Psalm 16
John 20:1-18

Most major events occur just like any other events.  Only after the events and their impact on our lives become long lasting do we begin to recognize and identify them as major events. Leaving my parents’ home and going away to college was a major event in my life.  However, at the time it seemed merely the normal thing to do.  I had no idea when I left for college that I would never live in my hometown again. That thought did not cross my mind at the time.  We do anticipate that some events will have a major impact on our lives because we are aware that similar events have had a major impact on others.  The birth of a child, the death of a spouse, and retirement are major events that many anticipate will have a significant impact on their lives. 
           
Easter is an important day in the life of the church and for those who identify themselves as Christians.  A significant amount of time and energy are focused toward Easter in anticipation of its arrival.  Then Easter comes and goes like any other day and we are immediately back to our normal routines.  Nothing extraordinary happened.  Oh, if you were in church on Easter, the music was more spectacular than usual and there were a couple more people in worship than usual but other than that it was pretty much a “same o, same o” kind of day.
           
That’s why I thought it might be helpful for us to hear the text from John’s Gospel today.  About the only time it is ever read is on Easter.  I thought if we read it a week after Easter it might have more meaning to us.  More importantly I thought if we examined this text a week after Easter, we might experience the power and importance of Easter taking on greater, longer lasting importance in our lives.  We might begin by at least considering what resurrected living means or what it means to live resurrected lives.
           
The appearances of the risen Jesus have prominent importance in the Gospel of John.  What Jesus said during these appearances are afterwords that have had lasting meaning and value for his disciples then and for disciples through the centuries. 
           
John wrote his gospel at least seventy years after the events had occurred.  John’s approach is more philosophical and systematic than the other gospel writers.  More time passed for him to organize his thoughts and decide how and what he wanted to communicate with his audience than was true for Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
           
The engagement that the small group of disciples had had with Jesus had been life changing for them.  It was so life changing that it was as if they were living new lives, resurrected lives. John sought to tell the story in such a way as to demonstrate that even the death of Jesus had not thwarted their understanding.  Actually the opposite happened.  As the disciples wrestled with the pain and agony of Jesus’ death and the injustice it represented, they began to see more clearly the truth that his life represented and how his life demonstrated the love of God for all people.  The hope that Jesus had raised when he was physically with them was renewed and reignited as they reflected not only on how he lived but also on how he died. So John sought to tell about the change in peoples’ lives, the new life, the resurrected living that many experienced.  And he told about this resurrected living through the eyes of some of those whose lives had seemed most changed by their encounters with Jesus.  It is important to note that the only people who saw the resurrected Jesus were disciples, those who had been friends with Jesus before he was executed. After the death of Jesus it was as if many of them were seeing Jesus again for the first time or discovering the truth of his life at a level they had not previously experienced.  The impact was so great that it was like a totally new experience.  The word for this experience was resurrection. 
           
In our text from John’s gospel today, John tells about resurrection through the eyes of Mary Magdalene. He tells about Mary Magdalene seeing Jesus again for the first time. As John tells the story Mary Magdalene was on her way to Jesus' tomb before daybreak.  Maybe she was going to prepare the body more properly for burial because Joseph and Nicodemus had been so rushed on the eve of the Sabbath.  Perhaps she wanted to visit the place where she last saw Jesus.
           
Whatever her reasons were for going, when Mary was within sight of the tomb she saw the stone had been removed.  She assumed the body was gone.  Either those who had killed Jesus had taken the body to dismember it or grave robbers, who were common, had stolen the body.  Without checking in the tomb, Mary Magdalene ran to tell Peter and John that "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb . . ." (John 20:2).  Peter and John ran to the tomb.  John got there first but did not go in.  Some suggest that he got there first because he was younger and could run faster.  Peter went in and then John entered.  The grave clothes were neatly in order.  John believed and then the disciples went back home.
           
Mary Magdalene apparently was just returning to the tomb when Peter and John were leaving.  She was crying.  This time she looked into the tomb and saw two messengers, but they were of no help.  She wanted and needed to find the body.  She turned away from the tomb and there was Jesus, but she did not recognize him.
           
Is it so strange that Mary did not recognize Jesus?  She was overcome with grief.  She never thought life would come to this.  The only person who had ever treated Mary as a person was Jesus, and now he was dead.  She was in a state of shock and confusion.  She was searching here and there, not knowing where to search, but unable not to search.
           
Mary did not see Jesus because she was searching for a body.  Part of what John communicates through Mary is that no one can ever find something or someone who does not exist.  The life and ministry of Jesus had so changed the way the followers of Jesus looked at life and understood what Jesus had sought to teach them that they could not find him among the dead because he had been about life and living. Many people keep making the same mistake Mary made.  They are looking for a Jesus that does not exist. The record of what he did and taught and suffered moves and impresses them.  In thought they often take their stand at the cross with a very real emotion in their lives and new inspiration surging up in them.  But they have no experience with the God of the living.  Their faith, genuine as it is, is not about newness or new life.
           
A further note, as John tells the story, is that in all her searching it was not Mary who came upon Jesus, but Jesus who found Mary.  Relationship with God is not a chance development in which, if we are fortunate, we might find of what or of whom we are in search.  God is searching for us when the last thing on our minds has anything to do with God, when we have lost God and know it, and when we do not even miss God.  God is searching for each of us.  God will not lightly let us go. God has missed us and wants us in relationship.
           
