Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb, and all she saw was that the stone had been removed from the tomb. She had spent the sabbath at home, but it had not been a good sabbath, not a day of holy rest. It was nothing but an endless stretch of empty time and numb silence, interrupted only by moments when memories welled up and her tears just started flowing.
Mary was heartbroken and sad. She was angry at the world and the powers that ruled it with selfish ambition and such violence. It hadn’t been that long that Jesus had given her the courage to imagine a world where masters wash the feet of servants, where the blind see and the lame dance, where the hungry are fed, and all who mourn are comforted.
She had allowed this man to awaken hope in her, bold, boundless hope. Because of him, she had begun to lean into a world of possibility: the possibility of forgiveness, the possibility of belonging to a community shaped by mutual love, the possibility of life abundant for all, young and old, brave and timid, friend and stranger.
And now he was dead; and with him, her hope had died. Mary found herself lost in a void that swallowed up light and life like a black hole. All she had were memories — and the garden tomb where Joseph and Nicodemus had laid his body.
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb. She came by herself — she wanted to be alone, I suppose, or she could have asked one of her friends to come with her. She came to the garden and she saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. Talk about a black hole — this gaping mouth of death, it was all she saw. The body was gone. Mary had already lost so much, so much of what gave her joy and confidence and hope, and now even that last place of tangible connection with Jesus’ body had been violated.
She ran back and told the others, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” They — whoever they were — had not only quenched the light of his luminous presence in the world, they had managed to make his absence unbearably complete. It was as though the pre-dawn darkness became even darker.
And at this dark moment, the story turns into comedy. We hear about the curious footrace between Peter and the other disciple, and who got there first, and who saw what first, and who was the first to believe, and how the two of them — and how’s that for a resurrection punch line — how the two of them went home. It’s like we get this close to holy Easter laughter erupting in the garden and spreading throughout the world — but no, the two went home.
Mary stood outside the tomb, weeping. “Woman, why are you weeping?” the angels asked her, and their question sounds a tad insensitive, doesn’t it? Had Mary had any strength left in her, I imagine she would have said to them, Why am I weeping? Why aren’t you? Haven’t you been paying attention? Don’t you see what is going on here? Don’t you see how they take away everything that is beautiful, destroy everything that is promising, and pile up ugliness and death on every side? How can you not weep when the light of the world has been snuffed? They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.
And here the story turns into comedy again, with a moment of mistaken identity. Mary turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. “Woman, why are you weeping?” the stranger asked, sounding just like one of the angels. “Whom are you looking for?” She thought that perhaps he was the gardener, while some of us are wondering what he was wearing, since John was so very careful to tell us that the graveclothes were still in the tomb.
“Sir,” she said, “if you have carried him away, please tell me where you have laid him.” At this point, you almost want to step in and say, Mary, can’t you see?
No, she can’t, not yet, and I for one am glad, because she helps me understand that seeing the Lord is not a matter of being at the right tomb at the right hour.
On the night before his arrest, Jesus told the disciples, “A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me.” They said, “What does he mean by this ‘a little while?’” and he responded, “You will weep and mourn, you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy. I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice.” And there in the darkness before dawn Jesus did see her, but she didn’t see him, or saw him but didn’t recognize him — until he spoke her name, “Mary!” That was when light and life returned to the garden, and joy and confidence and hope. “Rabbouni!” she said, calling him what she had always called him, and then she went and told the disciples, “I have seen the Lord.”
A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me, he had told them. We know a thing or two about “a little while” feeling like the longest time, and not just because we haven’t seen each other face to face, in person, in what feels like forever. The vision of God’s kingdom on earth awakens hope in us, but the powers of this world destroy and bury that hope. We mourn, we weep, we seek to reconnect with what we once knew, wondering who has taken it away, struggling to know where we might go and find it. We seek answers, we plead, we run back and forth, and most of what we see is ambiguous.
And so we keep searching and waiting, until we hear the familiar voice calling us by name, and we see him, and somehow we know in our bones that nothing and no one can extinguish the love that makes us one with God and one another, the love that gives us the courage to live and love and hope, the love and life and light revealed in Jesus Christ.
I hear a lot of talk, and you do, too, about “when life will return to normal.” I hear a lot of talk about that in my own thoughts and longings. But the resurrection is not the triumphant return of what was. It is the beginning of what shall be. When the first followers met Jesus, he asked them, “What are you looking for?” and he invited them to come and see. When Mary stood outside the tomb, weeping, he asked her, “Whom are you looking for?” He called her by name, and she came and saw, and he sent her to go and tell.
Like them, we listen for that voice and call and we follow, we seek, we find, we lose, we see without seeing, we hear our name, we want to hold on, and we let go for the promise of life’s fulfillment in the love that has found us in Christ. We do hold on, though not to the way in which we once knew life or ourselves or Jesus, we hold on to the promise that he will not leave us orphaned, the promise that he will see us and we will see him.
A couple of weeks ago I said that every Sunday is a little Easter. I’m not going to take that back now; it’s true, and not just for liturgy nerds. But the greater truth is, every day is the third day now.
Every day, he sees us, speaks our name, and the Friday darkness of buried hope gives way to the light. Every day, the Risen One breathes on us, and the Spirit gathers us into the intimacy and joy of real community — even when love demands that we do not gather, touch, hug and hold hands for a little while. Every day, the Risen One doesn’t so much burst forth with the sound of rolling timpani and bright trumpets, as he tiptoes onto the scene, silent as light, barely recognized at first, emerging from the deep shadows of sorrow like the dawn.