Have You Seen the Lord?

Intro.

This encounter between Jesus and Mary has a ring of eyewitness testimony to it.

The smallest movements that we read—her stooping, her turning (not once but twice), her mistaking Jesus for the gardener—all have the feel of a first-hand story that John has written down. The reality of the resurrection of Jesus is foundational to all of Christian teaching and belief. You may be here today and thinking that the resurrection of Jesus is an inspirational story but can’t really be true, at least not as the Bible actually describes it.

If you are curious about this and would like to learn more, I’d like to give you a book called The Case for Easter.

It’s absolutely free and you can pick up a copy in the atrium before you leave today.

However, the resurrection of Jesus is far more than an historical event; it is a personal encounter.

My desire today is that you would share in this reality and be able to say with Mary, “I have seen the Lord! Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, we need to understand the depth of Mary’s grief. It’s one thing to lose someone you love after a long battle with cancer; it’s another thing to lose someone you love in a tragic accident.

I’m sure, for Mary, Jesus’ death seemed like a tragedy he could have avoided. But this story is for more than those who are grieving. It is really for anyone who finds themselves lost or in some kind of mess.

Have you ever been lost or in a mess and just wished you were home?

Home means different things for different people. Home is more than a place, isn’t it? Home is being at peace and finding satisfaction and contentment. Let’s enter Mary’s story and watch as Jesus gets her home.

Whether you share Mary’s situation or not, I want you to share in her confidence and be able to say with her, “I have seen the Lord!”

Jesus entered Mary’s mess.

Mary Magdalene had a personal connection with Jesus.

Mark tells us that when Jesus met her, she was possessed by seven demons. If she had walked in here today, most people would be keeping their distance, and someone would probably call the police. But Jesus transformed her life by casting the demons out of her. When Jesus died, Mary thought she lost the one who changed her life.

No wonder she was crying.

This is not the quiet sniffing; this is chest-heaving, shoulder-shaking sobbing.

For those of us guys, this is probably the most uncomfortable part of the story.

Most guys I know don’t like to see a woman cry, which is maybe why Peter and John went back home as quick as they did. I want to linger on this part for a minute because it is helpful for us in the midst of the messes of our lives.

For over 25 years, Benjamin Franklin published a popular book of forecasts, household hints, proverbial advice he called Poor Richard’s Almanack. One of his sayings was, “God helps those who help themselves.”

It’s not in the Bible but many people have made that mistake. This attitude is quite common among people, and it sets up another expectation. It’s this: you have to get yourself together if you’re going to come to God, definitely if you’re going to come to church. That might be an American idea, but it’s not a biblical idea.

Look at Mary Magdalene.

Jesus comes to meet her at the tomb when she is in the middle of her mess. Notice how Mary seems completely unfazed by the presence of two angels here at the tomb. Throughout the Bible, there are numerous encounters with angels. Every time an angel appears, he brings a message from God. The fact that there are two angels here should have signaled something big.

However, Mary seems blinded to this significance. She’s jumping to conclusions and making assumptions.

Look at v. 13.

Have you ever been in the grocery store and heard the call, “Clean up on aisle 2”? Your instinct is likely to either avoid aisle 2 or some of you may be curious to go see what broke. Very few people actually run to the mess to roll up their sleeves and get involved.

Yet this is our God.

It’s the story of the entire Bible. The history of Israel is a history of God coming to their rescue when they were in a mess and promising to bring them home.

God doesn’t wait for us to get our act together. He comes to us in our mess and is there even when we should have known better. Even when we don’t realize it, he is there ready to show himself.

Jesus is going to get Mary home by coming to her in her mess, and he’s come to find you in your mess too because he wants to get you home.

Jesus called Mary’s name.

Something caused Mary to turn around, and when she did, she saw Jesus standing there.

However, Mary didn’t realize that it was Jesus. It’s possible that she was so grief-stricken that she had no category for seeing Jesus alive, and so she didn’t recognize him, or possibly her eyes were so filled with tears that she couldn’t see clearly.

However, there’s another explanation that seems most likely.

Jesus is keeping Mary from recognizing him until the right moment. Jesus is not encountered through the natural senses but through eyes of faith. It’s actually the way knowing God has always happened.

Psalm 119:18 ESV

Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.

Ephesians 1:18 ESV

having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,

Jesus repeats the angels’ first question, “Woman, why are you crying?”

Why does Jesus ask this question? We don’t know, but it shows us something important. It shows us that Jesus is patient because that’s what love is. On the single greatest day in human history, Jesus slows down and ask Mary why she’s crying. Jesus has come to wipe away her tears, but he will not do so roughly.

When scuba divers dive deep, they have to come to the surface slowly. Otherwise they can experience a condition known as “the bends.” Air bubbles get trapped in the body, causing excruciating joint pain and sometimes death.

Jesus seems to be bringing Mary out of the depths of grief slowly as well.

He’s not toying with her or patronizing her. He loves her. Have you ever felt that God is not working fast enough for you?

What if God knows that if you come up too quickly you’ll get a spiritual case of the bends?

