Easter Day

"Mary stood outside the tomb weeping."

Mary Magdalene was grief stricken at the death of Jesus. Many of us can feel for Mary for we too have been grief stricken at the painful rending of relationship with death brings. All of us have loved and lost. No matter how strong our faith in the reality of eternal life and resurrection – yet we miss those people, that person in this life. No matter how strongly we believe in the eternal love of God powerful over death – yet we miss the one whose love we felt. We miss hearing their voice. We miss the conversations we had. We miss having them around.

When we face the death of someone we love we face an unspeakable loss. A future is mapped out for us where there always be a large absence. Sometimes the finality of the loss is so great that we have to find strategies to deal with it. A common strategy is denial. People tell you how they hear the footsteps of their loved one on the pathway, their key turned in the lock. Or we lay an extra place at the table. Or we say to ourselves ‘Oh I must tell ...that’- Only to remember that we can’t. Sometimes the denial takes the form of searching for the dead. Like Anne a widow who went to the cemetery to look for her husband. Afterwards she wrote this:

‘I went to find you. A mad rendezvous. I remained outside reality, without being able to go in. The tomb was there I could touch the earth that covered you without being able to help it. I began to believe that you would come, a little late as usual, that soon I would feel you approach me. There was no point in telling myself that you were dead. You weren’t coming. No you were waiting for me in the car. A mad hope that I knew to be mad, and still it overtook me. ‘Yes he’s waiting in the car.’ And when I found it to be empty, I protected myself once more: ‘He’s walking on the hill’. I went down to the house talking to friends the while, looking for you on the road. Without believing in it of course.’

But there is no such denial in Mary Magdalene as she goes to the tomb of Jesus. She knows he is dead. No-one could deny the pain of grief that she felt. The loss that Jesus death meant to her must have been almost unbearable. Jesus had rescued her. She had been sick – mentally and emotionally disturbed. She was despised. An outcast. A woman with no friends. Stared at and pointed at in the street. Living on the edge. He had drawn her into his circle of friends. His new community, where people who were nothing gained infinite worth. Under his gaze she had blossomed. She had learned of the new world world where God reigned. Where all the rules and regulations that oppressed her were overturned. Where the poor were rich and the humble exalted. Where the sick found healing and the tormented found peace. Jesus had given to Mary her life - And now he was gone. Leaving behind this empty space. This nothingness. He had loved her – unconditionally as no-one else ever had. But now he was gone. And Mary Magdalene stood at the tomb weeping.

At that moment Mary presents as one of the most poignant and tragic figures in literature. All her hopes and her dreams and her life in ruins - again. Mary grieved not just the death of Jesus – but the death of hope for her. But then the story takes a very different turn. She meets him in the garden. Of course she doesn’t recognise him at first. Why should she? He was dead. But then he speaks her name ‘Mary’.

The voice that had first called her to him was heard again. The voice that had named her and given her a new identity and a new hope was naming her again. The voice that had called her to a new life was calling her again. Even through her tears she knew him. And a like a child who has found a long lost treasure she wanted to cling to him to hold on to him so that she would never lose him again. But that couldn’t be. Nothing would ever be the same again. Mary wouldn’t be the same again. The world would never be the same again.

Jesus said to her. ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’.

Mary now had to learn as we have to learn that you cannot hold onto the Risen Christ. He has been glorified, ascended to the father so that he can be with her and with us in a new powerful and dynamic way. Now through his Sprit Mary’s risen and ascended and glorified Lord Jesus Christ could live within her transforming her life from within. Now by his spirit he would be the life principle that would bring healing and hope and peace within – no matter what the outward circumstances of her life. She needn’t cling to his body and try to possess him anymore because he would come to her by his spirit and take possession of her life and all would be well. Death in all the many forms that it had oppressed Mary had been defeated forever. Her task now was to live the resurrection of Jesus in her new life – and to tell the others. Mary had met the risen Lord.

The healing and the hope and the life that he had promised was now an inextinguishable reality for her. Nothing could separate her from him ever again. ‘Go and tell the others’ He had commanded her. Mary’s message to us is the Gospel message of Easter. The cause of our Alleluia!

That Christ is risen ascended and glorified and through his spirit lives within us. We too can meet him in the most personal way as did Mary. He lives within our hearts and shapes our lives. Just as he has taken possession of Mary so he comes to us to take possession of us that we might know him and share his life forever. For we too with Mary have stood outside a tomb weeping. We have lost one whom we love. The Risen Lord comes to us with the hope of resurrection to new and eternal life. A hope of a new and glorious life beyond death for us all. And a hope that grief will not overwhelm us.

He comes to us as we stand outside the tomb of our lost hopes and our lost dreams. He comes to pick us up and put us back on our feet when life seems to have trodden us down. As he came to Mary so he comes to us to heal us of the hurts that life inflicts upon us. He comes to us as we stand outside the tomb of whom we might be and who the Lord calls us to be – the tomb of our lost selves.

The Risen Lord comes to forgive us for the hurts that we inflict upon ourselves, for the hurts that we inflict upon our relationship with him and with each other. As he named Mary so now our risen and ascended Lord names each of us and calls us to be his, within his family – and like Mary he has a task and a ministry for each one of us. He calls like Mary to go and tell the others by our words and by our deeds so that they too might believe and come to know that Jesus is raised with all that that means for us. Mary discovered Jesus in the garden – or did he find her? And for that she was glad.

But the greatest joy, the true Easter joy is that she and we can discover him always and everywhere. For he is risen ascended and glorified and lives amongst us and within us by his Spirit. That is the Easter Gospel.  Alleluia.