John 20:1-18
March 31, 2002—10:05 Worship
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco.
Susan R. Andrews, a minister in Bethesda, Maryland, tells a story about Lydia, a gifted concert pianist who is also a wife and a mother. Her life is full of riches—a satisfying career, an intriguing husband, four lively children, and dozens of nurturing friendships.
But then tragedy strikes. On a sunny day in January, the phone call comes. Her two oldest children—a son, Steven, and a daughter, Amy—are both dead. They were instantly killed when the bus carrying the high school ski trip plunged off a cliff. What has been Lydia’s heaven turns into instant hell.
Somehow, life goes on. Lydia grinds through the funeral. She disposes of the children’s clothing and belongings. She forces herself to go back to work—pounding on the piano that pays the bills.
Lydia’s friends are pleased because she is “managing;” in fact they are amazed that she seems to be coping so well. But her friends don’t know Lydia’s secret. In fact, nobody knows Lydia’s secret.
In the middle of the afternoon—when no one else is around, when the pain gets so excruciating that Lydia can’t breathe—she quietly slips into her dead daughter’s room and crawls into Amy’s bed. Though she gave away Amy’s clothes, she has never changed the sheets on Amy’s bed. Crawling inside those sheets, wrapping herself in their remembered warmth, Lydia closes her eyes and opens her heart and Amy is still with her—the sweet breath of the sixteen-year-old replacing the staleness of old sheets.
The writer, Gail Godwin calls this kind of grief “a living ache.” This treasured ache is hoard by us and we go out looking for it. We don’t want the ache to go away because as long as it is there, so are the dead loved ones. They can go on living with us as long as the ache is physically present.
Mary Weeping
Today’s Gospel lesson tells about Mary knowing well this “living ache.” She stood weeping outside the tomb. By coming back to the tomb, early in the morning when no one else is around, Mary can come back to Jesus. In her imagination, she can crawl under the sheets with him and she can keep him alive in her heart. Then Jesus can stay the same, and she can stay the same, and nothing will have to change.
But God has a different plan for Mary. God in the resurrected Christ moved Mary from the past to go into the future. God changed her grief into hope.
The resurrected Christ appears to Mary and says, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for? Why do you have this living ache?” At first, she didn’t recognize him and thought that he was the gardener.
Some people think that it was still so early in the morning that it was too dark for Mary to see anything clearly. Or could it be that the tears in Mary’s eyes blurred her vision. Or maybe she turned away from him embarrassed over her grief-stricken face and didn’t see his.
Maybe, Mary didn’t recognize Jesus because she was looking for the old and not the new. Maybe she was looking for what she lost and not what she has been given. Maybe the living ache in her caused her to only see that her Lord was dead.
Resurrection New Life
On this Easter Sunday, I am mindful that in the short few years that I have been with you—I have walked with you on some long, dark journeys. Death has no respect for our scheduled holiday of events. Our world stops and we have this living ache that just won’t go away.
Although I don’t look forward to officiating at funerals, they give me an opportunity to preach an Easter sermon every time. Like Mary weeping outside the tomb, we figure that we are born, we live, and then we die. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and that’s all there is. But when it comes to the empty tomb we find that all of that kind of thinking gets turned on its head. At the empty tomb, death and sadness do not have the final word.
My friends, it’s important for us to know what resurrection means. It does not mean reincarnation. That belongs to Hinduism. It does not mean the immortality of the soul. That belongs to Greek philosophy.
Resurrection means re-creation out of death and then breaking forth in totally new ways. The resurrected Christ is not physically the same as the crucified Jesus. Resurrection means life bursting forth out of nothingness—even the nothingness of grief. It means life that is new and different.
Mary didn’t recognize resurrection because she did not want it. What she wanted were things like the way they used to be—with Jesus as her friend and her teacher. If she couldn’t have things the way they were, then she wanted things to be the way they might have been—if only Jesus had lived, if only he hadn’t been so holy and righteous, if only…
The last thing Mary wanted to do was to relate to Jesus in a new “spiritual” way—for if her Jesus changed, then she would have to change too. In the resurrection of the Lord, the crucified Jesus is now the resurrected Christ! Mary needs to change!
