The Easter story from John’s Gospel is my favourite one of the four gospels; it’s such a personal account of Mary Magdalene’s experience from grief through desolation to the amazing and wonderful experience of coming face to face with the risen Christ.   This is the same Mary from whom Jesus healed many demons that had made her so ill.   This is the Mary who followed Jesus and took care of him, who loved Jesus, who was at the foot of the cross when he died.   This is a story of love, of grief and of a sacred awakening and amazing belief—it’s truly a story of questioning faith, conversion and evangelism.  

So, it’s the day after the Jewish Sabbath, early on the Sunday morning after Jesus’ death, Mary goes to the garden to Jesus’ burial tomb.  We can only speculate as to why—maybe to pray, or to mourn, or maybe just to be close to him.  She sees the stone has been rolled away from the entrance, and she must have looked inside because she leaves and runs to find Peter and the other disciple whom Jesus loved (no-one is truly sure who that disciple is, conjecture has it as John) and she tells them:  “They have taken the Lord out of the grave. We do not know where they have put Him.” (v2)   So the men literally race off like a couple of boys, seeing which of them can get there first, to confirm Mary’s story for themselves.  Although Peter took off first, the other disciple beats him to the tomb, but does not venture in.  Peter bravely looks into the tomb and sees the burial linens lying there and the special cloth that is used to cover the head is rolled up and lying on its own.   They too are puzzled.  If it was a grave robbing, which apparently in those days was a fairly common occurrence, they wouldn’t have taken precious time to unwrap the body nor would they have bothered to nicely roll up the burial linens.  The other disciple then joins Peter in the tomb.   What to make of this turn of events?  What does this mean?  This is a mystery, so, where is Jesus then?  John tells us the other disciple believes as soon as he sees the linens lying there, but what he believes is uncertain—does he believe Jesus’ body is missing now that he sees the empty burial lines, or does he believe that those empty linens means Jesus has risen?  We can only speculate at best, because John tells us that neither of them really ‘understand the scripture that he must rise from the dead” (v 9).  And what do the two men then do?  Confused, unsure, wondering what it all means, they go home.

But Mary stays at the tomb, weeping, overcome with grief and pain.  She doesn’t understand what has happened either, but is reluctant to leave.  Imagine her distress.  She was at the foot of the cross when Jesus was so brutally killed, the man who healed her from a difficult and unhealthy life, a man whom she had come to love, to believe in as the Messiah, her beloved teacher, and now his body is gone!  She looks again into the tomb, I suppose just to confirm what she knew, to help her come to terms with it, maybe just to be close to the place where Jesus’ body last lay.  Only this time the tomb is not empty, there are angels in there, and interestingly she’s neither frightened nor surprised by them, she takes them in stride it seems.  Maybe in her heartache and deep sorrow it didn’t quite register just who or what these beings were; maybe they just looked like regular people.  They ask her “Woman, are you weeping?” Now to our 21^st century ears, addressing Mary as “woman” may sound pejorative in the translation to English, but in the parlance of the day, this would have been a term of endearment.   And even through her grief, she has sufficient presence of mind to respond to these messengers of God:  “They have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they have laid him.” She leaves the tomb and walks past a man standing nearby.  So deep in her distress and grief, she doesn’t even recognize the man as Jesus.  But you know, I think I can understand that.  She’s not expecting him to be alive, she saw him die, saw him dead, saw him taken to be buried, why would she expect to see him standing there talking to her, burial linens notwithstanding?  It goes against all logical human experience--beyond human comprehension. 

Then Jesus calls Mary by name and the sound of his voice is unmistakable to her, she immediately recognizes him as her Rabbouni, her teacher, her Lord, the one she loved with all her heart.  Mary knew that voice.  And then she recognizes him.  Imagine how elated she feels, her heart ache, her grief is gone!  She reaches out to him, to touch him, to hold him.   Of course she does, wouldn’t you?  It would be an instinctive gesture to want to grab him and hug him!  But in this in between ethereal and earthly state at this point of time, she cannot touch him, she cannot hold onto him he tells her.  It matters not, Jesus who was dead, is really alive!  Differently alive, to be sure, but alive!  Jesus lives!  Christ has risen from the grave. 

