To Have the Best

Mary Magdalene was the first to see.  She was the first one there, with some of the other women.  Mark tells us they ran, scared out of their wits, not telling anyone a thing of what they had been told to tell and share.  But Mary Magdalene didn’t run away terrified.  She ran to Peter and to John—what do you suppose they were doing?  Where were the other nine apostles?  All the Easter bulletins I’ve ever seen make it out to be sunrise, and we get why—the new day, the new light.  But John as well as the others remind us that it was still dark when the women made their way to the tomb, to finish the job.  The law had prevented them; love drove them there again as soon as they could go.

But what they encountered only left the women in the dark: the stone—it had been removed.  The sealed, closed tomb had been opened.  Why?  Who?  Everyone had been so eager to close the matter, shut Jesus away, out of sight, out of mind.  Dead and done.  Why come back and open what you wanted closed?  Now, the women hadn’t considered how they themselves that morning were going to open the tomb to go in to the dead body to finish the job.  They weren’t thinking ahead: still numb, broken, devastated.  Now this.

Mary didn’t know who else to go to, or, rather, she knew just who to go to.  Peter and John . . . they seemed to know how to take initiative; they knew how to act—they weren’t ones just to stand around, looking boggled, waiting for somebody to tell them what to do.  “So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!’” (20:2).  They—who?  The Romans?  What would they do with a body they had already beaten and killed?  The servants of the priests?  The priests were the ones who had orchestrated the death of Jesus: they of all people wanted Jesus dead and gone, shut up and shut away forever.

They have taken.  Who?  The other apostles?  Why risk it?  Guards had been posted at the tomb, armed.  Of course it would be the followers who would come to take their leader, as the disciples of John collected his body after Herod had finished with it.  But that was to give John proper burial, and Jesus, except for completing the traditional, cultural burial rites, Jesus was already entombed.  And when Mary bursts into the room, out of breath, wide-eyed, trembling, telling what she had seen, it comes as a shock to Peter and John—they hadn’t thought of doing anything like that.  There was no reason to and every reason not to, because they knew that the priests would spread the story that it was the followers of Jesus who had come in the night, in some crazed plot to dupe gullible people into believing that Jesus had risen from the dead.  So, of course, it would be the disciples who would come and take the body—that’s just why the disciples made sure to stay away.  God kept them away.  And it really feels as if none of them were expecting Jesus to rise—their thoughts and hearts were not fixed on that.

Mary didn’t know who.  All she knew was that the stone had been removed; the body was gone.  The stone was heavy and took a lot of work to move: it was not a quick job.  It was not a one-man or even a two-man job.  Moving it needed strength and power.  “So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb.  Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.  He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in” (20:3-5).

John, younger, lighter than Peter, sprinted, adrenaline coursing through him.  Yet there, at the opening into the tomb, he stops.  He doesn’t go in.  Is he scared?  Would you be?  Want to stoop over into a dark tomb?  “Hello in there.”  We don’t like being in the presence of the dead or in contact with anything of death.  We were made for light and life, and we know it in our bones.

The burial cloth, the winding—it was still there.  Why remove it?  Wouldn’t it be easier, better, to transport the body in the burial cloth?  How desperate, how insane do you have to be, to manhandle a naked, dead body?  And how much time do you have, to unwind the cloth from the body?  The tomb had been guarded.  John shuddered, just as Mary had shuddered.  “Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb.  He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head.  The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen” (20:6-7).  Yes, that’s Peter—out of the way, squirt!  Peter always gets himself into the middle of it, charges in.  Like John, Peter also saw the burial linens.  But Peter also saw this: the head, the face—that had been covered, wrapped by another cloth, separate, a single piece of fabric large enough.  That also had been removed, separately . . . as if removed first, then the wrappings.  The face/head cloth was lying about where the head would have been.

Scripture doesn’t tell us, but if I know Peter, I just have to believe that he insisted on being one of the men to help take Jesus down from the cross and lay him in the tomb, maybe even wrap Jesus in the linen burial cloth.  It’s my guess that Peter saw Jesus dead in the tomb; maybe was one of the men to put the stone in place.  Here, now, seeing . . . it was as if Jesus had reached up, removed the cloth, then sat up, or stood up, and unwrapped himself, unhurried . . . strange, disturbing, incredible.  One thing was sure: Jesus was not there.  Jesus was gone.

