blip : Being Lonely In Paradise :

Title: Tombs and Gardens
Date: 3.23.08, Easter
Texts: Jn 20:1-18

John 20, verse 1: “Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed.” It was still dark. The night of Good Friday lingered into Easter morning. John doesn’t tell us why Mary goes to the tomb before dawn. We are not told what she hopes to find, what she expects to see. Maybe she couldn’t sleep that night. Her sleep was plagued with images of torture, remembrances of lost friendship, the trauma of extinguished hope.

Or maybe she can do nothing else but return to the tomb. Her life doesn’t make sense anymore; she is not able to forget this man who embodied unimaginable hope; Mary can’t pull off the psychological acrobatics that are required to move on, to forget.

You see, on the cross, with Jesus, Mary Magdalene’s spirit was crucified. They pierced her heart when the soldiers ripped open Jesus’ side with a spear. Now, her love lies dead, buried in a tomb. Part of Mary dies with Jesus.

Despite being a poor historian and textual scholar, Dan Brown, in his book The Da Vinci Code, does us some good to recognize the profound love shared between Jesus and Mary. But, like most modern males, he can only imagine a man’s love for a woman as sexual—so, he says, Jesus’ love for Mary was sexualized. For Dan Brown, Mary is primarily a sexual object—that’s how love must play out between a man and a woman. Why else would Jesus care about a woman, says Dan Brown?

Well, because Jesus reveals a love that doesn’t depend on sex, an intimacy that doesn’t need to make Mary an object of sexual desire for her to be important, for her to be significant, for her life to matter to Jesus. John is telling a different story in his gospel about Jesus.

For John, Jesus is God’s love made flesh, God’s love setting hearts aflame. Jesus is God’s alluring grace, mercy that beckons, love that draws all people into the intimate embrace of God. “For God so love the world,” John says.

John is the gospel of the beloved disciple, a disciple who testifies to the deep red love of Jesus. John is the gospel that tells us of a Jesus whose heart breaks, who weeps, when he hears the news of his beloved Lazarus, now dead. As Mary and Martha say to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick” (11:3).

John tells the story of a Jesus whose legacy is love. That’s what we see at the last meal Jesus shares with his beloved community, when he transgresses social boundaries, and washes their feet. Then he says: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (13:33).

John is telling a story about love, love poured out for the world, love poured out for Mary Magdalene, love poured out for us. “Love one another, as I have loved you,” Jesus says. But now, early Easter morning, how can Mary love when love has died?

So she is a shadow, whose company is the darkness of night, and a tomb where she may tap into the only emotion available—mourning. When she weeps, she feels alive—with tears she convinces herself that somewhere deep inside something still lives.

But this Easter morning, when she visits the tomb, even that place for mourning, for crying, for remembering—even that place is taken from her. The stone is rolled away and the cave is empty. The shock sends her running to the disciples. “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb,” she says (v. 2). Someone has stolen the body.

Not only is Jesus dead, but now there’s no body to visit, no place to go and mourn, no sacred site to aid her as she tries to work through her loss. No closure, just an empty tomb.

At this point the darkness is blinding. Weeping, she looks into the tomb. She sees angels. But even they don’t convince her that the body of Jesus is anything but stolen. She says to the angels, “They have taken my Lord away” (v. 13). Not even the appearance of angels awakens the thought of something miraculous. Resurrection is completely unimaginable. The empty tomb is nothing but a sign of a theft.

The night is so blinding that even when she sees Jesus, Mary doesn’t really see him. “She turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus” (v. 14).

The risen Jesus is there, standing in front of her, speaking with her, and she cannot see him for who he is. Then “Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’” (v. 16). Mary. He calls her by name, and the darkness is shattered. She sees the light. It’s all she can see. She stares at Jesus. Her love is returned. Hope is restored. Everything can go back to how it was—those wonderful days with Jesus and the band of disciples. She can have it all back, and it will not be taken from her again. Mary will hold onto that precious life forever.

But Jesus refuses. And he says something strange: “Do not hold on to me,” Jesus says. “Do not hold onto 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” (v. 17). Do not hold onto me. What a strange thing to say.