John’s accounting of the resurrection is the story of how three different people responded to an empty space and a stack of neatly piled linens.  It occurred to me as I was pondering the scripture, that this story is a microcosm of how many of us respond when faced with something new or unusual that challenges us to rethink what we’re sure we know or what we’ve always believed.  Mary is the first one to be confronted with this new and confusing reality, and her immediate response is to run to bring others to share the experience with her.  Peter, true to his personality, is first off the mark and when he gets to the tomb, boldly steps into it, but is thoroughly flummoxed at the sight of the empty grave clothes, and doesn’t seem to know what to think.  The other disciple outruns Peter and gets there first, but is hesitant, unsure and waits for Peter to take the lead into the tomb, and then follows.  The men leave and go home, no doubt shaking their heads, trying to figure it all out. 

Mary, however, is unable to draw herself away from the scene.  She needs to stay there and ponder it some more, as though she needs to allow herself the time to take it all in, become fully engulfed in this confusing and painful experience.  She has to go back into the tomb, to see it again, is just seeing really believing?   In the rawness of her emotion, in the aching loss for Jesus, the one whom she so loved, she sees the angels, but yet doesn’t really see Jesus—until he calls her by name.  Made me wonder, was Jesus there the whole time and the three of them just couldn’t see him?  Mary recognizes Jesus’ voice—remember the parable of the shepherd who calls the sheep?  Sheep really know their shepherd’s voice.  Mary instantly recognized Jesus’ call.   In her total vulnerability, when her defenses are completely shattered, Jesus comes to her.  Jesus will do that, Jesus comes to us when we really need him!  

Mary Magdalene, she is the first one to whom Jesus reveals himself as the risen Lord—not one of the twelve male disciples, not even the disciples in Jesus’ inner circle whom he took up the mountain with him at the transfiguration.  The risen Christ reveals himself first to a woman.  The significance of this is not to be undervalued in the extremely patriarchal society of 2000 years ago.  It was so unexpected, so noteworthy, that all four gospels make a point to tell us. And Christ tells Mary to go and tell the men she has seen the risen Jesus, and that he will be coming to them too.   Verse 18: “Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord” and she told them that he had said these things to her.”  And so it is Mary, a devoted woman disciple, who becomes the first Christian evangelist.

This is clearly an amazing event, one that changed the world.  God’s son, come to earth to show God’s people how to live in God’s holy ways, Jesus, a truly blessèd man, was considered an insurrectionist, a rebel by both the governing factions of the Jewish synagogue and by the Roman government.   His teachings of prioritized the love of God, love of neighbour, love of those in need before love of money and the things money can buy.  This was threatening to the rich and powerful, it threatened their way of life, their positions of superiority and power.  It’s really not a surprise he was killed.  The Romans used crucifixion as a tool of their authority.  It was an excruciating and public way to kill those who threatened the Empire.  But the story doesn’t end with Jesus’ death.  God the Son, it seems, cannot be killed, the evil of the world, while active and prevalent and doing its utter best to control the world in its wickedness since the beginnings of time, cannot kill God.  The rising of Christ, an extraordinary, almost unbelievable event; never happened before nor has it since.  Resurrection is the very hallmark of our Christian faith.   God cannot, will not, be overcome by the forces of evil —even though sometimes it sure feels like the evil side is getting the upper hand!  As Christians we hold onto the resurrection, this is the very cornerstone of our faith.  The love of God overcomes every evil—even death.  This cornerstone is what we need to hang onto—indeed, what we need to build our own faith upon—especially in times of uncertainty in our lives, when it feels like the world is crumbling around us and it’s out of our control.  Remember, God is ultimately in control, the evil of the world does not win.  And when we’re in the midst of our anxiety or confusion—Christ is there, even if we don’t recognize his presence at first.  Keep believing, keep looking, you’ll see him or hear him or feel his reassuring caring presence.   We are never alone, Jesus is with you, at all times. 

Alleluia! Christ is risen.   The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!