Easter
Preparation
Please begin by reading John 20:1-18 in your Bible. If you do not have one at hand, we have provided the text for you at the end of this reflection.
Reflection--Whom Are You Looking For?
We have trouble thinking outside of our rationalist 21st-century boxes, but that problem really isn't new. Mary Magdalene experienced it some 2,000 years ago.
Mary went to the tomb early on a Sunday morning. Whether to mourn or to finish preparation of Jesus’ body for burial is not clear from this account, but she went out of love for the one who had turned her life around and then had been taken from her. When she arrived, she saw that the tomb was empty.
Her reaction was the “sensible” one most of us would have. After all, in our experience dead bodies do not move unless someone moves them. Someone, she thought, had stolen the body.
She went to share her alarm with Peter and the beloved disciple, who also came and saw. While one “believes” (it is not clear here just what they believed), even they did not yet realize the full import of what they had seen.
Even when she did see Jesus, full revelation did not come until Jesus asked whom she was looking for and called her by name. Jesus then told her not to hold on to him, for he was ascending “to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” The old relationship, that Mary has not yet been able to give up emotionally, was being replaced by a new relationship.
Jesus had hinted at this new relationship earlier in John’s gospel. The new relationship was one of Spirit. “But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send the Counselor to you.” The "Counselor" Jesus was referring to is the Holy Spirit.
“Whom are you looking for?” is still the critical question. We often miss Jesus because, like Mary upon first arriving at the tomb, we are looking for the wrong thing in the wrong place. We are looking with our objective understanding. We are looking in empty places. We have not escaped the rationalist’s mental box and opened ourselves to the mystery of the new relationship with Jesus through the Holy Spirit.
This does not mean that rationality has no role in our relationship with Jesus. Jesus was a teacher without peer. It is critical that we study his teachings and the way that he lived his earthly life. Together, they lay out for us the model and pattern for our own lives. But we will never really know Jesus if we stop there; if we do not understand that the relationship of the past, no matter how valuable and cherished, is not the relationship of the present. As one commentator observes, “Mary’s closed world (and ours) is broken open when Jesus calls her name.”
And yes, the empty tomb is about victory over death — a joyous glimmer of our own destiny worth celebrating this Easter. But it is a lot more than that. It is about an event that changes everything in the here and now. It is about a new relationship with Jesus through the Spirit that dwells in us; a day-in, day-out constant relationship that is no less real because we can not cling to it physically or reason it out. It is about full participation in a new family. It is about sharing with Jesus a common parent, “my God and your God,” and being brother or sister to Jesus and to each other.
We struggle to escape those boxes that confine us to the physical world; our own tombs that demand that everything line up with our past experience and our rational understanding. The doors to those tombs swing open when we are, at last, willing to surrender all that and just be still and listen for Jesus spiritual voice.
Jesus is calling your name too. Stilling your mind to hear, and then answering, changes everything.
revclay
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John 20:1-18
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 from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him."
Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.
Then the disciples returned to their homes. But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid 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? Whom are you looking for?"
Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away." Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni!" (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, "Do not hold on to 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.'"
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.
[NRSV]