Although Mary was searching with her whole being, she did not recognize Jesus.  So often all that we see is some needy and per­haps unattractive soul; someone who does not appeal to us, someone who lacks friendship and claims assistance.  After the fact, some time later the question burns in our minds, "Did you not recognize me?" Jesus asks.  "That was I.  And inasmuch as you do it to the least of these . "you do it to me."  But we, like Mary, suppose the person to be the gardener or someone who is just trying to get something for nothing.
           
But then in the encounter that John tells, Jesus said one word to her.  He called her by name, and the way he said "Mary" caused her to know who he was.  She had heard him call her name before and the way he had dealt with her before brought healing.  No doubt the way Jesus said, "Mary" flooded her with hope.
           
There are many details of importance in John's Gospel, of which the experience of Mary Magdalene with the risen Jesus is very significant.  Each of the Gospel accounts tells of Christ's appear­ance to a woman or women.  Mark and John tell that Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene.  Mark says the companions of Jesus did not believe the testimony of Mary Magdalene.
           
Is it any wonder that they refused to believe Mary Magdalene?  There were numerous reasons not to believe her.  First, she was a woman.  In the Jewish world of the first century the testimony of a woman was not highly trusted.  A woman's testimony certainly was regarded as inferior to that of a man.  Second, Mary was from Magdala.  Magdala was a notoriously wicked town and there was the prejudiced tendency to discount as untrustworthy most of what any citizen of Magdala had to say.  Third, there was a question mark about Mary's sanity.  Jesus had cast out seven demons from her.  Emotional and mental struggles still prejudice us against persons.  We may say of another, "You know he's been seeing a psychiatrist."  We make seeing a psychiatrist like the plague and imply that any­thing a person says who has been in therapy is suspect.  Mary Magda­lene had seemed improved since she had associated with Jesus, but now apparently she was regressing.  She was claiming to have seen and to have talked to one whom the whole community knew was dead.  Not only that, she claimed he talked to her.  If the followers of Jesus could discount and discredit Mary's testimony, maybe she would keep quiet.  The thief on the cross was the least likely person to be acceptable to God, according to our standards.  Also according to our standards, Mary Magdalene was the least qualified to handle the most momentous news in spiritual history.
           
The empty tomb was not proof of the resurrection.  Someone could have slipped into the cemetery in the night and stolen the body.  The proof of the resurrection was the encounters the disciples had with the truth of what Jesus had taught them.  His appearances were made to those who had followed him, had seen him die, and knew that he was buried.  Can you imagine the shock and excitement and panic which erupted as Mary began to real­ize what had taken place?  Apparently part of her response was to cling to Jesus.  She would not let him out of her sight again!
           
As John tells it, Jesus said to Mary, "Do not hold me" (John 20:17).  The temptation always is just around the corner to keep a relationship the way it used to be.  But relationships can never remain static.  Relationships involve people who are growing, chang­ing, learning.  As people relate to one another, their relationships either deepen or surface.  If we think a relationship is frozen in time and remains just like it was in 2000, we are deluding ourselves. Neither the other person nor we are the same we were ten years ago, regardless of how stringently we have resisted changing. Some change occurs in spite of ourselves. 
           
Jesus was saying to Mary that a change had occurred. He wanted her to share in the reality of new life, resurrected living.  Mary was being given an inkling of what the resurrection meant, both to Jesus and to his followers.  This was an invitation by Jesus for his followers to begin living resurrected lives.  It was an invitation to die to living too much for themselves and to rise to live in a new dimen­sion of service to God.
           
Jesus asked Mary to go tell his brothers whom she had seen.  These whom he had called to be learners and servants, these who had failed him by betraying, denying, and scattering, he called broth­ers!   
           
Frederick Buechner has these observations about the resurrection of Jesus.  “The way the Gospel writers tell it, in other words, Jesus came back from death not in a blaze of glory but more like a candle flame in the dark, flickering first in this place, then in that place, then in no place at all. . . It was the most extraordinary thing they believed had ever happened, and yet they tell it so quietly that you have to lean close to be sure what they are telling.  They tell it as softly as a secret, as something so precious and holy, and fragile, and unbelievable, and true, that to tell it any other way would be somehow to dishonor it.  To proclaim the resurrection the way they do, you would have to say it in whispers: ‘Jesus has risen.’ Like that.”
           
“All the wonderful things that are going on around us on Easter Sunday can sometimes make us more conscious than usual that nothing even close to all that wonderful is going on inside ourselves.
           
“That is why the Sundays after Easter are so precious, and precious because, in their comparatively subdued, low-key way, they seem not only closer to how the resurrection actually took place as the Gospels describe it but, more important still, closer to the reality of the resurrection as you and I are apt to experience it.  These everyday Sundays without all the flowers and music and exaltation are like the kind of day that Luke describes in his account of two disciples on their walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus some seven miles away. (The Longing for Home, p. 143-144)
           
Mary Magdalene, the unlikeliest person, was able to say, "I have seen the Lord" (John 20:18).  In seeing him and telling about it, she began to be resurrected, a sign of which she had experienced when Jesus healed her of seven demons.  Thus, Mary Magdalene was an eyewitness to the most important spiritual news of all time.  She, along with other women, was last at the cross and first at the tomb.  Mary Magdalene was faithful to whom she saw and she told her fellow disciples.
           
As it was for Mary Magdalene, may it be for us.  May we be raised to new life, life filled with hope and joy.  May we be witnesses of the new life we have seen in others and experienced ourselves. May it be the most extraordinary thing we believe has ever happened and may we tell it so quietly that people have to lean in to hear it.  May we tell it softly as something so precious and holy, and fragile, and unbelievable, and true, that to tell it any other way would be somehow to dishonor it. (whisper) “We are alive. The love of God has raised us to new life.”