‘Very early the next morning, while it was still dark, Mary went to the tomb’
A sermon preached at All Hallows
by Sheena McMain on 23 March 2008
(Easter Sunday)
- Audio (listen to this sermon online)
Readings:
Acts 10:34—43, John 20:1—18
‘Very early the next morning, while it was still dark, Mary went to the tomb.’
This is a story of breathtaking intimacy and earth-shattering consequence.
A woman. An encounter with God.
A garden. The threshold between night and dawn.
This is a story of losing and being lost.
Of finding and being found.
Of naming and being named.
Of knowing and being known.
This is our story.
We don’t know a great deal about Mary.
But we do know that Jesus healed her of seven demons.
We don’t know what these were: un-reconciled parts of herself perhaps, damaged parts of her personality, maybe even the intrusive voices of psychosis.
Perhaps the secure identity of Jesus offered her a clear mirror to see herself more clearly, stilled her clamorous inner chaos without the ‘confounding chaos of another’.
At any rate Mary was all broken up, a woman in bits, and he healed her.
She was his devoted companion. She loved him. He was the centre of her world.
Can we dare then to imagine in what frame of mind Mary came to that garden: the man who held her true centre crucified, dead and buried?
Any one of us who has known terrible loss will recall vividly those first days of numbness, dislocation and bewilderment, of total loss of bearings.
Now even the one tangible reminder of Jesus, his body, has gone.
Mary has lost everything: focus, purpose, meaning, identity.
She is in terrible pain.
So focused is she on her own pain she fails to even recognise Jesus, the man she supposes to be the gardener.
Terrible pain can do that to a person.
That’s our story.
Jesus takes the step she can’t take: asks her to articulate what she’s looking for.
But it’s not till Jesus names her that she recognises him. In so naming her, with a single word of love, he affirms her identity and her unique relationship with Him.
He focuses her on Him and not herself, reorientates and holds her to her true centre in Him .
That’s our story too.
Jesus was a man entirely at home in his human body.
So it’s not surprising Mary reaches out to touch him in the joy of recognition, the remembrance of times shared. She wants things back the way they were.
But now He gently shows her things are to be different.
She is to stop her desperate clinging and step into the new security of their new relationship.
And then she recognises him for who he really is: My Lord and my God.
That’s our story too.
Finally he gifts her with a new relationship to herself: he sends her to tell her brothers.
In Jesus’s day women were not considered reliable witnesses in court.
This woman Mary, who has been mad, been thought mad, and thought herself gone mad, is gifted that morning with a new confident identity as witness to a miracle, articulate and credible. A witness who is still remembered by us today.
A stunning transformation.
This is our story.
For some of us Easter Day can be hard to get into.
It can feel at times that life is one long Good Friday.
Mary was in great pain. She was shattered.
Yet amidst the turmoil of grief she heard the voice of Jesus:
Peace, be still.
He brought order out of chaos, integration out of disintegration.
No one else could have known Mary as Jesus did.
No one else could known Jesus the way Mary did.
No one else could have had the relationship she and Jesus had.
No one else could have become what she became and done what she did.
That’s our story.
We are all uniquely known.
The gospel honours our individual encounter with Jesus. But more than this, it challenges us to move from the private to the public: to go and tell our brothers. To share ourselves, our story, and our experience of Jesus with others so they may know him also.
Jesus also challenges us to move from the past to present.
As we stand by our empty tombs peering into the familiar darkness of our hurts, our pain, our habits, our fears and our false securities, blinking like newborn babies in the brightness of his light , He who told us he would open our graves calls us out by name: Sheena … Bernie … Bob … David, Alison, Rachel, Jean: every single person here at All Hallows today without exception, without exception.
Why seek the living among the dead? See, I am making all things new. All things.
Even things that feel like death. Especially the things that feel like death.
Gene Robinson, openly gay priest and Bishop of New Hampshire, says this:
‘When I was preparing for my consecration as the Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire , I was getting a lot of death threats. Preparations were being made for the consecration security, and I was asked for my blood type so that preparations could be made for immediately beginning medical treatment on the way to hospital should something violent take place. I remember saying to our two grown daughters who were worried and anxious about my well-being,
“You know, there are worse things than death. Some people actually never live…,and that is the worst death of all. If something does happen, remember that the God who has loved me my whole life will still be loving me, and I will have died doing something I believe in with my whole heart.”
‘As I strapped on my bullet-proof vest just before the service, I remember feeling blessedly calm about whatever might happen.
‘Not because I am brave, but because God is good and because God has overcome death, so that I never have to be afraid again.
‘That is the power of the resurrection. Not in what happens after death, but what the knowledge of the resurrection does for our lives and ministries before death.
‘I am not worried nearly as much about life after death as to whether there is life before death!’
Jesus said ‘I am come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.’
We worship a God of surprises.
We worship a God who includes everyone, everyone, everywhere equally without favour and over all time.
We worship a God who has redeemed, is redeeming, and will redeem the whole of creation.
We can rightly say with Julian of Norwich that, despite the brokenness of our lives, our relationships, our communities and our world, ‘All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.’
Jesus tells us to step into hope, ‘to go ahead and he will meet us in Galilee.’
So this Easter ‘lose your fear, forget about comfort, drop your nets and make a mad dash after the mysterious stranger who invites you to participate in God’s resurrection life.’
The life that gives freedom to the oppressed, binds up the broken-hearted, proclaims liberty to captives, gives recovery of sight to the blind, makes the lame dance and the dumb sing.
Alleluia! He is risen indeed!
Copyright © 2008 Sheena McMain
Audio
This sermon was recorded. If you wish, you can listen to the sermon online. Just click on the appropriate link below:
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| 23 March 2008 |
‘Very early the next morning, while it was still dark, Mary went to the tomb’ |
12m 43s |
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*Notes on the audio formats
- MP4 format
MP4 format is a multimedia container format standard. Audio MP4 files can combine high compression with very high quality. Many media players can play MP4 files, including RealPlayer, QuickTime, iTunes, and recent versions of Windows Media Player (you may need to download a codec from www.free-codecs.com/download/3ivx.htm).
- Windows Media Player format
Windows Media Player is installed as part of Windows. If you have an earlier version, you can download version 9 (for Windows 98SE, Millennium and 2000) or version 10 or later (for Windows XP and Vista) from www.microsoft.com/downloads/Browse.aspx?categoryid=4. These are quite large downloads [~ 10 MB or larger], so if you have a dial-up connection you may prefer to ask Phil for a copy of the installation program on CD.
- RealAudio format
This requires RealPlayer (or the older RealOne Player) to be installed. A free version of RealPlayer can be downloaded from http://uk.real.com/player/ (choose the free player on the left of the page) — but again it’s a large download [~ 13 MB], so if you have a dial-up connection you may prefer to ask Phil for a copy of the installation program on CD.
Alternatively, you can install Real Alternative, which will allow you to play RealMedia files without having to install RealPlayer/RealOne Player. Real Alternative is free, and works well with all major browsers; it is also a much smaller download (5.7 MB). Get it from http://www.free-codecs.com/Real_Alternative_download.htm.
This page was last updated on Tuesday, 19 February 2008
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