Mary Magdalene’s Easter Journey (and Ours)

A Profane Horror

Have you ever considered the crucifixion of Jesus? When you pray and meditate on it, his physical death is nothing less than what Jürgen Moltmann called “a profane horror”—the mutilated body of Jesus strung up on a cross, so disfigured by the lacerations and the wounds of the lashings and beatings that it fulfills what is said in Isaiah, “He is one from whom we have hid our faces” (cf. Isa. 53:3b).

So horrific was he that, unless you were one of the hardened people who had seen plenty of crucifixions, you would turn away. And there were many who had done exactly that. The iron rod of Roman authority never thought twice about executing the ultimate penalty for all kinds of infractions.

Jesus had to go through that. But it was his own choice. And he did it for us.

Abandoned Hope

And what came next? When his followers saw Jesus crucified (flailed, beaten, and finally dead), they left. They abandoned hope. What else was there to do? The grinding power of Rome’s ultimate authority, had, in essence, won again. They had seen it. Jesus had died. It was absolutely incontrovertible. “‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.’ Having said this, he breathed his last” (Luke 23:46).

But what were they to do now? Especially those close to him, those who had spent the better part of three years with him?

As often happens when that kind of horrific tragedy hits, they went numb. They didn’t know what else to do except go home.

And so they did.

Except One

But there was one who did not. And that’s where the story picks up, with Mary Magdalene who, alone, is bravely making her way to the tomb. And in that country, under Roman authority, it was certainly not safe for her to travel by herself. She could have been subject to any number of things. Muggings happened on that route. Or worse, if she had actually encountered an unguarded garrison of Roman soldiers, they would have thought nothing of taking her and using her. Rome operated with that kind of impunity.

But she went. Let’s join her journey.

It’s still dark. The first rays of the sun are just beginning to break over the horizon. I’m not sure she knows what she’s going to do. The stone that had been rolled in front of the grave was an extraordinarily heavy piece of granite. No single person can move it, and yet she goes. But to her horror, she arrives to find that the stone has been rolled away.

She doesn’t have to think twice: “Something has happened! They’ve taken the body!” And she goes running to Peter.

It’s interesting that she runs to him, because this is the Peter who has denied Jesus three times. “I do not know the man!” (Matt. 26:72) he said. And yet she goes to him. She also goes to John, the beloved disciple, the one who all through the Gospel was emotionally close to Jesus. She finds both of them separately, and the two men take off, running to the tomb.

John, probably because he was younger, outruns Peter and reaches the tomb first. But then—he stops. Jews don’t go into graves; that’s ritually unclean. John is not about to defile himself. So he stands there, peering in. We’re not even sure what he can actually see, how light the dawn is at that point.

By contrast, no-filters Peter blows past him and strides right into the middle of the tomb itself. And then John gets brave enough to stick his head in as well.

What They Find

And what do they find? In terms of what they expect, nothing.

You see, if grave robbers had been there, the tomb’s whole interior would have been in complete disarray. The robbers would have tried to find if there were any treasures hidden with the body.

But what Peter and John find is the epitome of neatness. The shroud is laid out, and the piece of cloth that covered the head lies by itself, rolled up.

They don’t know what to make of it. All they know is that Jesus is not there. And they have no idea in the world what will happen.

What They Do

And so what do they do? The Bible says that the other disciple, meaning John, looked in, and when he saw, he believed (cf. John 20:8). But it also goes on to say “For as yet they did not know the scripture, that he must rise from the dead” (John 20:9). So it probably means he believed that, yes, Mary told us the truth.

And again, what do they do? They go home. You see, as we’ve been talking about, they were living in the terrifying unpredictability of enemy Roman occupation. Had a crime been committed there? What if the Roman soldiers who had been assigned to guard the tomb came back? Could they be arrested? Was this a crime scene?

So they go home. What else could they do?

An Unlikely Disciple

Whether they urged Mary Magdalene to go home as well, we don’t know—the scripture doesn’t say—but the story is that she stays. Standing outside the tomb, weeping, Mary is the picture of despair: the complete loss of hope, thoughts and emotions collapsing in on themselves.

