Tag Archives: mary magdalene

A sermon for Easter Sunday

Isaiah 25:6-9                      Acts 10:34-43                    John 20:1-18

What a Holy Week we have had! And here we are, at service 29 of 30, and Christ is risen – the foundation of our faith, the hope for the world, light in the place of darkness and life in the place of death. And what is there left to say? Well, let me make 4 observations from the story, and 4 challenges for us.

The gospel passage begins pretty frantically. Mary comes to the tomb and saw the stone was removed. She runs to tell someone, meets two disciples on the road and the three of them run back to the tomb. One runs faster, gets there first, finds it empty, ‘believes’ (although the gospel writer doesn’t say what they believe, because they don’t understand that Jesus has risen so…??) and then they go home.

And then everything becomes calmer, more tender, and it becomes Mary’s story with her Lord, and it is beautiful. She sees Jesus. She doesn’t know it is him. She mistakes him for the gardener and then she hears her name, and she knows. And she falls at his feet and worships. Jesus tells her – don’t hold onto me, go to my brothers, give them this message and Mary announces to the rest – I have seen the Lord. The resurrection is proclaimed, and the world is changed.

And as I reflected on these words, these extraordinary events, here is what I noticed – 4 things Mary did, 4 actions for us to imitate.

Mary went

Mary wept

Mary worshipped

Mary witnessed

Mary went while it was still dark. She went to tend and care for the one she loved. She went to the place of darkness and death. She went where others were too fearful to go. She went, even though going had potentially dangerous consequences. She went, and nothing could keep her away.  And because she went, she was there when the light of the world really dawned. 

She went and she wept – she wept at all that was lost and all that needed to be found. She wept for all she had hoped for and for all she thought would never be fulfilled.  She wept for her loss and at the imagining of what life would be like without Jesus.

And Mary worshipped – She heard her name, safely from his mouth, just as she did when he first set her free.  She knew he was back, that death hadn’t won, and she worshipped at his nail-scarred feet.  But she didn’t stay there. She knew that his rising, that this new, free, world of life and light meant that she had work to do and she got up and set to work right away.

She heard his command, and she went and witnessed to all she had seen and heard.  She took her gold-prize message of life forever, her message of salvation that stuck two fingers up at sin and death and suffering; she didn’t tuck it away, securely in her heart; she ensured she witnessed to it everywhere she went. Let it burst out of her lips, that the world might be changed.

Mary went – to the garden

She wept – at the tomb

She worshipped – the risen Christ

And she witnessed – to everyone she met

And this is our example, as we try to follow the risen Christ.

‘Early, on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went…’ to the place of true darkness and death.  Where are the dark places we might need to go?  Will we go? And are we confident we will find Jesus there?

When Mary got there, she wept.  Of course she wept.  Her hope was well and truly gone; not only was he dead but they had also taken him away.  There was nothing left, no body left. And she wept. Sometimes, weeping is the right and appropriate response.

What makes us weep?  What situations feel so desperate, so impossible to solve, that all we can do is weep?  When we weep, can we consciously take that despair and heartbreak to Jesus? Can we find the hope that our weeping will be received, comforted, even resolved in him?

And then she heard her name, spoken so familiarly, and she knew it was her Jesus and she worshipped; rabbouni, teacher, let me hold on to you; my refuge; my place of safety.  Her despair was gone, her hope was restored, and her response was worship. Do we take our despair and tears to Jesus and, as they are lifted from us, do we respond in worship? And have we ever heard him speak our name as we do?

As Mary’s weeping turned to worship, so she heard her Lord’s voice, and she heard the specific instructions that were hers to fulfil.

‘Do not hold onto me…go to my brothers and give them this message…’

And she witnessed to her brothers, and to the rest of the world, the truth that she knew to be true. She witnessed to those who were languishing in grief and darkness.  She witnessed to those in locked rooms and with fearful hearts.  She witnessed to those who were defeated by death.  She witnessed with words that change everything ‘I have seen the Lord’.

Have we each seen the Lord?  Have we seen Him, in the bread and wine, in the faces of each other, in the readings and the hymns; have we seen him, and will we witness to others that we have seen the Lord?

Mary went, she wept, she worshipped, and she witnessed.

And may she be our example, that we too may go in search of Jesus, weep at darkness and despair, wherever we find it.  May we worship when we see Christ’s transforming power and bear witness to others. 

And if none of this makes sense to you, if you have no idea what it means to go or weep or worship or witness, talk to me or someone else you trust. Because, like Mary, many of us have seen the Lord too, and long to witness to this message of light-over-darkness and life-over-death.

