Good news doesn't come easy

Children’s Time

I have a mirror. Look in this and tell me what you see.

Not just “I see myself.” Who do you see? What do you recognize about yourself?

Do you see someone scared? Someone brave? Someone silly? Someone confused about what the point of all this is?

I have something else with me today. It’s a shell, filled with water from our baptismal font back there.

In our baptism, God claims us as his sons and daughters and, like any good parent, he will never abandon us.

With your permission, I’d like to dip my finger in this shell and draw a cross on each of your foreheads. You won’t be able to see the cross for long, but you’ll know it’s there. And when you look in the mirror, whatever other feelings or emotions you have about yourself that day, maybe you can also remember that you are also a child of God, beloved and cared for by the same one who made the entire universe.

[Anoint foreheads with water, after checking permission, and say “Know that you are a child of God and Jesus loves you just the way you are.”]

In a second, we’re going to pray. Then after that, I have one more thing for you, so don’t run off quite yet. I have a basket of shells here. You can take one home with you, maybe to keep by your mirror or on the table by your bed. You can put a little water in it and draw the cross on your own forehead or your parents or family (just ask first). And every time you see it, I hope you remember who you are in your baptism.

Let us pray. Repeat after me:

God our father,

Thank you for making me your child.

I may not understand why,

But I’m glad I can always turn to you.

Amen.

Sermon

Good news doesn’t come easy.

I don’t think there’s any need to convince you that the media devote far more resources to covering problems and worries and drama than stories that show our capacity to take care of each other.

And when we are in the midst of grief and deep pain, it’s hard to really take in even the good news we do hear.

The idea of a linear, predictable series of stages of grief has been largely debunked as over-simplification, but grief is always messy and painful and hard to get through. Sometimes people go through stages and the grief seems to shrink over time, but not for everyone and not every time.

In 1996, counselor Lois Tonkin of New Zealand shared a model now widely circulated on the internet, a model she based on the lived experience of an unknown woman she heard share at a workshop hosted by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, all women, just like the first witnesses to the resurrection. She relates:

The woman’s child had died some years before. At the time, she said, grief consumed her totally, filling every part of her life, awake and asleep. She drew a picture with a circle to represent her life and shading [covering it entirely] to indicate her grief. She had imagined that as time went by the grief would shrink and become neatly encapsulated in her life, in a small and manageable way; she was realistic enough to assume that it would not go away entirely.

But what happened was different. The grief stayed just as big, but her life grew around it. There were times, anniversaries, or moments which reminded her of her child, when she operated entirely from out of the shaded circle in her life and her grief felt just as intense as it ever had. But, increasingly, she was able to experience life in the larger circle. (Tonkin 1996, Growing Around Grief - another way of looking at grief and recovery)

This model is remarkable in its simple beauty and its ability to lighten the burden of guilt sometimes added on to the existing suffering of the grieving, the guilt of continued grieving when we are “supposed to” get better.

Mary Magdalene and the disciples were grieving the loss, seemingly forever, of Jesus, their teacher and friend. They were processing differently. The disciples were laying low, keeping to the company of each other, just trying to make it. Mary, once she was allowed to travel (the sabbath having completed at sunset on Saturday) went to the tomb to grieve for Jesus in person.

And that is where her life after Jesus’ death started to grow again around her grief. Not all at once, and not even all in what looked like a forward or healing direction. No, here in the Gospel of John, we see a series of turns and motions that open up new understanding bit by bit, and though in the scope of what had been and was yet to come it happened quickly, the sense here is clear that everything was in slow motion, with each partial revelation only adding to the confusion or pain until, at what seemed like last, it came together.

What does this journey look like? Let’s walk back through those steps from the Gospel, imagining as if we were there.

Mary sees the crucifixion Friday and knows Jesus is dead, further following to see where the body was laid.

From Friday night to Saturday night, Mary (with all Jews) celebrates the sabbath. We hear nothing of this, but it must have been difficult to turn toward the Lord in the midst of those events. I like to imagine she leaned on one of the dozens of Psalms of Lament like Psalm 13 “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? Consider and answer me, O Lord my God! Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death, and my enemy will say, “I have prevailed”; my foes will rejoice because I am shaken. But I trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.” Whether or not she would have had the assurance to turn to those last verses, the hope, I’m not sure. I wouldn’t have.

Sunday morning, before it’s even light, Mary goes to the tomb and makes her first discovery - that the stone has been rolled away.

Without even bothering to investigate further (presumably because it seems obvious what has happened), she rushes to tell Simon and the other disciple whom Jesus loved that the Lord has been taken from the tomb and moved who knows where.

The others now run back so fast that it’s like a race, to see for themselves, though there’s no indication they distrusted her. Here we see the next discovery, as the other disciple bends down to look in (because tomb entrances were only a few feet high) and sees strips of graveclothes lying there. Like Mary, he pauses and doesn’t enter yet, maybe because it’s already too much to process.

