John 20:1-18; Colossians 3:1-4
Valerie: Questions have guided us through this Lenten season for which our overall theme has been Seeking. Questions like: Is this the fast that I choose? Who will you listen to? How do we begin again? Will you give me a drink? Who sinned? Can these bones live? Where will this lead? They bring us to the culminating question, “Who are you looking for?” All this time, we have been seeking, pursuing, listening. When we started all this, I challenged us to detach from our need to name what we were seeking and to pursue the journey… to cultivate more curiosity, openness, and the ability to pay attention.[1]
Perhaps in a spiritual practice of shared silence, meditation, drawing or journaling, slowwww-ing down, you have done this. Well for all of you who are frustrated with the pursuit and simply want to get some answers, Easter Sunday is the day!
We are going to explain why Jesus died on the cross. We are going to clear the air on substitutionary atonement. We are going to tell you who rolled that stone away and untangle the question of whether or not Jesus experienced a bodily resurrection or a spiritual one.
Madison: No, we are not. We are not going to tackle all of those questions with answers in this short (looks at watch) sermon.
Valerie: It was April Fools when I was writing that part… and I thought it was funny.
Madison: Did you? Then you might like this. Do you know who Joseph of Arimathea is?
Valerie: Yeah, the man who gave his tomb for Jesus to be buried in. That was a really kind thing to do.
Madison: It was. You know why he did that without any hesitation?
Valerie: No, why?
Madison: He said, It was no big deal. Jesus only needed it for the weekend.
Valerie: We are full of answers today!
Madison: We are full of something.
Valerie: Today’s question is one that the risen Jesus Christ poses to Mary Magdalene. He asks her, Who are you looking for? We can answer that one.
Madison: Yes we can.
Valerie: The answer is in Mary of Magdala’s five-word sermon that she delivered to the other disciples, “I have seen the Lord!” That’s the good news. That’s the gospel of John. That’s the Easter message. Five words from Mary – announcing rebirth, new creation, and resurrection. That’s the story of a God who loves the world, who aches to set it free…[2]
Madison: That’s the story of God who meets his people, once again, in a garden…
A garden in which Richard Dietrich agrees contains elements of classic comedy.
You have characters, Mary, Peter, the most beloved disciple, angels, and Jesus himself. The plot is straight out of a comedy, missing bodies, running onto and off the stage, mistaken identity… requires divine intervention to be resolved and yet it doesn’t end the story but bursts it wide open for the unfolding to continue and find out what happens next!
A story that begins in the early dark of the morning, can we sit with Mary for a moment? She’s filled with grief, eyes cloudy from crying for 48 hours, a pounding headache from all the tears, overwhelmed for what this all means and a deep desire to care for her Lord. So when she arrives to her destination that fateful morning, we’re met with more questions!
How does Mary know that the body is missing just by seeing the stone rolled away-she hasn’t yet looked in the tomb… What exactly does the beloved disciple believe when he gets there first and looks in? Maybe Mary’s truth, that the body is gone.
And when Mary finally looks into the empty tomb she finds it, well not empty! The angels are there, they want to know why she is weeping? Surely the grief is overwhelming. Don’t they know that? But notice, no one, not even the gardener, tells her not to weep, for tears are holy, and we all carry them with us don’t we?
Peter and the most beloved disciple ran home. Maybe to cry their tears in private, maybe to fret with the other ten. They saw the body was gone and must have felt some kind of way about it. Maybe they remember he said he’d be going away but they don’t yet understand what that means. When someone from behind, where no one was before, Mary finds a gardener… The Gardener in fact, he asks who are you looking for? He knows… she knows… we know… but nobody says who she is looking for! He’s in disguise until he calls her by name.
Mary. In a rush of memory all those days spent following this dear friend, all those lessons he taught, all the meals shared around a table, all the inside jokes they laughed about, it comes flooding in when she hears him say Mary.
As the sun is coming up, a new day dawning, the first day of a new creation, the sun is coming up on Mary’s faith. Hearing *his* voice call *her* name, she sees, and knows who this is. The sun has revealed the Son. All that frantic energy that had been building within Mary, it starts to melt away as she turns, and as she turns, she reaches out to take hold of this Jesus, maybe so she can believe it’s real, maybe so he can’t disappear again! But that’s exactly what he’s going to do, isn’t it?
Valerie: In his absence, disciples must rise up, grow into leaders of the movement he leaves in their hands. They must overcome their grief for the sake of people who didn’t yet know his love the way they did. There is much evidence in this scene of Mary’s love for her Lord. For though she was last at the foot of the cross, she is now first to the tomb….
