“It has always struck me as remarkable that when the writers of the four Gospels come to the most important part of the story they have to tell, they tell it in whispers. The part I mean, of course, is the part about the resurrection. The Jesus who was dead is not dead anymore. He has risen. He is here. According to the Gospels there was no choir of angels to proclaim it. There was no sudden explosion of light in the sky. Not a single soul was around to see it happen. When Mary Magdalene arrived at the tomb afterward, she thought at first that it must be a gardener standing there in the shadows, and when she saw who it really was and tried to embrace him, he told her not to, as if for fear that once she had him in her arms she would never let him go, the way I suspect that if you and I were ever to have him in our arms, we would never let him go either… The way the Gospel writers tell it, in other words, Jesus came back from death not in a blaze of glory, but more like a candle flame in the dark, flickering first in this place, then in that place, then in no place at all. If they had been making the whole thing up for the purpose of converting the world, presumably they would have described it more the way the book of Revelation describes how he will come back again at the end of time with “the armies of heaven arrayed in fine linen, white and pure” and his eyes “like a flame of fire, and on his head many diadems” (19:14, 12). But that is not the way the Gospels tell it. They are not trying to describe it as convincingly as they can. They are trying to describe it as truthfully as they can. It was the most extraordinary thing they believed had ever happened, and yet they tell it so quietly that you have to lean close to be sure what they are telling.  They tell it as softly as a secret, as something so precious, and holy, and fragile, and unbelievable, and true, that to tell it any other way would be somehow to dishonor it. To proclaim the resurrection the way they do, you would have to say it in whispers: “Christ has risen.” Like that.” 

Frederick Buechner in “Longing For Home”

1.  It’s true.  Like many other things in the life of Jesus there are no trumpets blaring or loud promotions and endorsements from celebrities.  It is often “tell no one”.  It is good news that sneaks up on you.  In some sense the passage this morning is a parable of our own lives.  It is a process of coming to realize who Jesus is.  It is our story told through the eyes of Mary Magdalene.

Read John 20:1-18

She sees the stone has been moved, looks briefly in the dark and runs assuming the worst in the darkness.  It’s often true that the best news when we are in the dark looks like the worst news.
Good news in the dark is bad news.

2.  She returns and looking in the second time she sees two angels just sitting.  No announcements.  No good news for all people.  No shepherds or wise men.  Just angels – and they are asking trick questions.  “Woman, why are you crying?  Who is it you are looking for?”

Why does God ask questions at a time like this instead of speaking words of comfort?  Revelations are supposed to come with answers included – not more questions.  Angels are supposed to bring explanation and protection.  Angels only come with good news – not questions. It feels almost cruel and insensitive.

We say “Jesus is the Answer” so often and easily but he is not always in the way we like to think.  He is often the source of a whole new set of questions.  Especially in the dark times.  But the questions we are asked in those times are often the ones that change our lives forever.  “Who are you looking for?” is sometimes a question we can only hear in the dark times.

Dr. Michael Balboni at Harvard Medical was here this week and met with a group of physicians.  He is studying the relationship between physicians, clergy, family and patients during end of life illness.  He said while most of the patients he has interviewed – especially those with cancer – have initially seen their illness as punishment from God they have often told him later that they consider this to be the best thing that has happened to their inner life.  The question “why me?” has been put aside and the real questions about meaning have taken it’s place.

3.  She sees Jesus but does not recognize him.

She is focused on the only explanation she could imagine.  She connected the only dots she could see and the only answer that makes sense.  “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

The greatest thing that would ever happen in her life looks like the worst.  Not even angels can make it better.  Not only do they kill him but now they have desecrated the body.

She is blind to what is by being so intent on fixing what was.

4.  She sees only when she hears her name.

There are a number of studies done of patients who have returned from comas and they remember their name being spoken even if they remember little else.

It’s sometimes called the “cocktail party effect” because our ears can distinguish particular voices in the noise of everyone else talking – especially if they say our name.

When the one who named you calls your name it is unlike any other voice.  The way my mother said my name was different from any other voice – not just the sound but the way it described our relationship when she said it.  It was not just my name she was calling but it was my mother calling.  No one else could say my name like that. “Time for dinner” was different when she said it. “Come in and wash up” was more than that.  I still hear her voice calling my name sometimes.  It’s never frightening as if she were a ghost.  It’s the most comforting sound in the world. It’s the voice of the person who knew me the best and the one I trusted the most – even in the difficult times.

But even then she only sees him as who she has known him to be.  “Teacher” she says.  I can imagine her thinking.  “I don’t understand what has happened here but the worst is over.  Life is back to normal somehow.  Jesus is here again.”  But he’s not, is he?

G. Campbell Morgan puts it this way, “Mary, do not cling to me as you used to know me.  The old order has changed…and you are going to have to break with it.  I’m not just yet what I will be but I’m not what I was – it is even better than Teacher.”

In other words, you have lost what you knew and loved.  Let it go.  Jesus is not where or who we expect him to be.  He is always surprising us with the unexpected that sometimes seems insensitive.

