John 20:11-18 - The Last Mourner

Introduction

A few years ago I learned why pirates wore eye-patches. It didn’t have to do with covering up an injury or something—it actually had more to do with their ability to move from the brilliant sunshine on the deck of their ship down into the dark hold. You’ve had that experience where you have to go from bright sunlight into a dark basement or something—your eyes are so dazzled by the brightness it takes a few minutes to accommodate your eyes to the relative darkness of the inside.

But if you’re a pirate (or any other kind of 18th-Century sailor, for that matter), you didn’t have the luxury of waiting a few minutes for your eyes to adjust to the darkness of a dimly-lit storage hold when you’re in the middle of a sea battle! So that’s why the eye-patches came in handy—it allowed the sailor to keep one eye covered (and therefore dark-adapted) so that he could move quickly and efficiently from the brilliant sunshine above decks to the dark cargo and gun decks below.

Now, stay with me here, because I think that illustration points out something very important for us as we turn our attention to the story of Mary Magdalene here in John 20. We live in the dazzling brilliance of a world where Jesus has risen from the dead. And so it is hard for us to read the first couple of verses of this story and not race ahead in our minds to what we know is coming. Our vision is so accustomed to looking at the miracle of Jesus’ resurrection that we can’t really see into the darkness where Mary is weeping as this story opens:

John 20:11 ESV

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb.

And so I want us to take a few moments to try to get our eyes “dark-adapted” as it were, so that we can go down below into the darkness where Mary is when this story opens. I want to do this so that we can come away with a fresh joy in the dazzling brilliance of Jesus’ resurrection glory, but I also want us to do this because there are millions of people who are weeping in this same darkness today.

To this date, hundreds of thousands of people worldwide (and___________ in the United States, _________ of them in PA) have succumbed to the COVID-19 virus. We are walking through one of the most hideous plagues in living memory—truly our world is “walking through the valley of the shadow of death”. There are hundreds of thousands of people in our nation who are right where Mary is in this passage, standing by the graveside of someone they weren’t ready to lose, weeping to break your heart.

They need the hope that this passage brings, they need the good news that

Our mourning over death has been transformed forever by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

John’s Gospel is the only one to bring us this story of Mary’s encounter with Jesus on the day of His resurrection. Her story is important for us this morning because her experience of what death was and what it did was completely shaped by what the Old Testament taught about death. Mary Magdalene represents the last person to mourn over death from an Old Testament perspective—and the first person to have her mourning over death transformed by the resurrected Christ!

Mary was weeping outside that tomb on that day because she knew what the Old Testament Scriptures taught about death, that

I. Death separates us from each other (John 20:11-13)

All Mary can think about is the fact that she has lost her loved one. Verse 13, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him!” And in verse 15, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him...”

Mary was one of Jesus’ oldest and closest friends. In Luke’s Gospel we read that she was one of several women that Jesus had rescued from demonic possession:

Luke 8:1–3 ESV

Soon afterward he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s household manager, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means.

Mary seems to be one of the wealthy patrons of Jesus’ earthly ministry—making sure He and His disciples had food, clothing, shelter, and whatever else they could provide them out of her personal pocketbook.

And she was a faithful friend—Matthew’s Gospel tells us that she was one of the few people who stayed to witness Jesus’ crucifixion:

Matthew 27:55–56 ESV

There were also many women there, looking on from a distance, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him, among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.

She had followed Him and provided for Him and learned from Him and witnessed His miracles and submitted to His teaching for three years—and now He was gone forever. This is what the Scriptures taught about death:

Its permanence takes away our hope (2 Samuel 12:23; Genesis 15:15)

Centuries before, when King David’s newborn son died, he lamented,

2 Samuel 12:23 ESV

But now he is dead. Why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.”

That’s the nature of death—when you bury someone in the grave, you will never see them again. The only thing you know for sure is that someday you’ll be there in the grave with them.

That’s the idea behind one of the common euphemisms for death you hear in the Old Testament, that when someone dies they “go to their fathers”. Genesis 15:15, for instance:

Genesis 15:15 ESV

As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age.