What if God doesn’t tell you why he does what he does?

When you look at this story you should trust that God has a purpose that can’t be seen and that purpose is inseparable from his love.

Mary thinks this man is an extra on the stage.

What she doesn’t realize is that he is both the playwright and the director. It’s OK that he is moving slow. He knows how the story goes, and he’s in control. In his own way and in his own time, Jesus will make sure Mary makes it home.

Jesus adds a second question: “Who is it you are looking for?”

This is really a bit of a strange question to be asking in a setting like this one. It anticipates that the searcher is looking for a living person not a corpse. It seems that Jesus is beginning to wake Mary gently from her nightmare by hinting that the one she is looking for had told her he would come back to life.

Mary is still so grief-stricken that she fails to catch the significance.

She had made a general assumption about the body being moved. Now she directs it specifically to the man she supposes is the gardener.

Here is the moment of revelation, but there is no triumphalistic fanfare—no “Ta da!”

Jesus simply says, “Mary.” In this instant, the scales drop from Mary’s eyes. She had turned away from Jesus but at the sound of her name, she spins around and falls as Jesus’ feet. This is a tender reunion of love between the Good Shepherd and one of his sheep.

John 10:2–3 ESV

But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

Jesus isn’t really unrecognizable, but he can’t be known with physical eyes.

Jesus spoke more words in his questions than in his call, but Mary didn’t recognize his voice. Jesus isn’t heard through physical ears. Jesus is seen and heard when he reveals himself to our hearts. Jesus is seen and heard when he reveals himself personally. What you need this morning is not to see something or hear something. You need Jesus to reveal himself to you personally. You need to hear Jesus call your name.

Have you heard him calling? You’ll never be the same.

This scene demonstrates the great reversal that Jesus’ resurrection brings.

There was another Garden—the Garden of Eden—and like Jesus, God walked through that garden calling a name, “Adam!” God called that name in judgment. The man he had created in his image had rebelled against him. God had created the perfect home for his creatures, but Adam disobeyed God’s word.

Just as Mary failed to trust that what Jesus said would come true, Adam had failed to trust what God had said would come true. As a result, God drove him from the Garden. Adam was exiled from his home, and God set a guard at the entrance to the garden—an angel with a flaming sword. The way back home was cut off, not just for Adam, for all of us. Every one of us have rejected God’s good rule and have not trusted that what God says will come true.

Then one night Jesus walked into another garden and agreed to pay the price to open the way back home again.

God the Father held the sword, and on the cross he brought the sword of judgment down on his Son, executing his wrath against sin. Jesus went back under the sword and was cut off.

Yet on the third day, we meet Jesus in the garden again walking not as the announcer of judgment but as the giver of grace.

Jesus defeated death and opened up the way back home. His word was personal, “Mary.” Mary shows us what it means to trust Jesus and to love him. She uses Aramaic, which was the language of her identity and her heart. She calls Jesus, “Rabboni”, which means “Teacher.” This is not “teacher” merely in terms of one who gives good information or one who increases knowledge. She calls him teacher in the truest sense of the word—the one I follow that I might be like him.

Jesus entered Mary’s mess in love.

Jesus revealed himself personally to restore her joy. Jesus is getting Mary home, and he wants to get you home too. The call is personal today as well. Jesus is calling you by name. He is calling to save you from judgment. He’s calling to give you his grace. He’s calling you home.

Jesus gets Mary home.

Mary had watched Jesus die and thought he was gone forever.

Now she sees him alive, and he’s called her by name. Quite surprisingly, Jesus replies, “Do not hold on to me.” Jesus is letting her know that because he is resurrected, their relationship was going to change. The reason Jesus gave was that he had not ascended to the Father.

When Jesus talks about ascending here, he is not merely saying, “I’m going to heaven.” Instead he is using the language of a king ascending to his throne and signaling that he will then fulfill the promises he had made to his disciples.

Our initial human instinct is that distance creates separation.

However, Jesus had promised that this distance would actually create closeness.

John 14:16–18 ESV

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.

John 16:7 ESV

Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.

Jesus wants Mary to understand that this moment of joy is not meant to be jealously guarded as some kind of private dream-come-true. Instead this joy is meant for sharing. This garden is not meant to be Mary’s home, and so she is sent not in judgment but in joy. She is sent not in separation but in restoration.

She is to carry this message of transformation.

Jesus tells her to take this message to his brothers. Jesus had physical brothers, but he’s not talking about them. Mary shows us who Jesus meant by going to the disciples. Jesus’ disciples are now his brothers—part of his family. When you encounter the resurrected Jesus, he brings you home as one who belongs to his family. As Jesus sends Mary, he sends her with the assurance that the one who is his Father is their Father too.

This is what it means to finally get home.

Home is seeing the resurrected Jesus with eyes of faith and being welcomed into his family. Jesus was dead for you and is alive again. If you will put your trust in him, God will welcome you home as Father. Hear him call your name. Turn to him and bow at his feet. Love him as teacher.

Say with Mary, “I have seen the Lord!”