He Said “Mary”

Scriptures:

Philippians 2:1-11

John 20:1-18

            I’m going to let you in on a little ministerial secret.  Most ministers really don’t like to prepare Easter sermons.  Well, maybe that’s a bit strong, but it is the case that you are immediately faced with that daunting thought:  what can you say about this day that hasn’t been said hundreds of times before?  We all know the story; we all know the scriptural passages; we all know the familiar hymns.  In my more cynical moments as I sit down to begin to prepare for Easter I think to myself, “You know, maybe I should just shut up for 20 minutes and let each one of you rehearse the resurrection narrative in your own minds as you’ve experienced it.”

            Well, I’m not quite going to do that (you weren’t really expecting me to, anyway, were you?).  But what I would like each of you to do is to think back, if you can, to when you first heard and understood the resurrection story.  Probably for most of us it was as a young child in Sunday School, and in our child-like minds it was an awesome adventure to be placed alongside the exploits of Jack the Giant-Killer, Peter Pan, Mary Poppins, or more recently Harry Potter.  Or, maybe you didn’t hear the story until you were a more mature young person, and then the response could have been that this was an incredulous event that, if it really did happen, didn’t have anything to do with parents, or peers, or school, or sports, or dating.  Or, maybe when you first heard this story you simply accepted it as a miracle from God that didn’t really need to have an explanation.  And when we became even more sophisticated we understood it as a cosmic event of ultimate significance for both the past and the future.

            To the first person who saw Jesus after his death, according to the Gospel of John, Mary Magdalene, none of these responses happened.  She saw only this man whom she had known.  The encounter was personal and direct – it had no hint of cosmic significance, or the miraculous, or being relevant to both past and future.  Mary responds, “Rabbouni” – “Teacher” – a simple, direct acknowledgement of who it is that has addressed her.  It is only later, when she tells the other disciples, that she makes her second response, which is her confession:  “I have seen the Lord”.  Personal encounter – not belief in a doctrine about an event – has led to commitment and discipleship and affirmation.

            In P.W. Turner’s marvelous play, Christ In the Concrete City, Mary Magdalene runs to the disciples to try tell them what has happened.  Of course they don’t believe her and say things like, “You must be made,” and “We ought to get her away for a holiday before she goes off her head altogether.”  But then one, perhaps a little wider than the others, muses, “Perhaps she’s not mad.  Perhaps we’re just stupid.  The tombstone rolled aside.  Those graveclothes so…so undisturbed.  Things he used to say that we never understood.  Remarks that come back after the event -- remarks about the rising of the dead.  Mary, tells us what happened.”

            “After you went away I stayed beside the grave.  I was crying because they wouldn’t leave him alone even after they’d killed him.  Then I turned away.  And there was – a man – standing there.  I suppose I thought he was the gardener.  And he asked me why I was crying.  And I asked him to tell me where he had taken the body.  I – I wanted to go and do what I could for him. 

“And then he said, ‘Mary’, and I realized who he was.  It was the Lord.  It was the Lord, and I’ve seen him and he isn’t dead any more.  He’s alive, and his hands and his feet bear the wounds from what they did to him.”

            Then, immediately following this speech the character who is Mary Magdalene continues speaking but from a modern perspective:  “Yes, that’s it – he said ‘Mary’, didn’t he.  And he said it with the old inflection of voice – and then – she just knew.  Yes, that is how it happened.  And how it happens.”

            What happened – and what happens – is that a name was spoken, a personal contact was made.  Resurrection, when it touches our lives, is not just a fuzzy, somewhat unbelievable doctrine that we are told to believe “if we know what’s good for us”.  Instead it is a personal address which we affirm by acknowledging, “I have seen the Lord, and he knows me.  He calls me by name.”

            Christmas and Easter, as you know, complete a circle.  Birth (the incarnation) and eternal life (the resurrection) fulfill one another.  The birth that we affirmed at Christmas we reaffirm today.  And what this means for us is that eternal life is what we are living in right now.  We are not “resurrected” to eternal life, but rather we are now in touch with eternity because Christ has come to us as the incarnate Son of the living God.  So, what place does resurrection have in shaping our relationship to eternity?

            Simply put:  resurrection confronts us with choice.  Consider Mary’s alternatives when she heard her name.  She could have run screaming from the garden yelling, “You are a ghost!  Why do you want to haunt me?  Get away from me!”  She could have been incredulous thinking, “What I am seeing and hearing just isn’t possible.  This must be some sort of trick my mind is playing on me.  I must get hold of myself and not let me be affected in this way.”  Or, she could have taken the path that, in fact, she did take, beaming with a quiet joy that, “I have seen the Lord.”  Her decision was an immediate response, because she had lived for the past few months in the aura of this man who had already called her “Mary”.  Her response, then, was simply the affirmation of a choice already made.  This, too, is how our choices are made – with each small action we take we are responding to our name being spoken by the Lord.  “Mary (or Jim or Tom or Ann or Judy or Jeanette or Dave or Jerry or Kay or Maddie or Jason or Lillian or…or…or…) how will you serve me?”  And then when we hear our name being spoken again at the point of resurrection, how each one of us chooses to respond to this personal encounter – whether by fear or by doubt or by joy – will be dictated in large part by the choices we have continually made with our lives.

