The Wounds that Transform Us: April 9, 2023

 

Easter, Year A                                             John 20:1-18                                                                           

           Mary Magdalene wasn’t afraid.  She wasn’t afraid when she walked alone to the tomb in the dark…not when she realized that the stone had been rolled away, not when the two angels appeared out of nowhere…not even when a mysterious man approached her who she thought might just be the person who stole the body of Jesus.  She wasn’t afraid. Now you might be thinking, but how could you possibly know if she was scared since her emotions aren’t detailed in the text? That’s true.  But if you compare the 4 Gospels, you will see an interesting juxtaposition.  Matthew, Mark and Luke all have multiple women going to the tomb. John is unique in that it mentions only Mary Magdalene.  All 4 Gospels describe either angels or someone robed in white appearing to the women.  Matthew, Mark and Luke all say that the women were afraid or record the angels telling them not to be afraid. 

            This phrase (Do not be afraid) might be familiar to you, not just because of the Easter story, but because of the Christmas story.  When the angels appeared to share good news, they were always telling people not to be afraid.  This is a theme throughout the Bible, the appearance of an angel scares people.  Yet in John, it never says that Mary is afraid and the angels never tell her not to be afraid. Then when she sees the man who she doesn’t recognize, she doesn’t cower in fear, she demands an answer from him.  “Tell me where you have laid him.”  A woman alone with a strange man, even in this day would be intimidating.  But in Jesus’ time, it was downright terrifying for any number of reasons.

            There was a fierce courage to Mary of Magdela.  There have been a lot of misconceptions about Mary over the years.  Dan Brown made it significantly worse with the DaVinci Code.  She was not a prostitute nor was she a woman caught in adultery.  At some point, someone just conflated all the unnamed women in the Gospels to one woman and all of their gifts and sins got attributed to Mary of Magdela.  The only thing we know about her was that she was an early follower of Jesus.  She started following him after he cured her.  She was at the crucifixion, at the tomb and she was the first person to see the risen Christ.  So here is what I want to know, what gave her the courage to sit at the foot of cross and watch him die, then visit the tomb alone and then eventually spread the rather unbelievable news that he had risen?  I want to know because I want that courage.

            In order to find the source of that courage, we need to go back to the first time we hear about her, which was a very brief mention. She started travelling with Jesus and the disciples after Jesus cured her of seven demons.  At the time, people assumed someone who was possessed by demons was evil in some way. But more likely, the individual was tormented, not evil.  It could have any emotional illness that we now have terminology for.  It could have been extraordinary grief. It might have been a physical illness. Anyone who lives with that kind of affliction has to have some courage.

            Think about it— think about the time in your life that was the most difficult, the darkest time. I bet it was hard just to get out of bed.  And maybe you didn’t get out of bed that day, but you eventually did.  That required courage and faith.  This woman had that courage in spades, even before she was healed.  Yet once she was healed, she also had what seem like an unshakable faith, the faith that comes from living through hell and coming out the other side, the faith that comes from a personal encounter with Jesus.

            It was that faith and that courage that allowed to her to stay and watch her Lord and Savior die.  It was that faith and courage that propelled her to the tomb on that dark and lonely morning. Now I am not saying that her faith was absolute.  I almost started this sermon saying she was fearless.  I don’t think she was.   I believe she was resilient because she had to fight over the course of her life.  During her times of greatest pain and anguish, she was probably alone quite a bit, which meant going to a tomb alone didn’t scare her.  And once you’ve been the home of 7 demons, a couple of angels aren’t going to scare you either.  Facing those immense challenges in her life and then being healed by Jesus equipped her with the courageous faith that she would need to be a disciple and then an evangelist.

            Episcopalians don’t typically talk about demons, so this might be a leap, but I want you to think about your own demons.   Maybe change the word to affliction or burden.  It could be depression, anxiety, chronic pain, a disease, addiction….anything that inhibits you and keeps you from being the person that God has called you to be.  Some of these afflictions are with us a lifetime and some are temporary, but they all leave their mark in some way.  Usually we assume those marks make us less than, not good enough, not strong enough.  But if someone with 7 demons could become a disciple and an evangelist, why not you? 

            You might think, well yeah, but she was cured by Jesus.  She was free.  That’s true.  No doubt getting cured by Jesus gave her a bit of a head start.  Yet…I bet those demons—even exorcized demons— left their mark.  She never forgot them. She could either let that hold her back, or propel her forward.  Remember, even Jesus’ resurrected body still had scars.  We are all wounded in some way.  We are all tormented by something. What matters is how we let those afflictions and wounds change us.  Do we try to hide them?  Are we ashamed of them? Or do we give them over to God’s power and let them transform us into a more complete and beautiful version of ourselves?  Do we let them transform us into a beloved child of God?

            Someone once said that courage is telling the story of who you are with your whole heart.[1]  Being a disciple of Jesus, watching him die, and going to the tomb….all required courage. But I wonder, if the thing that really required courage was Mary telling the other disciples, “I have seen the Lord.” Because her story used to be that she was the woman possessed, that there was something wrong with her.  That she was broken.  But now…now she was the woman who had seen the Lord. 

Our faith gives us this gift.  It provides each one of us with the ability to change our story, transform our afflictions and wounds into something new and beautiful.   That gift is freely given.  Yet it is on us, to accept that gift and allow it to transform us—to live into the Easter message, that God can make all things new, even you and me.

