Easter 2004

John 20: 1-18

Rev. Elizabeth Macaulay

Mary Magdalene is getting a lot of press these days.

With the printing of Dan Brown's book The DaVinci Code, lots of people are talking about Mary. (How many of you have read it?)

People are wondering:

Is she the disciple seated just to Jesus' right in DaVinci's painting of The Last Supper?

What was the nature of her relationship with Jesus?

Why is her voice or perspective so seldom considered?

Why is the gospel of Mary, which does exist, so seldom heard?

On this Easter morning, it is Mary's voice we will hear.

It is Mary Magdalene who is the first to discover that the power of her beloved teacher would live on. It is Mary, a woman who knew the way of public silencing, who was the first to speak the good news of the resurrection.

The story we hear this morning is not hers alone. It is ours as well.

Each of us, who have known the panic and despair of wondering if life would ever sparkle again.

Each of us, who have felt utterly abandoned to the abyss of despair. This is our story, too.

So I share with you this Easter the story of Mary Magdalene, as she might have told it herself.

I am Mary of Magdala. I have spent my life trying to give voice to what Jesus taught me.

For you to understand my story, you have to know that before I met Jesus, I was among the "not seen".

I was a woman who was, they say, possessed by demons. Seven of them.

Many believed that my struggle was sure sign that God had judged me. My illness made it uncomfortable for people to be around me. Maybe they were afraid that what I struggled with was catching. Maybe they didn't know how to help me, and so they remained distant.

Maybe I made them uncomfortable because having to see me as a person was too clear a reminder that there is so much about life that is laced with pain. So much we don't know about.

For whatever reason, I was ignored, avoided, judged, shunned. As long as I was invisible, I didn't cost people their compassion, which they seemed to want to hoard close to their hearts.

It was hard not to feel bitter and hate filled; toward God and toward the people of God. When I felt it creeping into my heart, that bitterness, I tried to keep it at bay. I knew it was as dangerous to me as the unknown forces that overtook my body.

And so I lived.

Possessed by demons which attacked my body.

Possessed by the demon of social isolation which attacked my soul.

And, against all odds, possessed by a sense that there was something more to living than misery.

Sometimes I would wish for my passion for living to leave me. If I could stop hoping. If I could stop loving the possibilities of life. If I could stop believing that there was somehow more, I could plod through my days without the constant battle between hope and despair dogging my every invisible step.

But I could not let go of the sense that there was something more. And I know now that the whisper of hope that would not be stilled was a holy kind of gift. Because it spoke to my heart when I first saw the teacher.

He who was hope given voice and touch.

I have to tell you an extraordinary thing. When we came face to face, Jesus actually SAW me. He did not back away from the pain I was in or the struggle that was mine. Instead of seeing through me, he reached out to me and he touched my places of pain and the demons - those unexplainable forces that had tormented me so long - they gave up their power over my life and I was healed. I was healed.

I was no longer the unseen and untouched.

I was alive.

With the memory of my long struggle and dear the God amazing gift of new life.

There was no choice about what I would do with the gratitude and wonder I felt. I followed the healer. I listened to his teachings. I watched the effect he had on others.

Others like me, who were used to being not seen.

And, I watched the effect he had on others who were very aware of being seen.

Those in power, very sure of their right to be seen, did not at all like the message my teacher brought to all who would listen. He taught that God would have us see all people, tend all people, listen to all people.

I watched as people in power - temple elite and political elite and social elite alike - struggled to figure out what to do about the message Jesus taught. He taught a message that has meant danger to prophets through the ages. He taught that those without - without voice or social status or power - those people and all who lived by God's ways would be raised up to fullness of life. Regardless of wealth or status or privilege. I worried about his safety as I smelled the fear and anger of those who were threatened by the message of Jesus.

And, I watched as those who were listening to him began to allow themselves to hope. To believe that at long last, after so many years of living under the boot of Rome, the Messiah was in our midst. A teacher who could bring us to the way of God. His healings and the power of his presence called many to his side. The numbers who came to hear his message grew.