Before and If Only
We can identify with Mary because we too like to cling to the way things are, the way things used to be. We want to go back to the way things were before:
before our children grew up and left us,
before our husband died or our wife got sick,
before that friendship turned sour,
before our bodies began to sag and our energies dwindle,
before tragedy and heartache turned us bitter,
before our roles and family relationships changed,
before work got difficult and faith got confused and life turned dangerous,
before September 11th.
We say, “If we can’t go back, we’ll live with the “living ache” of the past, because if the ache is there, the past is there.”
Others of us yearn not for the way things were—but the way things could have been—if only:
if only that child lived,
if only we had followed our dreams,
if only we had accepted that job,
if only we had tried one more time,
if only life could have dealt us a better hand,
if only I was there so I could have helped.
When we dwell in the past, we are unable to acknowledge who we really are, and what God has in store for us, now.
Jesus’ response to Mary—and to us—is gentle and firm, “Don’t cling to me.” “Do not hold onto me.” Don’t focus on the way things were or the way things might have been. Jesus tells Mary to let go of the past. Mary needs to stop playing the “Before” and “If Only” games with her life. So Jesus tells her to let go. “Do not hold onto me,” instead, “Go and tell the disciples what you have seen.”
With these words, Jesus commissions Mary into ministry—into a vocation of service—into embracing a world beyond her grief and love for Jesus. Jesus helps Mary to transform her sorrow and loss into hope and life and love for others.
In the resurrection, Jesus has changed to the Risen Christ. Mary stops holding on to that living ache and believes in the Living Christ!
Jewish Folktale
There’s a Jewish folktale about a man whose son died in a tragic accident. The man, crazy with grief, mourned the loss so deeply that no one could provide him with comfort. At last a friend took him to the house of a holy man where he made his sobbing plea. “Use your powers to bring my son back to life. Surely you are able by prayer or some magic to induce the Almighty to lighten my grief!”
The old man spoke kindly to the father, “Bring me a mustard seed from a home that has never known sorrow. I will use that seed to remove the pain from your life.”
The man immediately set out in search of the magic mustard seed. He first picked the home of a wealthy family, because he was convinced that they never knew sorrow. But as soon as he spoke to the wealthy wife, he learned differently. With tears and lament, this woman began to pour out the sorrow and tragedies of her life. And the man listened. For several days he listened and cared.
When he left to resume his search the man visited a modest home a mile away. The experience was the same. Wherever he traveled, from mansion to hut, he was greeted with tales of sadness and sorrow. Everyone found him a willing and careful listener.
After months of travel he became so involved with the grief and struggles of others that he forgot about his own search for the magic mustard seed, never realizing that it had indeed remove the sorrow from his life.
Cling to the Living Christ
My friends, if we believe in the resurrection of Jesus, then it is possible to believe in the resurrection for ourselves when our time comes. We don’t need to play those “Before” and “If Only” games anymore. Out of nothingness in the tomb where grief and disappointment reside, there is life for us—a new life to replace the old.
If we trust that the risen Christ is with us, then we can find courage to let go, stop clinging to that “living ache,” and turn and go and tell, listen and care and serve. Let the past be and welcome the future—for there we will find the promise and the gift of the living Christ.
When Jesus told Mary to not hold onto him but to go and tell the disciples what has happened he said, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” When we believe in Christ’s resurrection, we too will be resurrected and will know God as our Father.
On this day, Easter morning, Christ is risen. He is risen, indeed. Hallelujah!
Let us pray.
O Gracious and loving God, the spirit of the living Christ has come among us today, claiming us for our new life together. Forgive us from clinging on to the past. Lord, move us from death to life to share in the promise of Easter! Amen.