Growing up as a Lutheran, on Easter Sunday, we would greet each other with the phrase, “He is risen.” The response to this greeting would be, “He is risen indeed.” I think, again, that I was doing something by rote, without really thinking about it, but which had a great depth to it. After all, isn’t this the greatest greeting to share with your fellow Christians. Jesus has risen!
You see, I still think we take for granted what it is that we claim to believe. Here we are, gathering together today to worship God. Here we are, saying that we believe that Jesus rose from the dead after spending a day in the grave. Here we are, by gathering together today we are saying that we believe that miracles can and do happen. We are saying that we trust God to take the worst possible circumstances, the death of Jesus, and turn them into a time of celebration.
We believe that Jesus was raised from the dead. Furthermore, we believe that we have this same end in store for us. It is good news, a bit unbelievable, but good news nonetheless. And here we are, coming together to rejoice in this good news. And yet, I wonder how seriously we really take this good news that we celebrate. Do we live our lives as if Jesus was raised from the dead? Do we allow this good news to change our behavior and how we live? Or do we pay it lip service without even really thinking about what it is that we believe? “He’s risen… he’s risen indeed…”
Christian leaders around the country today are giving messages about how we really believe that Jesus rose from the dead. A skeptic could look at this and say that perhaps we are protesting a bit too much. Perhaps we are pushing this whole resurrection thing so hard because we don’t really believe it ourselves. But this is not the case. There is a much more real reason as to why we feel the need to proclaim the resurrection to our congregations so strongly. It is the fact that the majority of Christians in America don’t live as if they really believe in the resurrection. The majority of Christians don’t live lives that are in tune with the resurrection.
The resurrection is good news and should affect us to our very core. It should change how we interact with the world around us. It should keep us from fearing the unknown, even death. It should give us purpose and it should fill us with joy. It is good news and it is worth celebrating. So this morning, let us celebrate this good news together. Let us rejoice in the news that death did not conquer Jesus, Jesus conquered death. Let us revel in the knowledge that we too have resurrection to look forward to. Let our hearts be filled with joy as we realize that he is risen, he is risen indeed.
I. Mary Magdalene
I want to focus this morning specifically on the story of Mary Magdalene. She is an important part of the gospel story. She is the first to see that the tomb is empty, though she does not understand what this truly means. She is also the first to meet the resurrected Jesus, though she does not recognize him for a time. Her story is the story of many of us. It is the story of one who follows Jesus to the best of their ability, but who is unable to recognize him when he makes himself clear before them. It is the story of someone who, upon seeing the empty tomb is not filled with joy, but rather with grief, because her expectations of the world are that something bad must have happened, not something good. Mary Magdalene was not living a life in tune with the resurrection and therefore had no clue what to make of it when presented with it.
It seems that Mary had grown up in the school of hard knocks. Obviously, the last week has told her what to expect from this world. A week that started in joy continued to go downhill and the last three days were of complete suffering for her. She was one of the few of Jesus’ followers who actually stood at the foot of the cross and watched Jesus die. She saw Jesus at his worst. But she had learned to expect the worst from life. She had been demon-possessed until Jesus healed her. The church has often said that she was a prostitute as well, conflating the story of her being demon-possessed with other scriptures about prostitutes that turned from their lives to follow Jesus. But the fact is that there is no biblical support for Mary actually being a prostitute. But it just goes to show you that life sometimes offers you lemons. Here is a woman who was healed by Jesus and followed him as one of his disciples. And the church decided to make her out to be a prostitute. Some people get no breaks.
And so Mary has been programmed by this world to expect the worst. This is something that we all tend to share with her in some form. Our first year of marriage in Chicago, we lived about 25 minutes by train, or “el”, from the school. Lisa would tell me that she would be home at such and such a time and that time would come and go and she would not return and I would find myself becoming very worried. I have heard that this is a sensation that all parents know at one point or another, especially when your children are in their teens. But here I was, worrying about my wife. I would worry that something might have happened to her on the train, or walking to it. When she finally did show up it was usually something minor or just the fact that it took her longer in the library than she thought it would, and I would give her an especially hard time about calling if she knew she was going to be late.
Well, this sensation is similar to what happened to Mary Magdalene. She came to the tomb and found it opened and found the body missing. Instead of remembering what Jesus had taught about his coming resurrection, she assumed the worst. She figured that someone had taken Jesus’ body away from the tomb. She expected the worst and the worst presented itself to her. So she ran and found the disciples and told them the bad news, Jesus’ body was missing. John and Peter ran to the grave and we are told that they believed, though they did not understand. And Mary went back out to the tomb and stood outside it and wept. She did not know what to do. She did not know how to deal with what she saw. And she looked inside again and saw two angels. But she still did not believe. And then Jesus himself came to her and showed himself to her. And she still did not recognize him.