Who is this disciple to the disciples? There is important new scholarship emerging about Mary Magdalene. One of those debates is where she is from. You see, if you were to travel to the Holy Land today, some nice tour guide would take you to a little village on the sea of Galilee and they would tell you that’s where MM is from. But the problem with that is: that village wasn’t called Magdala in the first century. In fact, no one is sure where that village would be – if there ever was a village– called Magdala. And in fact, there is good evidence to suggest that Mary was from somewhere else (but that’s a story for another day).
If we were up on our Aramaic, the language that Jesus and the disciples spoke, we would know that magdala in Aramaic means tower. Magdala! When scripture names her Mary Magdalene, we call her Mary Magdalene, it’s not Mary from Magdala. Instead, it’s a title, Diana Butler Bass says. This disciple to the disciples is Mary the Tower! In much the same way as Peter got a new name when he confessed Jesus to be the Messiah, Jesus said, “You are Peter the Rock.” There is reason to believe that Mary, also a confessor of Christ, gets a name augment: Mary the Tower. Can you imagine why this scholarship was hidden from view, even disguised, in our patriarchal world? …So that Peter got to be the cornerstone of the church and not also a woman who, instead, has been characterized as a harlot?
Does that feel like a lot for Easter Sunday morning? It might and there is so much more to this scholarship, but we’ll save that for the next time we study Mary and Martha from Bethany… The reason this felt important to say today, is that we all need the encouragement, the reminder, that the sun is still coming up on new ideas, new revelations in scripture, in our faith. The sun has come up, once again, shedding new light on an ancient text and belief. Perhaps Mary Magdalene doesn’t fit in the box we have had her in for so long. And maybe that’s why she gets to see him first, and hear the risen Jesus call her name. Maybe this is why she is called to be the proclaimer of this good news: that not even the grave can contain the Love of God. In the cross, the outstretched arms of God grew even wider and the Love of God even broader. The good news, “I have seen the Lord” is Mary’s five-word sermon that restores their hope and changes Peter and John and the others from frightened followers into bold proclaimers! Love has overcome death in the person of Jesus Christ!
Madison: You know who reminds me of Mary the Tower, Beth Moore. Beth has just announced the final farewell tour of her Living Proof Ministries and it has a few reflecting on her legacy. The editor for Good Faith Media Craig Nash put it like this: There’s not much overlap between my theology and Beth Moore’s. But I have always admired her for [a few] reasons: 1. Even before she claimed the title of “preacher,” opting instead for the less controversial role of “teacher,” she was by FAR one of the best preachers that ever stood in a Baptist pulpit, or any other pulpit for that matter. Having been in the room when she preached at First Baptist Waco for Truett’s preaching conference I can attest that she is one of the great preachers of our day.
And second says Nash, She loves Jesus so much in a way that is almost embarrassing. Like, “Wow, she really means this!” embarrassing–but it’s so infectious that you want to love Jesus just a fraction of the amount that she loves him. How much did Mary Magdala love Jesus? So much so that she went to his tomb while it was still dark. So much that she was heartbroken to see grave robbers who must have done the unspeakable to his body. So much she would do anything to have him back and treated properly. She loved him so much that the moment he called her name she knew exactly who he was and ran to tell the greatest news of all, Jesus is Alive!
Valerie: Do I love Jesus, “embarrassingly so,” the way Mary did, the way Beth (Moore) does? Do you?
Who are you looking for? Mary Magdalene, Mary the Tower, is the very first to see Jesus’ alive. And so it is up to her to preach the good news of Jesus’ resurrection.
Madison: And so she does, in five words: I have seen the Lord!
Valerie: That’s the answer to the question, Who are you looking for?
Madison: This Easter Sunday, what version of Jesus are you looking for?
Valerie: In the end Jesus was crucified because he was not the Messiah the religious elite were looking for. His Kingdom vision certainly wasn’t anything the Empire was looking for!
Madison: He wasn’t even everything the disciples were looking for.
Valerie: Jesus didn’t fit in everyone’s “Messiah” box. I don’t know why we keep trying to do that to one another… fit people like Marys and Beths into boxes, under labels. Those boxes become like tombs.
We have to stop shrinking to fit the places we’ve outgrown.
Easter’s God will move every stone out of our way, for us to rise and grow and have new life and new possibilities with Christ. The risen Jesus called Mary Magdalene up and out of her station in life to give the Easter sermon!
Madison: God wants to shine a new light in the tombs of our lives, in the dead places, in the hopes that we believe are long buried away. Will you let the sun come up on your dreams, your hopes and lives this Easter?
Valerie: What is our Easter sermon? When have you seen the Lord?
[1] Shroyer, Danielle, Sanctified Art, Seeking Sermon planning guide
[2] Bass, Diana Butler, A Beautiful Year, I have seen the Lord 2024