That’s why Mary wept so bitterly there by the tomb—even though the tomb was empty! Jesus had promised over and over that He would rise from the dead after three days, but Mary’s whole life had been lived in the shadow of the permanence of death.

Verse 10 says the disciples went back to their homes, but Mary stayed there in the graveyard. Like so many people before and since who weep and mourn over the loss of their loved one, she felt like she had no place to go. If her loved one is dead, and all her ancestors were there in the grave, why bother going anywhere else? “This is where everyone I ever loved winds up in the end, why bother going anywhere else?”

The permanence of death takes away our hope. And when death separates us from each other

Our grief is inconsolable (John 20:12-13; Jeremiah 31:15)

Think for a moment what Mary witnesses when she looks down into the tomb:

John 20:12 ESV

And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet.

Think of it—Mary has a supernatural vision of angels, but even that is not enough to snap her out of her inconsolable grief! Do you realize that every other appearance of angels in the Bible (Old and New Testament both) describe people trembling in fear and terror before their presence? (In fact, these were the same angels who so terrified the Roman soldiers standing guard at the tomb that Matthew 28:4 says they fainted dead away!)

But when Mary sees these inconceivably holy and glorious beings standing at either end of Jesus’ burial place asking her why she is weeping, it doesn’t faze her a bit! She answers them without even so much as batting an eye:

John 20:13 ESV

They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”

But this is what grief over losing a loved one does, isn’t it? How many of you know exactly what Mary was going through because you’ve been there yourself? Nothing can pull you out of your inconsolable grief—nothing anyone can say, nothing anyone can do can give you any comfort whatsoever. Even a supernatural experience of angels wouldn’t make a dent in your despair. Like the prophet’s description in Jeremiah 31:15

Jeremiah 31:15 ESV

Thus says the Lord: “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.”

The permanence of death takes away our hope, our grief is inconsolable. And in verse 15 we see Mary do something that we often try to do:

We try to bargain with our grief (John 20:15; Psalm 88:10-12)

Look at what she says in verse 15 (Of course, she’s saying this to Jesus Himself, but she doesn’t know it yet—she thinks He’s the gardener): “Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him away”. What did she think she would do with a corpse? What was her long-term plan here? Also, bear in mind that according to the previous chapter, Nicodemus brought 75 pounds of spices to wrap His body in—His remains would have weighed somewhere over two hundred pounds! How was she going to simply “take Him away?”

But this is what happens to us in our grief, isn’t it? We aren’t thinking straight, we aren’t being rational—we are just trying anything we can to lessen our pain. We bargain with our grief, pleading to find even a little bit of relief somehow.

We hear that kind of pleading in the Psalms, for instance. In Psalm 88:10-12 we read:

Psalm 88:10–12 ESV

Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the departed rise up to praise you? Selah Is your steadfast love declared in the grave, or your faithfulness in Abaddon? Are your wonders known in the darkness, or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?

“Please God, just anything to make this pain and grief stop! I’ll rise up to praise you, I’ll declare your faithfulness and make known your wonders if only you’ll rescue me from this darkness!”

Mary was the last person to mourn over death from an Old Testament perspective: Its permanence took away all hope, there was no consolation that you would ever see your loved one again, and so all you could do was beg and plead and bargain for even the slightest speck of comfort in the ocean of your tears.

The Old Testament painted a dark and foreboding picture of how death separates us from each other. But even more grim is the message of the Old Testament that

II. Sin is spiritual death that separates us from God

Right from the very beginning of the story of the world, we see that

Death is the result of our rebellion against God (Genesis 2:17)

In the Garden of Eden our First Parents Adam and Eve deliberately turned away from God’s command not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and suffered the penalty that God had warned them of:

Genesis 2:17 ESV

but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Centuries later the Apostle Paul would make it clear that it was Adam’s sin that brought death into the world:

Romans 5:12 ESV

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—

The Scriptures teach us that sin is spiritual death that separates us from God. And throughout the Old Testament Scriptures we are shown over and over again that