II. Unrecognizable
There’s something odd that happens throughout the gospels in the New Testament. When people see Jesus after he is resurrected they don’t recognize him. Though he never hides his identity from them completely, he usually spends time with them, he usually shares with them, and then he does something personal and they recognize him. With the disciples on the road to Emmaus, he is recognized when he breaks bread. Here, he is recognized when he calls Mary’s name. “Mary!”
But before he calls her name she does not know who he is, she even thinks he is the gardener. Some people like to talk about Jesus wearing a disguise so people wouldn’t recognize him. Others talk about his body being so different that those closest to him cannot recognize him. Now I’m sure his body is different, but Jesus wasn’t trying to hide who he was. It’s not Jesus who hid his identity from Mary, its Mary who could not see who he really was. It’s her own inability to understand God’s plan, her inability to see what it is that God is doing that keeps her from recognizing Jesus. She did not expect to find Jesus alive and so she could not see Jesus alive. She was not living in tune with the resurrection and therefore she was unable to recognize the resurrected Jesus. The same is true for us. God doesn’t hide from us. He doesn’t disguise himself so that we cannot recognize him. He is there, plain as day for all to see if we only look. But our preconceptions, our views, our understanding of the world around us sometimes keeps us from seeing him clearly. I often wonder why it is that the Jewish religious leaders did not recognize Jesus. It seems that after spending all their time studying God’s word, they would recognize the word of God made flesh. But they did not. And the reason that they did not has nothing to do with whether Jesus was hiding his true nature from them. Instead it had to do with the fact that they didn’t know God as they thought they did. They didn’t recognize Jesus because they were looking for the wrong thing in a Messiah. Mary didn’t recognize Jesus because she was looking for a dead body.
I think we have much more in our lives that keep us from recognizing Jesus. I think we are too busy to recognize him. I think that we are distracted by all the things that take up our time and energy in this world. We are distracted by all the things that are designed to entertain us, to convince us that our desires and needs come first. We are distracted by a world that tells us that we are supposed to be successful following standards that are set for us. And we are distracted because, like Mary, we are used to seeing the worst in something and therefore are not able to see God at work.
III. A New Beginning
And we find ourselves like Mary Magdalene, not sure what our eyes see and mistaking our God, our Lord, for a gardener. But God pushes Mary, and he pushes us also to recognize him. He calls her by name, saying “Mary” and her eyes are opened, and the impossible becomes real to her. All of a sudden the things that seemed important to her fall by the wayside. She had been focused on preparing a dead body for proper burial. She had been focused on working through her grief and pain. But now those things no longer matter. He is risen. At that moment, at the time where she recognizes Jesus, all things are made new. All of a sudden, in Jesus’ presence, things make sense in a way they didn’t before. All of a sudden, in Jesus’ presence, Mary finds a peace that transcends her grief; that transcends everything that she had been going through throughout her life.
That is what the risen Christ has to offer to each of us. He is able to offer a world, a life that will have difficulties, and that will have trials. But he is able to offer the promise that he will be with us through it all. And if we only open our eyes to recognize him, if we only let ourselves see him standing before us, then we will also cry out as Mary did, “Teacher, Lord, Master, Savior”. He is all of these to us, and more.
But, unfortunately, we often refuse to allow him to reveal himself to us. Unfortunately, we let our excitement over the activities in the world around us overtake our excitement about Jesus and his resurrection. We focus so much on the things we feel are important that we run across the things that God sees as important in our lives and we do not recognize them. But there is hope.
The hope is in the fact that God will never stop pursuing us. No matter how many times he attempts to speak to us and we brush him off as the gardener, he will continue to work at getting our attention. As he did for Mary he will do for us. He will call us by name. And the hope is also in the fact that we are given the opportunity to respond. We can seek to recognize our Lord. We can allow him to reveal himself to us and therefore walk in the path that he has before us.
We have good news that we all claim as Christians to believe. Now, let us start to live lives that show that we truly believe this good news. He is risen. And we too will rise because of what he has done. And we too will have a place for us with no pain and no suffering and eternal joy. In the end, this is what we are celebrating on Easter. Not just the fact the God raised Jesus from the dead, but the fact that God will raise each of us from the dead. We are celebrating the fact that God is able to do things that we cannot even imagine, that we cannot even think about. We are celebrating the fact that there can be joy in our lives no matter what we are going through because Jesus is alive and active in this world. There is so much to celebrate, for in rising from the dead, Jesus began something new and something powerful. And we are all a part of that which Jesus has done. We are a part of his Church, we are a part of his people. We are God’s children because of Jesus’ resurrection. He lives in us. And he will raise us from the dead. We cannot do anything but praise him for this, and celebrate the joy that he gives!
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