Easter
John 20:1-18
“Hidden and Revealed”
Rev. Melissa D. Ramos
The world was still in
shadow as Mary Magdalene woke and donned her robes, just as we awoke in
darkness this morning, and dressed and made our way to church. It was for Mary, and is today, Sunday morning
at the break of dawn. But for Mary
Sunday was more like Monday for us, a day to return to reality, a day to head
back to work or school. Sunday, like
Monday for us, was a day when no matter what has happened, life calls us back
into the daily grind of things as the world moves on, and time marches on,
despite any sorrows or griefs or anxieties we feel.
As Mary walked the road
to the tomb so early in the morning, the darkness, the shadows might have
suited her just fine. The lingering
darkness of the morning must have mirrored the dark veil of sadness that hung
about her shoulders, slowing her steps, and lining her face.
Maybe Mary Magdalene
just felt lost after all that had happened in recent days. She had trusted Jesus, and she had been
healed by Jesus; Mary had followed Jesus in his ministry, just as the disciples
had done. The Gospel of John doesn’t say
exactly when Mary Magdalene became a follower of Jesus. But the Gospel of Luke tells us that Mary was
as much a part of Jesus’ ministry as the twelve disciples.
So we might imagine
Mary Magdalene had seen Jesus turn water into wine at the wedding in
Mary knew the healing
power of Jesus – the Gospel of Luke says that she had been healed of seven
demons. Mary knew the kind of power
Jesus carried in him, because she had seen and experienced it herself. Mary believed Jesus was the Son of God, the
Messiah. If Jesus had saved her, he
could save all of
The Gospels of Matthew,
Mark, and John all report that Mary was there, watching from a distance, as
Jesus was crucified. With the other
women, Mary Magdalene saw Jesus nailed to the cross with a thief and a
murderer, and she watched him die.
Theologian Dorothy
Sayers puts the story of Jesus’ death in this way: “Possibly we might prefer not to take this
tale too seriously – there are disquieting points about it. Here we had a man of Divine character walking
and talking among us – and what did we find to do with Him? The common people, indeed, ‘heard Him
gladly,’ but our leading authorities in Church and State considered that He talked
too much, and uttered too many disconcerting truths. So we bribed one of His friends to hand Him
over quietly to the police, and we tried Him on a rather vague charge of
creating a disturbance, and had Him publicly flogged and hanged on the common gallows
‘thanking God we were rid of a knave.’
All this was not very creditable to us, even if He was (as many people
thought and think) only a harmless crazy preacher. But if the Church is right about Him, it was
more discreditable still, for the man we hanged was God Almighty.” (Creed or Chaos?, 8).
No wonder Mary thought
the tomb was robbed when she arrived so early in the morning and saw the stone
rolled away and the tomb empty. Some of
Jesus’ enemies might have realized that killing Jesus wouldn’t be enough to get
rid of Him.
Maybe some of us here
this morning have tried to get rid of Jesus in some way or another, to get rid
of the uncomfortable truth of the Gospel, to ignore God’s call on our life, or
to drown out God’s Presence with our busy schedules, our disenchantment with
churchy things or churchy people. But as
we discover over and over in life, as Mary and the disciples are about to
discover, Jesus will not be gotten rid of.
The fire of the light of Christ will not be extinguished.
Mary, thinking that the
tomb had been robbed, runs to tell Peter and John that the stone has been
rolled away and that the tomb is empty.
Peter and John run to the tomb – there’s a lot of early morning running
in the passage – maybe that’s to help us stay awake during a
Peter and John find the
linen wrappings that had embalmed Jesus’ body when he was buried. In the first century AD, desecrating the tomb
of the dead was a shocking and disgusting thing, and yet it was relatively
common. The Emperor Claudius had issued
a decree that desecrating a tomb, removing the stone seal, or removing bodies
was punishable by death. So, someone
robbing a tomb would not have risked taking the time to unwrap the linen cloths
from the body, for fear of being caught in the act and facing capital
punishment.
So the linen wrappings
lying on the floor of the tomb is a real mystery for Mary and Peter and
John. The Scripture says that the two
men then go back to their homes, but Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. The shroud of death and fear and sadness
still hangs about her.
The shroud of death
hangs over our world still today. Global
warming – the fear of death by environmental collapse. The nuclear threat of
For Mary the world had
already collapsed around her when Jesus died.
And like Mary, we, too, are sometimes found weeping when the weight of
it all feels too heavy, too much to bear.
Like most of us, Mary Magdalene doesn’t realize that as she weeps and
grieves, Jesus is there with her.
And Jesus is with us in
our tears and our struggles. And often,
like Mary, we don’t recognize that God is with us. Like Mary sometimes we don’t know that the
joy of God in Christ is right before us, because we’re looking at our fear and
our struggle. Like it was for Mary, the
extraordinary, shattering power of God is right before us, but we mistake God
for the ordinary. Mary thinks that the
man standing before her is the gardener, she doesn’t understand that he is the
risen Lord. But as Mary discovers, the
power of God is both hidden and revealed.
Te power of God is
revealed in nature, the beauty of the world all around us, for those who
believe in the Creator-God. The power of
God is revealed in the church when we can look beyond our own expectations, and
beyond our petty irritations with each other, to see the Spirit of Christ at
work in us together. The power of God is
revealed in Jesus for those who looked beyond the ordinary carpenter from
In the Resurrection of
Jesus from the dead, the power of God was both hidden and revealed. Jesus as the Risen Lord does not appear to
the Pharisees. Jesus as the Risen Lord
does not appear to Pontius Pilate or government officials or the crowds who
crucified Him. Jesus does appear to Mary
Magdalene, a woman of faith, even as she weeps and she doubts.
Mary at last sees the
power of God as Jesus speaks her name.
Jesus says her name, “Mary,” and then she knows Him. For Jesus has said, “I am the Good
Shepherd. (The Shepherd) calls his own
sheep by name and leads them out. When
he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him
because they know his voice.”
Mary knows the voice of
her Lord, and at last, she believes. At
last the shroud of death and fear and sadness is lifted from her, and a shaft
of light from heaven falls on her to reveal the glory of God right before her,
calling her name. Now Mary knows that
God has faced death, and in Jesus, God has conquered death and fear. Mary has eyes of faith to see that, although
she feared everything was lost, in Jesus the Lord, everything has been gained.
Mary has eyes of faith
to see that Jesus is the Risen Lord. He
is the eternal Word of God who could not be defeated by human violence, human
sin, or unbelief. Jesus is the eternal
Word of God who stands before Mary in the promise of resurrection. Resurrection of faith, or hope, or
friendship, or love, resurrection from death into a life with God hidden in all
its glory until we, too, see the Risen Lord.
Mary saw Jesus, the
eternal Word of God, standing before her, and she believed that, as the
Scripture tells us, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. He was in the
beginning with God. All things came into
being through Him, and without Him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in Him was life, and
that life was the light of all people.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
The Word became flesh
and lived among us, and stood before Mary, and we have seen his glory, the
glory of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
Christ is Risen for
us. The light of Christ shines in our
darkness, for no darkness can overcome the glory of God. Let us respond to the joy of Christ’s
resurrection by coming forward to the cross, and placing a flower in one of the
holes. A symbol of the new life we are
promised in the resurrection of Jesus.