return home after a long absence? You see this a lot on things like Funniest Home Videos. Someone is filming the return and reunion of a son or daughter in the military. The camera is on his mother. She is not expecting this at all – furthest thing from her mind. Her deepest desire is that her son would be here for Christmas or whatever the event, but no way expecting it, not on her radar. And yet here comes her son. He is dressed in his uniform, and she doesn’t recognize him at first, and he is kind of toying with her, wanting to surprise her. And then “Oh, my son, is it really you?” And there is this joyful tearful reunion.
Well, it’s a totally unexpected reunion isn’t it? Jesus and Mary. She is not expecting Jesus to be upright. But he speaks her name and she recognizes him: “Mary.” “Rabbi, is it really you?” and she embraces him.
The resurrection of Jesus from the dead undoes all that we expect and all that we assume about life. It rattles all our certainties, calls into question all that we thought true, about life and death. From now on anything can happen because death has been defeated. Life is victorious.
But here’s another thing. I was reminded of this by Methodist Bishop Will Willimon, and we have already pointed it out. Jesus doesn’t show up with a big “Tah dah!” He doesn’t go back to the leaders in Jerusalem to set them straight, or to the Temple or the military palace, the centers of power and influence. He goes back for Mary. He speaks her name. He doesn’t even at first reveal himself to the foot-racing disciples. He shows up for her – while she is crying and distraught. He comes back for her. He will have other things to do. Doesn’t even want her to hang on too tight. He has big things to accomplish still. But before all that he has time for her.
And so yes, the resurrection of Jesus does certainly rattle us. One of the other gospels says the earth shook when Jesus rose. Resurrection is an earthquake. As writer Leif Enger says, “When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. The resurrection is a miracle, and a miracle contradicts the will of the earth.” It takes that kind of miracle to defy the big stuff – the darkness of our time.
But know this too – Jesus is risen for you and for me. Like he did for Mary, he comes back for us. He has time for us. Reunion! He is risen, he is risen indeed.