What’s so wrong with holding onto Jesus? I mean, isn’t that what we are supposed to do? We are to fix our eyes on Jesus, to contemplate the Son of God, to hold him in our hearts, to never let him go.

Here’s the trouble: we want to turn Jesus into a possession—something we can cling to, a security blanket. We want Jesus to be a figurine, a miniature superhero, an object to put on our bookshelf… or a charm to put in our pocket or around our necks for protection.

It’s what I like to call, the “Honey, I shrunk the kids” version of Jesus. I assume some of you remember that movie. They have some fancy new device that shrinks things, and they accidentally shrink the kids—and they run around, the size of ants, having frightening adventures.

Well, isn’t that what we want to do with Jesus?—to shrink him down to a manageable size. We want a “Honey, I shrunk the kids” Jesus that we can hide in our pockets or our hearts so we can return to the life we loved.

“Do not hold onto me,” Jesus says.

You see, Jesus isn’t simply an object that we can put in our pocket, or tuck away in our hearts. Jesus is not a possession—one among many. Instead, Jesus possesses us. Jesus holds onto us.

That’s the good news of Easter. Christ returns to Mary, saves her from the walking dead with a word of love: Mary, he says, and his Word reaches into her heart, sets it aflame again, restores her life—and Jesus sends her to the place where his presence will permeate all people, where the Spirit of Christ’s love will dig into human flesh, wrapping everyone in God’s love.

“Do not cling to me,” Jesus says, I will cling to you. How? In and through the band of followers, the disciples, assembled in Christ’s name, awaiting the Holy Spirit. Return to the disciples, Jesus tells Mary. Because there, with those people, every person is a manifestation of my presence, each one is the presence of my love for you.

We are held, embraced, permeated with Christ’s presence, God’s love. Now Jesus becomes more intimate than ever before; his presence flows through us. We don’t possess Jesus; we are possessed, permeated, embraced by Jesus.

The sun in the sky may be a helpful way to understand the difference. Easter means that the Son has risen. Jesus, the Son of God, is like the risen Sun—that bright orb in the midday sky. In order to enjoy the sun, we don’t stare at it. That would blind our eyes. The world would become dark—oblivious to the happenings around us. Instead, in order to enjoy the sun, we look around. The sun helps us see what’s going on around us. The sun’s light makes it possible for us to see, for our eyes to do what they are supposed to do. The sun illumines our world.

Easter means that Christ now offers to illumine our world, to give us new eyes, to shed new light. This doesn’t mean that evil disappears. Easter doesn’t paint over a world of dark hues with bright pastels. Easter doesn’t erase. Believing in Easter isn’t like clicking our heels, closing our eyes, repeating to ourselves, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home,” while we wait for rainbow colors to splash over everything.

Easter is nothing like that. The world Mary Magdalene continued to live in was still one that destroyed lives; Rome still tortured and killed; and our world does the same—the only thing that’s changed is that we are better at torturing and killing.

But Easter is about giving us new sight, unmasking darkness, exposing evils that hide in the shadows. The risen Jesus shows us that a new world is possible; he gives us hope; but this kind of hope is also a mission, a task, something to do, a place to go to. The resurrected Jesus shows up at the place of death, a tomb. But the tomb is also a garden… tombs and gardens.

In the daylight, the light of Christ’s redemption, we may be able to see how tombs are also gardens. The seed of resurrection is sown in a tomb. Mary finds God’s resurrected love when she weeps at the tomb. Or, I should say, Jesus finds her at the tomb.

That’s the good news of Easter: the crucified love of God, Jesus, calls us by name. But this Easter story also asks us a question: will we go to the tombs? Will we cry with Mary, so we can also hear God call us by name?

The glory of resurrection takes place at a tomb. Will we go there? Will we go to the places where death seems like the last word, places without hope, where evil seems victorious and let God show us, with Easter’s sunlight—the Son’s light—how that place is the garden where resurrection blooms, where love calls us by name and turns us around to meet him in each other, as we speak his word and commune at his table.

Easter means that our hope is already here; speaking to us, but we haven’t yet recognized him. Jesus appears as a stranger, at a tomb. But the tomb is also a garden.