what God does in the dark
[a sermon preached at St. Andrew’s by-the-Sea in Pacific Beach, 2024]
It’s Easter morning, and we have the example of three disciples in our gospel story today: Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and the disciple whom Jesus loved. Three witnesses of the mystery of the empty tomb; and two very different reactions to the resurrected Christ.
First, of course, is Mary. Now, many books have been written and speculations made about the relationship between Mary Magdalene and Jesus, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about today. It is clear, just from the biblical stories themselves, that Mary and Jesus had a close, intimate relationship. She was one of his closest companions, and we have seen her throughout this holy week, if we’ve been paying attention.
Remember back to last Sunday, when we celebrated the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem riding on a donkey. Hosanna to the king of kings! we sang. We waved palm branches like those who welcomed Jesus into the holy city. Then the mood shifted, and we heard a strange story about a woman carrying a jar of expensive perfume. We watched alongside the disciples as she poured that precious oil out onto the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair.
For the other disciples, it was too intimate - they had to look away. But like Jesus, Mary knew what was to come - she knew that it would be one of her last moments with Jesus, her teacher and beloved, before his terrible death. And so with precious oil, she anointed him for death. She showed him - with her very body, with all senses involved - touch, sight, smell - she reminded him of who he was - Beloved.
And then the unimaginable happened. Jesus suffered, Jesus died a terrible, shameful death at the hands of the state. A man who stood in non-violent protest of systemic oppression was put to death by those in power. Jesus died a death not unlike the deaths of other revolutionaries who refuse to be silenced by the powers that be. He was a brown man hung upon a tree outside the city, a man whose very body was the Presence of Love itself.
And all the way through, there was Mary Magdalene - all the way to the cross, all the way to his burial, she witnessed it all.
And so now it’s early in the morning on the third day and Mary comes to the tomb. Mary comes to his grave to grieve. Another gospel account says that she came - along with some other women - bringing spices and oils for anointing. They wanted to reach out and touch him one last time, even though they knew he was gone - they wanted to put sweet-smelling oil on his body, as a way to say goodbye. Mary returned to the grief. She came back to the sadness, to the place where her beloved lay.
The other disciples, on the other hand, were locked away in a room, afraid of what would happen next. If Jesus has been put to death, what will happen to us, they wondered? What if someone finds out we’re associated with him? But not Mary. She had seen Jesus go bravely into moments of tension and difficulty for the sake of love. She had seen him cross social boundaries in order to connect with those the world said were not worth connecting with. Maybe it was that bravery that coursed through her that early morning, when she put one foot in front of the other and kept walking, all the way back to where the hard thing had happened.
“We all have tombs in us, places where we’ve buried bodies that haven’t seen the light of day in years. ”
We all have tombs in us, places where we’ve buried bodies that haven’t seen the light of day in years.
We all have caves where we hide our loneliness, our hurt feelings, our festering wounds.
We take our insecurities and stuff them deep down in a place where no one can see them, alongside our deepest shame, and hope to God that they’ve died in there.
But what Mary Magdalene shows us is that if we are brave enough to go back to the place of the hurt, if we return to the grief, we just might be surprised by what we find there.
You see, it was the disciples who stayed at the cross - Mary, and the other women - who encountered the risen Christ that Easter morning. It’s no coincidence that the ones who stayed in the hard thing and witnessed the death were the ones who had the capacity to witness the resurrection.
The others, who had run away when things got difficult - they stayed locked in their fear. And this is not to shame those disciples who hid in fear, or to shame us when we hide our own fear and hurts away. That’s what we have to do to survive this life! But Easter gives us an invitation to try something different: to walk with Mary Magdalene back to the tomb. We just might be surprised by what we find.
Mary is so amazing because not only does she come back to the place of hurt, she stays there. She abides. She goes and brings the other two disciples, Simon Peter and the one whom Jesus loved. And they run - the tomb is open, how can that be? - and they basically make it into a race - and the one writing the gospel makes sure we know he got there first - and they find the empty tomb, and the linens that had been wrapped around his body - where there should have been death, they see - nothing. In the place where they thought they would find death, they find - surprisingly - nothing. And what do they do? They run away again.
It is Mary Magdalene who stays there at the tomb and weeps.
She is not afraid of grief. She knows that grief is simply love transformed. Mary stood weeping outside the tomb and may we all have the capacity and the courage to stand at the tombs within us and in the world as witnesses to the pain and weep, too.
“...may we all have the capacity and the courage to stand at the tombs within us and in the world as witnesses to the pain and weep, too.”
She not only returns to the place of hurt, she abides there. She has a grounded presence, an ability to stay and feel the grief all the way through. The other disciples don’t stay long enough to see what this new life was. Mary stays and weeps - in sadness, and in confusion, as the tomb is empty. What could this mean? Her only response is to weep. Her only response is to be present in her body, to feel the grief and loss and let it come out as tears and sobs.
New life happens when we roll back the stone from the tomb - the place where we think only sadness and hurt live. But we have to go there to see what God might have done there in the night, while we weren’t looking.
They buried Jesus. But they didn’t know he was a seed.
Could it be that the places of hurt and sadness within us are not tombs at all, but wombs?
Could it be that the places in our world that are too painful to look at - the places of violence and oppression and disconnect - have the potential to be sources of life?
This is the witness of the gospel, this is the witness of the Christian story: it is the very places that scare us the most where new life will surprise us, if only we can stay long enough to witness it, all the way through.
