It is a good policy, a good insurance-policy, to keep a record of what you have written, or what you have said in public. It spares blushes. It saves you from the indigestion of attempting to eat your words. Seventeen years ago this past Lent I preached a course of sermons, “Christ’s Encounters with Women”: what Christ says and does in situations recorded in the Gospels where women and he talk together. His friendships span busy women, clever women, women in life-threatening situations, frustrated women, loving women. We see his respect for them, his affection for them, his enjoyment of their company, entirely free from the prejudices of his day, totally himself as he and they react in the situations he finds himself, always in extraordinary terms of equality and welcome.
The gospel you have just heard is John’s account of early Easter morning. Mary Magdalene whose feast we celebrate today is the woman I preached about on Easter Day 1990. I have read that sermon and I am glad I did. I am glad because there’s little in it that the years would have me alter to fit this day. And before you start to think that I’ve put a cold dish into the microwave from the freezer I would remind you that the saintly John Wesley would speak about preaching the same sermon forty times…
If any person in the world could be linked with Easter morning it would be Mary Magdalene. Certainly she would accord it as the most dramatic confrontation and encounter in her life.
Remember, she is a wreck as she comes to the tomb in the dark. Shattered and sleepless she sees in the grey of the dying night that the great wheel of stone closing the mouth of the tomb-cave had been rolled back, and the tomb is empty. She runs back and tells Peter who despite his cowardice is still regarded as the leader. Peter and the much younger John race to the tomb, and John gets there first to find the grave clothes undisturbed but the body in them having vanished: he waits for Peter who typically dives into the situation—inside the tomb he also sees the linens undisturbed where they had fitted around the body: he is joined by John in the tomb who then in a flash of understanding knows what has happened: he realizes what this means, and he believes what he realizes: the first to believe in the Resurrection.
When Mary gets back to the tomb they are gone. In her broken heart she weeps as she looks into the tomb. The horror of his execution is now made more terrible for her by the discovery of his tomb desecrated, rifled of her beloved Rabbi’s body. She has not only lost him in life: she has lost him to death. It is a double deprivation, a dual cruelty to her. She could be the singer of the Psalm (88 vv 9-12) (page 449 in the Prayer Book, if you’d like to follow): “My sight faileth for very trouble… Dost thou show wonders among the dead, or shall the dead rise up again, and praise thee? Shall thy loving-kindness be showed in the grave, or thy faithfulness in destruction? Shall thy wondrous works be known in the dark, in the land where all things are forgotten?”
Her tears blind her sight as she faces that deserted tomb. She cannot see what Peter and John saw. She misses the grave clothes lying where they lie. Her world has collapsed around her. St. John records that as she stoops down two angels sitting where Jesus had lain talk to her: they ask why she is crying and she tells them of her bereavement: “Because they have taken my Lord away, and I do not know where they have laid him.”
Someone stands behind her, and as she turns from the tomb she sees a man she assumes to be the gardener. He asks her why she is crying: “Sir, if you are the man who has removed him, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” And in so saying she turns back to the tomb. The practicalities of the situation are beyond her. She says what she says because all she wants is to be near Christ’s body to mourn over it. She doesn’t even wait for an answer from the gardener. She returns to her personal grief.
You and I well know that there are times when explanations and reasonable discussion simply aren’t important. Whether in grief or in anger or in anxiety there are times when our preoccupation is impervious to any exterior influence or point of view. We become unreasonable. We become unreachable. We can become demented. And this, Mary Magdalene has become.
Have you realized that there is a strange pattern in all the accounts of Christ’s Resurrection appearances? He makes himself known to his friends at a time when they are far from being at their best. When they have lost their composure, when they are, in our contemporary Manhattan parlance, unglued, when they have fallen apart. When they are blind to reality. Christ chooses a time to “meet” them, as the Scriptures say. When the disciples are huddled in a room for fear that an attack will be made upon them, scaring them still further out of their wits, they are so terrified by events that they can’t think straight or see straight. And he is with them. To two men later on Easter day, walking in gloom and disillusionment back to Emmaus, heads down in sad talk and unable to see beyond their nose, sad at the collapse of all their hopes, the crash of the investment of all their dreams, they fail to recognize the man who catches up with them and listens to their heartbreak and tells them what they should have remembered from Scripture, and finally makes himself known to them when he is invited to their sad supper, in the breaking of the bread. Recognition breaks in on preoccupation.
To Peter and his companions who are bereft of their beloved teacher and in their misery take the boat out to do night fishing in an attempt to pull their lives and finances together after the debacle of the arrest and execution of Christ, he appears when they have failed utterly to land anything worth taking. He meets them in their frustration and discomfort and failure when tempers are short and bitterness is at the back of their mouths, when they simply cannot discern or notice anything beyond their own plight.
And here, with Mary Magdalene, oblivious of anything in her self-absorption, lost in her bereavement, he chooses this time to make himself known to her. And he does it not by reasoning with her. She is beyond reasoning. He does it by saying her name in the way she instinctively recognizes to be his way of saying her name. That is all he has to do to pull her out of it all. He calls her name in his way.
There is a lesson in that for us, as a Church and as individuals. We can learn from this.
That lesson is that the Resurrected Christ can not only give us the means of grace but the hope of glory. He has his methods of surprise encounter at our most unfortunate and fruitless times. How many times have we seen our schemes for the Church misfire—plans for our unity somehow fizzle, plans for new ways of worshipping somehow puzzle and defeat many who saw little or no reason for change and assume that change was made for the sake of change. We see Bishops make fools of themselves by saying and doing things which sound plain contrary to the faith they have been enjoined to protect and teach. I’ve seen disobedience and separation in the very places where there should be loyalty and cohesion. The Church has few laurels to rest on, and a great part of it is unhappy with itself. We can, if we reflect upon it, feel as abandoned as Mary Magdalene at what we see of the wreckage of our hopes.
But I am convinced that the Resurrected Christ stands waiting to be recognized in his call to us to be true to him. And I am convinced that if we want him in our lives he will quietly take his place and we shall find the life he promises to those who love him and the energy of joy which his life imparts. And with the Psalmist, we shall say Dost thou show wonders among the dead: or shall the dead rise up again, and praise thee? By Christ’s resurrection: Yes! Shall thy loving-kindness be showed in the grave: or thy faithfulness in destruction? Yes. Shall thy wondrous works be known in the dark: in the land where all things are forgotten? In Christ’s name: in his life of resurrection: Yes! Yes!