Alleluia Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed, alleluia!

Easter Sunday 2022

What a holy week we have had, haven’t we?

If ever I needed cast iron proof that I’ve truly found my tribe with you lot, this holy week has confirmed it. A few of us have yawned through Morning Prayer or whispered our way through Compline. Beauty and creativity have sprung up in the labyrinth and the graffiti wall and most abundantly in those stations of the cross. We have held silence and sacred spaces and banquets and night watches. We lamented and waited at the foot of the cross. We have tried to, faithfully and tentatively, walk the Way of the Cross and we have done it together and we made it to resurrection. And didn’t we just!

And then, we hear the most stunning account of the resurrection narrative, as recorded in St John’s Gospel. We see faithful Mary Magdalene – last to leave Golgotha, first to arrive at the grave. We witness her fear at the moved – removed – stone, and we watch as these anxious, grief-ridden, competitive disciples – barely even able to cling to that title – race to the tomb, summoned by Mary’s fear rather than their own devotion.

They look in, they don’t go in, they go in, they see the linen wrappings, they believe, they don’t understand and then they go home. The account of them is frantic, chaotic, and kind of exhausting. But. Mary stood weeping outside the tomb.

They are too-ing and fro-ing, running and racing, and Mary just stood weeping. Sometimes it is good to just stop, pause, and have a good weep. Be like Mary!

And then, the tempo changes into this beautiful tender kind-of distanced embrace.

She sees two angels – just sitting there in the tomb – and they ask her ‘why are you weeping’ and she says, ‘they have taken away my lord and I do not know where they have laid him’, heart-wrenching, and then she turns, in her grief, and she sees Jesus. He’s right there and she sees him, but she thinks he is the gardener.

Through history, art has given us gorgeous glowing images of the resurrected Christ. He is always wearing billowing white robes because he must always be standing in front of some kind of holy wind machine. And he is glorious and radiant and…really clean. But Mary mistakes him for the gardener, and if you’ve been around these grounds on a Wednesday morning, you will know what gardener’s look like. They don’t wear their best clothes and they have mud under their nails and leaves in their hair. And I think maybe that says something more important about resurrection – something that is stolen from us if we cling to these images of a golden angel, minus the wings.

Jesus was dead. He was beaten and broken and dead. Murdered, brutally.

On Friday I told you that I still deeply wonder why Jesus had to die, or if he even did have. And I said I will always continue in that wondering, and I will. But the bottom line is, he died. We know that to be true. God died and was placed in that tomb. And in my questioning and my wondering I have spent some time thinking about what happened next.

In our creeds, and in the pages of scripture, we hear about how Christ descended to the dead. On Good Friday God died, but by Holy Saturday, God was up to God’s amazing, transformative, redemptive work of salvation, for all people and all situations, for all time and all eternity. First stop; the gates of hell, and with the keys of life Christ smashed them open – I swear, from the inside, and then declared, ‘everyone out – you first Judas’.

On Holy Saturday Christ was BUSY!

There was work to be done. He didn’t just rest there in that tomb, healing. He got straight to work in the divine plan of all salvation. There was more to do. Death needed to be shown it didn’t win.  Pain and suffering didn’t win.  Destruction and human failings didn’t win.  Abuse didn’t win.  Hatred, oppression, injustice, poverty, racism, war; all these things didn’t win.  Love won. Love wins.  Love goes down to the dead and restores life.  Love smashes the gates of hell and sets captives free.  And Love beats darkness; it takes it and redeems it, into something good and pure and holy and beautiful. It’s no wonder Mary mistook Jesus for the gardener. That’s exactly what he was – the pruner, the re-creator, the One to plant the new heaven and the new earth.

You see, the resurrection isn’t about making everything shiny and clean. It is about total transformation – destruction of the old and creation of the new. The work of the holy gardener, sowing and seeding and cultivating new life. Sowing seeds of light and hope in the places of all darkness so that it might overcome.

I love the thought that the risen Christ looks more like a slightly scruffy gardener with dirt under his nails because it means he’s at work and it also means I can more likely imagine becoming more like him. I’ll never be a wingless angel, but I might get messy in the work of telling darkness and death to pack its bags and leave. I will gladly get messy in the work of telling oppression and injustice that its days are numbered, and it has to go. That’s the work of the gardener and that’s the work of us because we are the gardening team.

So, this easter, this year, listen out for the voice of that holy gardener as he calls your name – like he did with Mary – and then look up, see this gardener handing you a spade, because there is work to be done and our Risen Christ needs a hand.

Amen