Next, Peter arrives and goes in, seeing both the graveclothes and a head wrap, lying separately and in such a way that they were clearly not set there by grave robbers hurrying to move a body before being caught.

Peter doesn’t understand yet, and we don’t know if he says something here, but soon the other disciple enters, sees the same thing Peter saw, and we see the first inkling of real understanding - for we are told the other disciple “saw and believed.” While it’s implied that he understood that Jesus had risen, it’s also explicitly stated that neither of them understood the scriptures that Jesus “must” rise from the dead. Having learned what they can here, the disciples go back home, literally “returned to theirs.” More than being home, the emphasis is on being among themselves, either individually or as a group, rather than continuing to investigate.

But one person doesn’t return home. Mary Magdalene remains and weeps. When she bends over to look in the tomb herself, she sees not just grave clothes but two men in white (angels, we are told) who invite her to name her grief, asking “Woman, why are you weeping?” She has not yet drawn the same conclusion as the other disciple and instead tells them how her Lord has been taken away to an unknown location.

Not ready to hear more, she turns and catches someone else out of the corner of her eye, whom she assumes is the gardener. This person too calls out, giving just a tiny bit more to hang her understanding on. He says “Woman, why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?” But as is so often the case, she couldn’t hear the compassion through her grief and assumes this gardener had already heard (or knew from where she was) and maybe even that he is just rubbing it in. She replies, without turning to fully face him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you put him and I will take him.” At that moment, unknowingly, Mary stumbles onto the truth of his identity. She had said to the angels “My Lord has been taken away.” Many of you may recognize the Greek word for Lord, Kyrion - from Kyrie as in Kyrie eleison, “Lord, have mercy.” When she replies to the gardener, she addresses him as “Sir,” a polite address translated from the Greek Kyrie. When Jesus washed the disciples feet at the Last Supper, he said “You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am.” (John 13:13) Mary calls him Lord, and even though not meaning it in that way, it seems to be enough of a recognition from her, stumbling about in the dark to understand what’s going on, that Jesus can call her by name “Mary” and she turns to behold and recognize Jesus, acknowledging not only as before that he is Lord but also Teacher (Rabboni).

Mary and the others, you see, had their eyes opened bit by bit. Seeing through the tears of grief is rarely an instant transformation, just as developing faith doesn’t take place all at once in a flash of lightning. Even Martin Luther, said to have turned to the religious life as a monk in response to a bargain with God to serve him if only he survived this particularly scary lightning storm, even Luther at first understood the cross and the burden of sin without the grace of the resurrection.

But what does Jesus say here?

John 20:17 NRSV

Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ”

If Mary’s life has been made larger around her grief by recognizing that Jesus is alive, it certainly grows more here. For Jesus is making the kind of claims here that only make sense to those who (unlike Peter and the other disciple) are prepared to understand the scripture about the resurrection.

Jesus sends Mary to the disciples not by saying “go to my students” or “my disciples” but “go to my brothers.” Though he has not yet ascended to the father, Jesus, in sharing humanity to the uttermost on the cross, dying, and conquering death in resurrection, has made good on God’s promise to adopt us as his children, something he only reinforces by saying “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”

Jesus is both God-kin and God-worshipper, and in the resurrection is brought to completion the plan (which John takes so many pains to point out in the various asides in the gospel about what was done to fulfill scripture) to finally and indelibly adopt humanity, not just as toys he created (as a sort of clockmaker god) or even foster family, in his care for a time. No, Jesus, standing outside the tomb he until recently occupied calls us brothers - equal in love and possessing full rights of inheritance to the Kingdom of his father and our father, his God and our God.

And at this, Mary is ready. She goes to the disciples, as Jesus asked, and announces - no, the word announce is too weak; Mary Magdalene “Angels” to them (angellousa) as a messenger sent by God - she proclaims to them that she has seen the Lord and not only is he ascending but that we share in the fulness of his brotherhood and sonship.

The others still have not seen Jesus, and probably react in a variety of ways, though maybe eased by the witness of Peter and the other disciple that Jesus has been raised. But Mary’s words, like those of the angels in the events surrounding Jesus’ birth, prepare their hearts to see him face to face and to come to understand the scripture surrounding his death - not only that it was necessary but that it has won the cosmic battle once and for all, and that they are the ones tasked as messengers to the whole world. But the first of those tasked with telling was not a disciple, not a Sistine Chapel angel. It was Mary from Magdala, like Mary the mother of Jesus, low among women, struggling, and suffering. It was Mary, personally called and changed in the midst of grieving, not to magically overcome her grief but to claim her place as Christ’s sister and be the first to proclaim the best news of all:

Christ is risen.

He is risen indeed.