Look at the account of Jesus at the Temple compared to Jesus at the Tomb. (Luke 2 and John 20)

Two Mary’s.  One his mother and the other Mary Magdalene.

Both after three days.

Both looking for what is lost.

Both amazement in the finding.

Both met with questions about what they are looking for and what they expected.

Both end with Jesus’ sense of purpose and direction.  He has not just gone to heaven and sat down to wait for us.  He still goes ahead of us and is about his father’s business.

5.  She finally sees “The Lord” but only after unseeing him as Teacher.

She does let go of what he was and what was most comfortable.  She let go and really sees him now for who he is – not who he used to be.  She goes back to the disciples again but this time she is reporting she has seen The Lord – not the Teacher.

Wendell Berry wrote a poem in which one of the lines is “Practice resurrection”.  He uses it to show how a life that has experienced the resurrection of Jesus is different from normal life.  It is a life that not only surprises the people around us but it surprises even ourselves.

Eugene Peterson took the phrase as a title for one of his books and said this about practicing resurrection:
“We live our lives in the practice of what we do not originate and cannot anticipate. When we practice resurrection, we continuously enter into what is more than we are. When we practice resurrection, we keep company with Jesus, alive and present, who knows where we are going better than we do…” 

Every great religion in the world sees Jesus as Teacher – and that is what blinds them to who he really is.  It’s one of the dangers of focusing too much on his teachings and not enough on the resurrection.  We begin to live by the wisdom of Jesus instead of the new life of Christ.

Romans 8:11: “And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.”  We do not live now by the teachings of Jesus but by the life of the Spirit of Christ.

6.  That is why the resurrection is central.  That is why we need to be careful about the emphasis on an improved life instead of a life that has died and been raised with Christ.

Paul warns us of the distortion of a faith that is focused on the improvement of this life.  Unfortunately, we have so emphasized the value of the gospel in making this life better that we have distracted people from the death and resurrection of Jesus – and even our own death. We still have to go through death and that is something we have tried to avoid.

“I am sure that the separation of church buildings from graveyards was not the intentional start of this process, but it certainly helped to lessen the presence of death. The present generation does not have the inconvenience of passing by the graves of loved ones as it gathers for worship. Nowadays, death has all but vanished from the inside of churches as well. Perhaps it is ironic, but the church that confronts people with the reality of the shortness of life lived under the shadow of death prepares them for resurrection better than the church that goes straight to resurrection triumphalism without that awkward mortality bit.” 
Carl Trueman in “First Things”

Paul calls a life where faith is only about improving this life a pitiful faith.  It is hope that is false hope because it is the hope of only making this life better and putting off thinking about the real life that is to come.  Eric Hoffer said, “It is the around the corner brand of hope that prompts people to action while the distant hope acts as an opiate.”  Too often, it is that “around the corner hope” that we are giving people because we know we want our hope now.  We want hope we can see now. Napoleon Bonaparte said, “Leaders are dealers in hope” and that’s true…but too often it is the hope of a false promise or the kind of hope that is “around the corner”.

Only the resurrection allows us to live this life well and with purpose – because we are part of something that is far greater than this life.  We can never fully see what God is preparing but we fix our eyes on it.  We look for it.  We wait for it.  We live in anticipation of it.  We do not avoid it.  We are preparing for it and not dreading it.

In some ways, life is a never ending process of “unseeing” and being drawn forward by the unseen and unpredictable.  It is living with God’s surprises and the knowledge that even though we are afraid we can be filled with joy – as Matthew described Mary.  Jesus made the disciples unafraid of death without making them disinterested in living.

7.  The Spirit of God is gradually but relentlessly recreating us and making us ready for what is next.

Don’t be afraid.  Don’t hold on to the way things used to be.  Don’t look for the living among the dead.  Don’t expect easy answers and formulas. Be ready to “unsee” everything you know and to be about the Father’s business in the time he has given you.

The Russian writer Leo Tolstoy wrote this:
“My question – that which at the age of fifty brought me to the verge of suicide – was the simplest of questions, lying in the soul of every man from the foolish child to the wisest elder: it was a question without an answer to which one cannot live, as I had found by experience. It was: “What will come of what I am doing today or shall do tomorrow? What will come of my whole life?”Differently expressed, the question is: “Why should I live, why wish for anything, or do anything?” It can also be expressed thus: “Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?”

Only the certainty of the resurrection can answer that question.

It is the resurrection that gives our life meaning. As Lucy says in the Chronicles of Narnia:
“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now…”
“The light ahead was growing stronger. Lucy saw that a great series of many-coloured cliffs led up in front of them like a giant’s staircase. And then she forgot everything else, because Aslan himself was coming, leaping down from cliff to cliff like a living cataract of power and beauty… And as he spoke he no longer looked to them like a lion; the the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and the adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

Where are you this morning?

Fearing the worst?

Questions instead of answers?

Trying to recapture what was?

Living by the wisdom of Jesus and not the life of Christ?

Having to “unsee” Jesus and see him for who he is now?

Looking for hope in this life only?

Practicing resurrection?

“So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
Practice resurrection.“