Only death can atone for our sin (Leviticus 16:15)

The most profound picture in all of the Old Testament of the death-penalty for sin is found in the description of the Old Testament Tabernacle (and later the Temple in Jerusalem). There were a series of courtyards and rooms, each one getting closer to the Holy of Holies (or the “Most Holy Place” in the ESV.) The Holy of Holies was the innermost sanctuary of the Temple—shrouded in darkness, it had neither lamp nor window for any light. Inside the Holy of Holies was the Ark of the Covenant, the chest that contained the Ten Commandments that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai. And on the lid of the Ark there were two golden cherubim—angels who were depicted as spreading their wings over the top of the Ark—the “Mercy Seat”.

Exodus tells us that when the Tabernacle was first constructed, the presence of the LORD rested on the Holy of Holies, indicating God’s presence there. A thick veil separated the Holy of Holies and the Ark from the rest of the Tabernacle, because anyone who crossed through that veil would be struck dead in the holy presence of God.

There was only one time in the year when it was safe to enter the Holy of Holies—on Yom Kippur, the day of Atonement. On that one day, the High Priest was permitted to enter with the blood of the sacrifice offered to God for the sins of the people. We read in Leviticus 16:15 that the priest

Leviticus 16:15 ESV

“Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering that is for the people and bring its blood inside the veil and do with its blood as he did with the blood of the bull, sprinkling it over the mercy seat and in front of the mercy seat.

The only way that the people’s sins could be covered was by splattering the blood of a sacrifice on the Mercy Seat—blood spilled in the presence of God in the Holy of Holies. “Without the shedding of blood”, the writer of Hebrews tells us, “there is no forgiveness of sins” (Heb. 9:22).

Sin is the spiritual death that separates us from God, and the only way to atone for our sin is by spilling blood—entering into the thick darkness of the place where it was death to enter, splattering the blood of an innocent sacrifice between the wings of the cherubim. But that sacrifice, the New Testament tells us, had to be repeated, year after year, because

Hebrews 10:4 ESV

For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

But the great and glorious Good News that we proclaim this day (and every day!) is that Jesus Christ “appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself!” (Heb. 9:26) Sin and Death are the great separators, the great divides that have rent this sorry world apart—death that separates us from one another and sin that separates us from God. But here is the Good News, beloved:

III. Jesus Christ utterly defeated sin and death (John 20:16-18)

Mary Magdalene was the last Old Testament mourner—no one would ever have to grieve in the shadow of the Old Testament Law ever again! Here we see that glorious moment when she comes out from the shadows of the old world’s fear and despair and hopelessness in the face of death into the brilliant sunshine of the glory of the resurrected Christ!

Look at verses 16-18:

John 20:16–18 ESV

Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for 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.’ ” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”—and that he had said these things to her.

All of her hopelessness and inconsolable grief, all of her bargaining in the face of death—all of it was driven away by the sound of Jesus’ voice speaking her name! Death was no longer a permanent separation, because

Jesus restores our fellowship with God and with one another (v. 17)

He speaks her name, and she responds with “Rabboni”—a term of affection for a beloved teacher. The relationship that she was mourning was restored by Jesus’ resurrection! And notice what Jesus says to her: “I have not yet ascended to My Father!” Mary’s Old Testament understanding of death was that when you die you go down to your fathers, never to be seen again—but Jesus turns Death on its head! Now He says "I am ascending to My Father AND your Father!”

Death no longer means separation down into the darkness of the grave! When you die in Christ, death means that you ascend to God the Father in heaven! Do you see what I mean when I say that our eyes have been dazzled by two millennia of living in the glory of the resurrection of Christ? When we stand by the grave of a loved one who died in Christ, we mourn because we are separated—but only for now! We grieve because we will never see them again—in this life! But when we have the assurance of faith in Jesus Christ for our salvation, we know that death has been defeated, we know that they are “absent with the body and present with the LORD”, we know that we will see them again in glory for ETERNITY!