            It is helpful for us to remember that all three of these emotional responses – fear, doubt, and joy – were part of the early resurrection stories.  We have been conditioned by 20-plus centuries of Christian lore to glom onto the joy.  But as Dr. Edmund Steimle has pointed out in an Easter sermon, the initial mood was one of embarrassment and fear.  Recall Luke’s Gospel:  “They were startled and terrified, and thought they were seeing a ghost.” (24:37)  Or Mark’s:  “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” (16:8)  Or Matthew’s:  “So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples.” (28:8)  This was a fear of judgment, for now they knew that not even in death can one escape God.  Dr. Steimle concludes:  “And so the most characteristic initial word on Easter is not, ‘Be of good cheer,’ but ‘Be not afraid.’  For the one who returns, who brings it all back to life again, who permits no escape into death, who allows no burial, no forgetting, is the one we know….. For now despite the judgment, the bringing alive of all he had been and of all they had been, they knew they could trust that the judgment he brought alive was the judgment of love.  So Easter becomes a commentary on John’s words, ‘There is no fear in love, for perfect love casts out fear’.”

            As there has been for 20 centuries and even more so as we move further and further into the 21^st, there was also doubt.  How could there not be?  Such an event is beyond all rational thinking and natural understanding.  This mood is typified, of course, by Thomas – such a wonderfully human character with whom most of us can easily identify.  His doubt is based on his lack of empirical evidence; he wants to see this risen Christ before believing these fanciful stories.  Thomas is very much a 21^st century man.  He has to have classifiable proof regarding the mysteries of God.  And in many ways we can be thankful for his viewpoint, for without real doubt real faith is not possible.  What happens to Thomas when he has his personal encounter with the living Christ?  He does not say, as perhaps we might have expected him to, “Yes, the evidence now before me seems to indicate that you are Jesus and that you have been resurrected.”  He does not run away, refusing to accept what is right there in front of him.  Rather, as was the case with Mary Magdalene, he simply, profoundly, makes his confession:  “My Lord and my God!”  Our doubt about the resurrection is not just a suspicion as to whether it has actually happened; it is a doubt as to whether we can confess and worship this very human Jesus as the Christ.  It is a doubt that can only be overcome by a personal encounter with the One who speaks our name.  It cannot finally be conquered by just wanting to believe what others have told us.

            But fear and doubt both ultimately give way to joy.  This is the emotion that outshines all others when finally we are face-to-face with the Easter events.  And because it is so strong our tendency is to want to run to the joy first.  But the journey to joy takes us through fear and doubt.  It is always necessary to remember that the resurrection was not possible without the crucifixion.  Unless Jesus was willing to suffer for our sins, the triumph of the resurrection would not have been so meaningful.  The joy of the disciples – and our joy – is most potently felt in the simple, yet deeply motivated, confessions of Mary and Thomas:  “I have seen the Lord.”  “My Lord and my God!”  What mattered was not that a miracle had occurred; what mattered was not that the natural order had been broken; what mattered, at least at this point, was not even that death no longer had the final word.  What mattered was that a name had been spoken – our name, your name, my name – and because of that the response could be full and complete:  “My Lord and my God!”  Here was the source of the joy.  It was not just a happy ending with the hero riding off into the sunset, but it was the final victory of God over the powers of the world which had seemed to be the ones victorious only three short days before.

            One other important point to remember:  the very first person to have their name called by the risen Lord, according to the Gospel of John, was Mary Magdalene, whose past was at best checkered, even if she was not, as some have thought, an actual prostitute.  And so there is hope – and a warning:  no matter who we are or what we have done, it is always possible for us to be there in that garden with the risen Christ and to be ready for that moment when we are called by name.  And because this is so, none of us can ever stand in judgment on another person as being outside that circle of readiness.

            Easter and resurrection have real meaning for us when they come as a personal word spoken to each one of us and not as an awe-inspiring event or a dry, hardly believable doctrine.  The meaning of Easter is found in the choices we make, for we are continually making choices in our lives – choices which speak to our fear or our doubt or our joy.  Recognizing the living Lord comes when our name is spoken, and we are called upon to be his servants in the service of all humanity.  This is the message that comes through clearly in the final words of the play Christ In the Concrete City, as the characters gather together in a chorus and say:

            For it happens not as the plausible end

            Of a religious story,

                                                But as God’s act

            In the hideous situation.

            For the Word, which is Christ,

            Was made flesh,

                                                And died,

            And Christ is risen indeed, and goes before you into Galilee.

Your Galilee,

            The Galilee of the modern industrial city

            Of the neon lights and the multiplex.

            Where you jostle Christ on the pavement

            Among the plate-glass windows.

            Galilee Street,

            The street on which you live,

            And where he waits to move in,

            Fulfilling his promise to be with us,

            Always,

            Even to the end of the world.

            Arise, rejoice!

            Thy light is come!

            And the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee!

            Amen.

                                                Dave Pomeroy

                                                First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ

                                                Las Vegas, NV

                                                April 16, 2006

CONGREGATIONAL PRAYER

            Loving God, on this Easter morning we gather here to greet the love that came into the world in a way that we have never known before or since.  Help us to see with the eyes of our hearts the wounds in the palms of the resurrected Christ, that our hearts might accept the meaning of this act of love for our lives.  Help us to nurture your love in our hearts and let it shine forth at all times of the year.  The joy of Easter is found in this:  that the strength of its love can carry throughout a lifetime.  Let us experience this joy, O God, so that our lives will become a tribute to its meaning in this world.  For then we will indeed know that neither the death nor the resurrection of your Son was in vain.  We worship the living and risen Lord, Jesus Christ, who had been conquered by the world, but who now conquers all the power the world can throw at us.  Let us continue to worship Christ in our lives, our thoughts, our actions toward ourselves and others – for in this way we praise him whose name we now call upon:  Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

Amen