             

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[1] Brene Brown

April 20, 2014: John 20

Easter Year A                                                               

            It was my first Ash Wednesday as a priest and I was a little nervous about leading the church through Lent all on my own.  I was planning on visiting someone and stopped in the sanctuary to retrieve the reserved sacrament from the aumbry.  The aumbry is the wooden box between the main church and the side chapel.  When we have left over consecrated bread and wine, we put it in the aumbry.  In the Episcopal Church, we believe that Christ is present in the sacrament.  We call the bread the body of Christ and the wine the blood of Christ.  Even once the service is over, Jesus is still present in the bread and the wine.   When I looked in the aumbry, I realized that the container that held the bread was gone.  That container is always supposed to be there, even when it is empty. The only time it comes out is when we take it out during the service itself.  Of course I panicked.  My first thought was, “Oh dear God, someone stole Jesus. It’s my first Lent and Easter as a priest.  I am all by myself and I have already lost Jesus.”   I realize that my reaction was a little irrational, but I was very sincere.

            When Mary Magdalene saw that the tomb was empty, her first reaction was that someone stole the body of Jesus.  That reaction might seem a little irrational to us now.  Who would steal a body?  Didn’t she know that he was going to be resurrected?  Hadn’t she been listening?  It was a fairly reasonable fear, one that the other disciples probably shared.  One of the concerns of the Roman and Jewish leadership was that Jesus would be worshipped after his death.  This could happen in a couple of ways.  His followers could steal the body and tell everyone that he came back from the dead.  Or…his body would remain there and his burial site would become a place of worship for his followers, which would create problems for the Romans. 

While there was a rationale for a missing body I am still surprised that disciples thought the body was stolen after all that Jesus had told them when he was with them.  Yet we look at it through the lens of already knowing the end of the story.  Jesus’s followers didn’t have the Gospels all written out. Jesus told his followers about his resurrection, but he did not give them concrete details.  They had no idea how it would happen or what it would look like.  We really cannot blame them for expecting to find the body of Jesus in the tomb where he was buried and then be confused and scared when it was gone.

            Peter and the beloved disciple reacted to this fear and confusion by leaving the garden and locking themselves in a room with the other disciples.  Yet Mary stayed.   She wept and continued to gaze into the empty tomb. Through her tears she saw two angels in white who asked her why she was weeping.  She told them she was weeping because they had taken away her Lord and she did not know where to find him.  The angels did not respond and then for some reason she turned.  She turned away from the tomb and the angels within.  Perhaps she sensed there was someone behind her.  Maybe the sight of the angels disturbed her.  When she turned, she found Jesus.  But she did not know it was Jesus.  She thought he was the gardener. 

            One cannot help but wonder how Mary, someone who knew Jesus well, was not able to recognize Jesus.  Some have hypothesized that it was her tears that clouded her vision, literally and figuratively.  Perhaps her grief was so great she could not see properly.  She was so convinced that this was a stranger was not Jesus that she asked him to tell her where he had taken the body of Jesus.  Then Jesus said one word, her name.  That was all it took.  She heard him call her name and she knew that it was Jesus.  

            I often run into people from the parish outside of the church.  It might be a restaurant, the grocery store, the gym, any number of places.  Usually I recognize the person, but occasionally I don’t because the person is not in the right context.  But most of the time, I recognize the person long before they recognize me because I am really out of context.  I am not wearing my robes or my collar. We tend to put people in certain categories-- in boxes and it can be disconcerting when we encounter that person in an entirely different environment.   It’s not that we do not want to see the person; we just don’t expect it.  And in that moment we don’t always recognize the person, even someone we might know well.  I wonder if that was what happened to Mary on a much more dramatic scale.   She had seen him die.  She was there to mourn him, weep for him.  She was there to close this chapter of her life. Yet when she saw that tomb empty, everything changed. The paradigm shifted.  Her role as a disciple of Christ was not ended; it was just beginning. 

            While seeing the living Christ was comforting and hopeful, it was also disconcerting.   The first thing he said to her after he said her name was, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father.”  What?  There was no, “So good to see you, thanks for being one of the few people to stick with me through the end.”  No big hug.  Not even a reassuring hand on her shoulder. 

            It’s not that Jesus didn’t want to show Mary that he loved her.  I am sure he wanted to comfort her. However, he knew that the person she was clinging to was the person who died on that cross…the same person she was expecting to find in the tomb.  But he was not that person anymore.   He was the resurrected Christ and he could not be confined to the tomb, nor could he be grasped by human hands or hopes.

            It would be nice if we could always find Jesus in the last place we left him, like a tomb or an aumbry.  That way when we needed him, we could just visit him there, or possibly take him out and hold on to him for a while.  Yet Jesus refuses to be confined to a tomb.  He likes to surprise us and come to us in different forms when we least expect him.  I fear that often we get so wrapped up staring at the empty tomb (because that is where he is supposed to be) that we ignore the stranger standing behind us.  We are afraid to turn around because while the tomb is dark and empty, it’s what we know and understand. 

            I eventually found the consecrated hosts.  Someone had mixed them with unconsecrated hosts…which really blew my liturgically correct mind.   I ate them all…and there were a lot.  I have no idea if that was the right thing to do.  I wanted to make sure that the consecrated host was consumed, but I did not want to jumble them all together since some were not consecrated. 

Often we find that things that are holy and sacred are jumbled in with the ordinary.  Sometimes Jesus looks more like a gardener than God.   What we have to decide is if we are going to leave him in a box or allow him entry into every aspect of our life.  God does not typically come to us in bite sized pieces.  God comes to us in inconvenient times when we have 1000 other things we are supposed to be doing.  As lovely as our Easter service is, this is a tiny tiny glimpse of God.  And if this all we are experiencing of God, we are missing out.  We could leave this service and consider our Christian duty complete.  Or like Mary who finally turned from the empty tomb to start a new life, we too can leave and realize that our role as a disciple is just beginning.