John 20:11-18

 

But Mary stood outside the tomb weeping. As she wept, she bent down and looked into the tomb. And she saw two angels in white sitting where Jesus’ body had been lying, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” Mary replied, “They have taken my Lord away, and I do not know where they have put him!” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus.

Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?” Because she thought he was the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will take him.” Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni” (which means Teacher). Jesus replied, “Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father. Go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene came and informed the disciples, “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them what Jesus had said to her.

 

Imagine with me  – Amy Baik Lee, “In the space of a single word”

 

The women who had followed Jesus from Galilee stood at a distance watching Him breathe His last. 

On the day of Preparation they followed Joseph of Arimathea and saw the tomb and Jesus’ body laid in it. The record in Luke says nothing of how they felt, or what they said amongst themselves, or how long they lingered in the last place they might see their Lord. 

But their next act reminds me poignantly of a mother who once wrote about preparing for the death of her terminally ill daughter. All throughout the daughter’s young life she had packed her lunch for school, and snacks, clothes, and toys for family trips. But in those grief-weighted days at the end… what could she pack for her now? What could she give her for this long journey? 

The women went back and prepared spices and ointments before the sun set and Sabbath began. This was, perhaps, the last loving thing they would be able to do for Jesus. 

And none of it would be needed. 

What happened to those spices? Did they fall to the ground with the women’s faces as the angels asked, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” Were they clutched in their arms as the women took to their feet, leaving a fragrant trail of haste and incredulity? 

*

In his gospel, John continues the account. Mary Magdalene stands weeping after the disciples have come and beheld the empty tomb and gone home. The spices are no longer present — but neither is the body they were intended for. 

The two angels in the tomb ask her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” 

“They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him,” she replies. She turns to see a man, likely the gardener, who asks her the same question. 

She does not know him until He says her name. 

All the post-resurrection moments in which the eyes of Jesus’ followers open to recognize Him have something to tell us, I think; this one arrests my heart.

After all the earth-shattering events whose import and magnitude could be sensed, even if not fully comprehended; after the piercing agony of watching from a distance, and wondering what will become of her and the women with her; after wishing to catch one last sight of His body, at the very least, and yearning to hear His voice just one more time — here He is, and all He says is a single word. Not His own name, as He told Moses and the Israelites with equal succinctness so long ago — but hers.

“Mary.”

In the space of that word, I remember that the Chief Shepherd calls each of His sheep by name. The Captain of the Fishers of Men is, astonishingly, not in the business of pulling up anonymous crowds in a net; we are each line-caught, as it were. 

In the tidal rush of world events and catastrophes, we are not forgotten. It is a truth that the Sons of Korah knew ages ago: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea…” (Ps. 46:1-2) — and it is a truth reiterated straightaway by the resurrected presence of Christ. He is here, with me, with you, not vaguely, not abstractly, not merely on the level of nations, but right here. 

*

Today we were to host an Easter egg hunt. How I miss the sound of children laughing in the spring slant of sunlight across the garden. There ought to be bunting fluttering overhead here, and merry shouts of discovery, and the silent rejoicing of emerging tulips to trumpet Christ’s resurrection with color and vim. 

But white snow blankets the ground instead, as heavy as the drift of this spring’s headlines. In place of putting up the banded banners, we’ve covered the strawberry crowns. 

Make no mistake: we will rise to the joy of the occasion nonetheless; we will tuck a few eggs into bookshelves and hidden corners, and gather around the table with clasped hands and hearts full of wonder at the decisiveness of the Lord’s victory. We will still make way for “foolish and crucially beautiful things,” as Matthew mentioned on Wednesday, especially in this time of grief and limitation.

But perhaps the best commemoration I can make — the act most resonant with that new and holy morning so many years ago — is to come with confidence before the throne of grace, and look full in the face of His love. This Love who was not satisfied to die for mankind in one indistinguishable mass, but who stooped to look the desperate invalid in the eye, who raised His head to call directly to the single outcast in the sycamore tree. This Love who knows my face, and who calls me by my own name. 

And so it is that we may turn from the ever-present specter of death with the gladness of Mary hearing the voice from beyond the grave. In place of spices to mask the decay of shrouded hope, here is, instead, the fragrance of life coming upon the wind of the Spirit — deep strength and purpose and joy in the face of an ageless Gardener as He prepares a place for us. 

 

Alleluia; He is risen indeed. 

 

Poem: Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson; John Updike – “Seven Stanzas at Easter” 

 

Make no mistake: if he rose at all

It was as His body;

If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit,

The amino acids rekindle,

The Church will fall.

 

It was not as the flowers,

Each soft spring recurrent;

It was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the

Eleven apostles;

It was as His flesh; ours.

 

The same hinged thumbs and toes

The same valved heart

That—pierced—died, withered, paused, and then regathered

Out of enduring Might

New strength to enclose.

 

Let us not mock God with metaphor,

Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence,

Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded

Credulity of earlier ages:

Let us walk through the door.

 

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,

Not a stone in a story,

But the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of

Time will eclipse for each of us

The wide light of day.

 

And if we have an angel at the tomb,

Make it a real angel,

Weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in

The dawn light, robed in real linen

Spun on a definite loom.

 

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,

For our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,

Lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed

By the miracle,

And crushed by remonstrance.

 

Song: Son of Laughter (Chris Slaten), “The Gardener” 

 

Amid the morning mist the gardener sings 

To infant stems he bends almost whisperings 

Their young unopened fists are softening 

Their lily heads shall spread open offerings 

 

I am learning how to see 

Oh what is not as it shall be 

And he is still singing over me 

 

You found me by the riverside 

So sick of my old ways I cried 

I try, I try but I see no change in me 

 

And you told me, Love change can be slow 

Just look how long this river goes 

To sketch its steep canyon deep calligraphies

 

I am learning how to see 

Oh what is not as it shall be 

And he is still singing over me

And that rivers’s still washing over me 

 

So I was so confused the day we buried you 

Searching in vain for a reply 

I kissed the lines along your eyes 

If we’re the work of thousands of days 

Well, who could throw such work away?  

 

Amid the morning mist the gardener sings 

To infant stems he bends almost whisperings 

And I stand alone in his periphery 

Where this cemetery carries many scattered seeds 

 

And I am learning how to see 

Oh, what is not as it shall be 

Yes, all that I’ve loved and all that I’ve known 

Will one day be laid in this valley of bones 

And with a song the Gardener 

Will call all we are not as if we were 

And will come springing from the earth

 

Prayer: Brian Brown, The Collect for Easter Sunday 

 

O God, who for our redemption gave your only-begotten

Son to the death of the cross, and by his glorious resurrection

delivered us from the power of our enemy: Grant us so to die

daily to sin, that we may evermore live with him in the joy of

his resurrection; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God,

now and for ever. Amen.

*The artwork featured above was created by Shannon Sigler.