Because when He came out of the grave on that Resurrection Day morning,

Jesus turned the place of death into our source of life in Him

When Mary stooped down to look into that tomb—that dark, terrifying place of death—what did she see? She saw two angels, one at the head of the place Jesus lay, and one at the foot. She saw in reality what the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy of Holies in the old Tabernacle were pointing towards—the day when two angels would stand at either end of the place where God the Son would be laid in His innocent death—the New Mercy Seat, covered not with the blood of bulls and goats, but with the blood of the Lamb of God Himself, Jesus Christ!

Jesus utterly defeated sin and death by His death, burial and resurrection on Easter Sunday—the place of death—the grave—is now our source of life in Christ! Because the Scriptures teach us that

IV. We now live in the death of Christ (Romans 6:4; Galatians 2:20)

Paul defines our entire existence in terms of our death in Christ, doesn’t he? In Romans 6, he identifies our baptism as our identification with being buried with Jesus Christ in death to sin:

Romans 6:4 ESV

We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

And in Galatians 2:20 he says

Galatians 2:20 ESV

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Christian, your source of life as a believer is found in that empty tomb—that New Holy of Holies that represents your freedom from the penalty and power of sin, and your strength every day to live in the life of Jesus Christ!

And so that means that when you encounter the death of those that you love in this world, you

Grieve like a Christian (1 Thessalonians 4:13-14)

Paul tells the church in Thessalonica not to “grieve as others do who have no hope”

1 Thessalonians 4:14 ESV

For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.

Everyone who dies with saving faith in Jesus Christ knows that they will be together again someday! Death is not sinking down into darkness and oblivion—death is only “falling asleep”! When you grieve, Christian, grieve with hope that they have gone to their Father and your Father, their God and your God, and you will be together again someday!

You now live in the death of Christ—and that means that when the time comes you can

Face death like a Christian (2 Corinthians 5:8)

Not begging for one more day or bargaining for one more hour, but being of good courage, as Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5, knowing that being away from the body means being at home with the Lord! At home with Jesus, at home in the presence of your Heavenly Father, at home with all of those loved ones who have fallen asleep in Christ that will be restored to you when you awake there!

But understand—this comfort, this hope, this drawing on the empty tomb of Jesus Christ as your only source of life and hope is only true when you come to Him in repentance for your sins and faith in Him alone to save you!

If you have come here today and you have no share in Jesus Christ—if you have never called on Him to repent of your sins and place your trust in Him for your eternal life— then this is our plea to you today:

Die with Jesus for eternal life (1 Corinthians 15:3-4)

That empty tomb that Mary Magdalene stooped to look into—that place of death, darkness and fear—has been transformed by the work of Jesus Christ into the Most Holy Place—the place where His blood has purchased the mercy of God for you for the forgiveness of your sins! The most important news you will ever hear is the news that this day was established to proclaim, “That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,

1 Corinthians 15:4 ESV

that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,

This is the Gospel—the Good News that Jesus Christ died in your place for the sins you have committed against an infinitely holy, infinitely powerful God, and when you turn from your sin and call on Him to save you, He will deliver you from the fear of death, He will deliver you from the power of sin, and He someday, when you breathe your last breath on this earth, He will deliver you safely into the arms of His Father and your Father in Heaven.

If you want that peace in the face of death, if you want that forgiveness of sin and hope of eternal life, come and talk to me or one of the elders down front right after the service and we can pray with you and show you how to be sure that you have eternal life. Don’t put it off, don’t wait until tomorrow—you don’t know what’s coming tomorrow. Now is the time, now is the day of your salvation! So come—and welcome!—to the Risen Christ!

BENEDICTION

Hebrews 13:20–21 ESV

Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION:

Read 1 Corinthians 15:55-57. How has Jesus’ victory in the resurrection taken the “sting” out of death for you?

Who do you know that is struggling with the fear of death during this crisis? Who do you know that might be mourning like Mary was at the beginning of this passage (mourning without hope)? How can you use these verses to comfort those people this week?