Have you ever been so deeply grieved, so wounded, that what’s going on around you just fades into the distance? That all you know is the inner emptiness of loss?

That’s where Mary is. She has come in an act of genuine bravery to go and, in essence, pay her last respects, and even that has been denied her. She is not allowed to honor the man who has cast demons out of her, who has set her free.

“They Have Taken Away my Lord”

All Mary knows is that he is gone. She cannot do what she had hoped. She is, in her grief, blind to everything going on around her. So she bends over to look into the tomb, the scripture says, but she can’t see what’s there. And then she sees two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and the other at the feet, almost like the two cherubim at the Ark of the Covenant.

If a normal human being had seen angels at that point, they would have been on their face in terror. Angels could be messengers of anything. And if God showed up, what would have happened then?

But Mary is lost to all of that. The angels say to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” (John 20:13a). And she answers as if it’s the friend next door: “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him” (John 20:13b).

The angels don’t answer. One commentator said this was because they could see behind Mary, and when Jesus appeared, they went mute.

“Woman, Why Are You Weeping?”

But somehow they know. And Mary knows. Her intuition somehow tells her to turn around. And so she turns, but she doesn’t yet know that it’s Jesus. And he says to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” (John 20:15a).

Notice the tenderness, the gentleness of the question. He could just as easily have said, as one of the angels says in one of the other accounts, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” (Luke 24:5b).

But he doesn’t. His question is very kind. “Woman, why are you weeping?”

When you raise a question with someone in that kind of grief, your voice should carry a tone that allows the question to enter that painful place. And that’s exactly what Jesus did.

Point of Recognition

She still doesn’t know who he is, but his question doesn’t offend her. “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’” (John 20:15b).

She couldn’t actually have done that. You see, if Jesus had been prepared according to the rites of a proper Jewish burial, he would have been packed in more than 75 pounds of aromatic spices. That’s a lot of weight.

But that’s what you do, don’t you? When you’re in that place of grief and sadness, you express an aspiration, even if you can’t actually carry out what you promised.

So what does Jesus do? Again, he doesn’t tell her, “Oh, don’t be silly.” Instead, he says her name.

Have you ever heard the voice of a friend or loved one, maybe from another room, and felt something spark inside you? As soon as you heard their voice, you looked forward to seeing them coming around the corner.

Jesus says, “Mary,” and his words go right to the heart of her grief. And even though she can’t fully see through her tears, there’s a point of recognition: “Rabbouni. It’s you” (cf. John 20:16).

And what does she do? What any of us would do. She runs to him and wants to throw her arms around him, so overjoyed that Jesus has to say, “No, no, no, not yet. I’m ascending to my Father. And besides, you have work to do. Go and tell the disciples” (cf. John 20:17).

“Go and Tell My Brothers”

And what does he say? When he says, “Go and tell the disciples,” he calls them, “My brothers” (cf. John 20:17b).

But look at these people. Every one of them had forsaken him. Many, I’m sure, are asking, “Did we get it wrong? Is he really not who he said he was? Is he just some delusional prophet? Yeah, he did miracles, but—the Messiah?”

And yet he still calls them “my brothers.”

No matter where you are in terms of your faith, what you believe, what you don’t believe, what questions you have, what seems like intellectual nonsense to you, what the hungers of your heart are, the truth is that Jesus is more than willing to receive you. He’s willing to hear your questions, to listen to what’s going on in your heart, even the things you may not want to admit to anyone. He wants to hear those things from you.

Why? Because he wants also to call you his brother, his sister, a member of his family. Don’t think that to be able to somehow qualify, we have to be a certain kind of person. Remember—the good ones in the Bible didn’t make the disciple list. The invitation is much wider, much deeper, much more encompassing than that.

Believe me, if Jesus can call these disciples who failed to stand up for him, who in Peter’s case actually lied that he ever knew him, “brothers,” that means there’s room for you and me. Because when it comes to our reputation, many of us will lie. So when it comes to putting ourselves in a place of personal embarrassment, much less danger, as it relates to our Christian faith, more than one of us has chosen to fade into the background rather than step out and say something.

Resurrection Power

I was struck this week by a piece on the news—it went viral—about a woman who came through a drive-through to pick up some coffee. Her husband had just died 24 hours earlier. So she got up to the drive-through window to pay, and grief, as it often does, overtook her.