The hope that was unleashed in me when I was healed was being unloosed in the hearts of many throughout the land.

And he became a marked man.

Because he preached hope, he became marked for death. We who lived with him day in and day out were torn over how to advise him. We knew that to hear his message was to hear the way of life. We knew that the good news he taught was alive and HAD to be shared. But we also knew that he was risking so very much. His success, the power of his message, the incredible gift he had for seeing and hearing and challenging was like a sure invation for trouble.

And it came, trouble. It came.

And he would not run from it.

And my heart, which was so newly mended, was awakened to pain I never could have imagined.

Because they put him to death. The giver of life. They put him to death in the way of the most base of criminals. He was crucified. Publicly humiliated and scorned. The target for spit and jeers.

The promise of "God with us" was hung on a tree.

I could not leave his side. I wanted him to know that I was there to see him in his pain as he had seen me in mine and I begged God to spare Jesus this horror. My prayers were unanswered. He died on that cross.

One of our group offered a burial place for him to be laid. And so we took him down off the cross, washing his body with tears welling up from the very depths of our souls.

We laid our love in a tomb, and rolled a stone against it to keep out animals and grave robbers.

And we left. Each of us devastated by what we had seen and heard. Each of us shattered, frightened, furiously searching in our hearts for the answer to why this could happen. How could hope and holy love be nailed to a cross to bleed itself out?

We were together, but we were each very much alone in our thoughts. What could we have done to help him? What had we done that might have led to his death?

I have never felt so alone or empty in my life. Being invisible was better than this shattering of his body and vision, this shattering of my heart.

After a time I knew that I had to get out and do something. I needed to be close. Since he had died on the eve of the Sabbath, we had not been allowed to anoint his body because of Sabbath law. I wanted to tend him in some way. So I went to the tomb.

I did not believe that any more pain could be wrung from my heart. But oh, when I approached his tomb I saw that the stone used to close it had been rolled away.

It was beyond cruel that after all that had been taken from us, his body would be taken from the sanctity of its resting place.

I ran to tell Simon Peter, and he and another of our group ran to confirm what my eyes had seen. They too saw, and then left me there. Alone.

I could not leave. It was too much. I sat outside of the tomb and cried out my anger and my pain and my fear and my sense of utter helplessness.

I sat until I summoned the courage to look into the tomb and make myself see the emptiness there.

But it was not emptiness. I saw two dazzling figures who asked me what it was that was breaking my heart. I did not have the energy to care why they were there. I was intent on finding the body of my beloved teacher. So I shared the news with them -

"They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him."

Senseing a movement behind me, I whirled around hopeing that whoever it was could help me. This figure too asked me why it was I wept. He also asked me who it was I was looking for.

I begged him - "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away."

And then the figure spoke again. He called me by name.

"Mary".

Oh God in heaven it was my teacher. It was Jesus. The one who saw me and taught me to see and who was there in that place of death so very alive and my battered heart threatened to stop for the sheer joy of being in the presence of Him who was love - for me and for so many.

I threw myself at his feet and embraced him for the sheer wonder of being able to and the sound of my weeping - this time for joy - echoed off the walls of the tomb that could not contain the power of his love.

He pulled me to my feet and looked into my eyes and he who saw me allowed me to see him. Risen from the dead. Alive. Testament to the lessons he taught ----------

That God IS. That God is in the struggle. Challenging us to see each other. Inviting us to a vision for living together grounded not in fear but in hope and in love. Calling us to believe and follow, to live into the promise that we are - each one of us - called to life lived in God's embrace. The power of death, the power of Rome, the power of fear. No power is greater than the power of holy love.

He sent me out to tell the news to any who would listen.

And I did. Stumbling over the words and the wonder and the need to tell as many as I could, I did.

And I will tell the news, as long as I have life to tell it. There are those who cannot believe what I tell them. And I understand, I do. Because I was there, in the presence of the Risen Lord, and my fear and grief were so huge that I could not recognize his voice until he spoke my name.

Listen. If you have ever felt invisible, overcome by the immensity of pain, or alone; listen to what I tell you.

He is risen. Even yet. He is risen.