She couldn’t speak. And finally she got out, “My husband died yesterday.”

And what did the barista do? He reached through the window and said, “May I pray for you?” And he put his hand on her shoulder and prayed, right there in the drive-through.

That’s the witness of resurrection power. When you’re not afraid. Or when you’re afraid, but you do the right thing anyway.

“Go to my brothers,” Jesus says. And tell them what? “[That] I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (John 20:17c).

We’re in this together. That’s what Jesus is saying. There’s no rejection. There’s no condemnation. There’s no place for shame. Shame is one of the works of the devil that continues to keep you at arm’s length from God because you think, “If I get too close, the shame place will be exposed, and then I’m just done for.”

Jesus never does that. Ever. It’s not that he doesn’t know. He knows it all. And he wants you to share with him your secrets, but they’re safe with him. With him there is mercy. With him there is redemption. With him there is a way to make even the worst things right.

And so Mary takes off like a shot. “An apostle to the apostles” as she is called, going to share the good news with the men who were still afraid and hiding out in their homes.

This Happened in History

What does all this have to say to us? First of all, for the writer of the Gospel of John, Easter really happened. “This is not,” as N.T. Wright says, “a clever point of fiction. The writer is attempting to present a coherent and credible portrait. They are anything but cardboard cutouts producing stock responses and questions.”

William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury a hundred years ago or so, even goes so far as to say, “The details—the John outrunning Peter, the place of the grave clothes—all of these are the kinds of descriptions that can only come from an eyewitness account.”

This happened in history. And a part of what we have to deal is the fact that a man was raised from the dead.

Raised from the Dead

And that’s the second thing: God raised a body from the dead. If it was mere resuscitation, as if somehow Jesus had been drugged on the cross and the rest of it was just made up, it wouldn’t look like this.

Can you imagine? If he was in fact drugged and came up wrapped in a shroud, it would have been torn to shreds, the cloth torn off his face as he tried to escape.

But remember? The shroud is all laid out. The headpiece is all rolled up. There’s a wonderful sense of authority and pace. God is at work, and he’s not rushing it for anyone.

This was orchestrated, you see. This is something much more than a man coming back to life. God has acted with authority to do something decisive and new.

Seeing Jesus for Who He Is

And the point of this journey with Mary is to see Jesus for who he is, not who we might imagine him to be. If you think Jesus will keep you at arm’s length because of what you’ve done, that’s not the Jesus of the Gospels. If you think Jesus will somehow let you get away with anything, that it’s all OK because you’ll be forgiven, that’s not the Jesus of the Gospels, either.

The Jesus we know is a complete realist when it comes to the human condition. He’s willing to forgive anything—anything—but it means we must come to him and say yes to the tenderness and the kindness of his invitation, breaking through the places of our own shame and grief and opening our hearts.

And that is the resurrection power of God, breaking into our lives and doing something new, something we could never imagine, something we could never create for ourselves.

I would urge you, particularly if you’re a regular churchgoer: there is such a thing as the monotony of church. It happens when you go through the same thing Sunday after Sunday, and it’s just rote. It comes off the top of your head without actually penetrating your heart.

Don’t let that happen. Listen to the story afresh. Hear the appeal of the Savior. John says at the end of his Gospel, “But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:25). He also says, “But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).

A Challenge and an Invitation

This journey issues a challenge. A challenge to say, “How are you living? Do you live as if God raised Jesus from the dead? And if not, why not? Do you think it doesn’t matter?”

It also issues an invitation. An invitation to the One who loves you like no one else, who will heal and restore and forgive and set your heart on fire with his love. That’s this Jesus.

God raised him from the dead. Will you say yes to him, and mean it?

Easter extends long past a particular date on the calendar, and so does its challenge and invitation. Share your response—and this blog—on Twitter and include my username, @revgregbrewer. I’d love to hear about your journey.

(This post is an adaption of Bishop Brewer’s sermon on Easter Sunday, March 27, 2016, at The Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, Florida.)

Unless otherwise noted, scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

PHOTO CREDIT: James Steidl | Dreamstime.com