John, emboldened by Peter as usual, also entered and saw (20:8).  Not there.  Jesus was gone.  They knew that.  Saw that.  Undeniable.  Obvious.  But what they were seeing . . . the meaning, the truth, the reality wasn’t registering.  Let’s not be quick to blame them.  We’d be perplexed, too.  We’d look for an obvious answer, an obvious solution: someone must have taken him.  Insane.  Bizarre.  Who?  Why?  John, looking back decades later at the events of that morning, tells us neither of them had understood “from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead” (20:9).  We read Scripture believing: so many verses sing the resurrection to our ears and hearts.  If we read, not believing, finding it unlikely, preposterous, impossible, all those places and verses, all those clear words of Jesus himself, remain mysterious, or just figurative—poetry, pretty poetry; not real though.  In the absence of belief, the words of Scripture are not living words.  In the absence of belief, we don’t even notice.

No one rises from the dead, though Peter and John had seen Jesus raise the dead to life, more than once.  So, John, implicating himself, wanting to be very clear with us, tells us he and Peter “went back to where they were staying” (20:10).  Nothing more to see.  Nothing to ask or seek, at the empty tomb.  Just more numb confusion, more mystery.  More than once, the apostles come across as remarkably dull.  Why do you suppose they want us first of all to see and understand that?

Peter and John leave—why stay, what’s the point?  If Jesus is going to be found, he won’t be found in the grave.  Mary Magdalene, alone, remains, raw all over again, lost.  She “stood outside the tomb crying.  As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot” (20:11-12).  Each time the matter is looked into a little more, we see more.  We’re not told those angels shocked or even shook her.  She’s already in shock.  She doesn’t faint, so that’s something.  She doesn’t know what to do—she can’t think; she can barely feel.  Stuck, she doesn’t know how to take the next step, or what that would be.  She came to finish what had been left unfinished.  All the signs, every indication was crying out in the voice of Jesus, It is finished, but Mary wasn’t hearing.  She is still looking into the tomb, hoping he’ll be there.  She thought she knew where to find him.  Maybe if she looks again.

John is clear with us that these are angels—Peter and John hadn’t seen them; Mary hadn’t seen them, before.  Now, they address her stuck at the tomb.  People get stuck there, at the grave, feel lost there: all is lost, no hope, nothing more, all gone away, nothing more to say.  “They asked her, ‘Woman, why are you crying?’  ‘They have taken my Lord away,’ she said, ‘and I don’t know where they have put him’” (20:13-14).  She doesn’t even wait to hear if the angels in the tomb have any response to that . . . it’s all become a bit surreal because life has been emptied out for her; she’s plunged deeper yet in darkness of grief.  Gone.  What sort of world is this, what sort of life is this, where such things happen?  No love, no decency, no compassion.  If she could only find Jesus.  If only there were someone to tell her where to find him, how to go to him.

“At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus” (20:14).  Hearing but not listening; looking but not seeing.  How could she not know it’s Jesus?  Maybe because all Mary’s focus, just then, just there, was upon herself, the entirety of her grief and sorrow, her hurt and pain, her confusion and spiritual paralysis.  Me, miserable me.  She was not seeing what was being offered to her, who was already right there with her, available, alive, glorious.  As always, it’s Jesus who is the first to speak: “‘Woman, why are you crying?  Who is it you are looking for?’” (20:15).  And what shall she say?  I’m looking for the dead?  I need to tend to my dead?  Why have you taken my dead from me?  “Thinking he was the gardener, she said, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him’” (20:15).  If you don’t want him here, I’ll take him elsewhere.  She doesn’t know what she’s saying.

There’s something different about Jesus, risen; Mary sees a man, hears him speaking to her.  She doesn’t know she knows him.  Something prevents her from recognizing Jesus right there with her.  Yes, we know.  It’s when Jesus addresses her personally that she suddenly hears, sees.  Jesus calls her by name—that’s when Mary knows.  John tells us she “turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, ‘Rabboni!’ (which means ‘Teacher’)” (20:16).  Alive, again?  Or a ghost.  Perhaps Mary sort of lunged for Jesus, or threw herself at his feet, needing some solid footing: her world has lurched again, as it did when Jesus had first set her free, healed her, saved her.  But this, now, here, didn’t feel like a dream or a hallucination.  A miracle.  Mary’s head was spinning, her heart thudding, her soul . . . singing.

“Jesus said, ‘Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.  Go instead to my brothers and tell them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God”’” (20:17).  Oh, we hold on to our hopes, we know.  We don’t hold ghosts.  Ghosts can’t be held.  We hold what is real, touch what is substantial.  Jesus was no ghost, no hollow cloud without substance.  He was standing there, warm, smiling, clean, radiant, new . . . alive.  He’s telling her the best blessing is yet to come, and that to have it Mary will have to release him, not cling to him.  Let hurt give way to hope.  Now is a time for action; not a time for the pain of the past but for the power and promise of the present.  To grasp and cling is to go nowhere, to get up and cease clinging is to go, move, act.  God shows us love; Jesus, risen, shows us love: love rises; love gets up; love goes.

Sometimes we cling to what is past and dread what’s ahead.  We settle for good enough when we could have better; we’ll take better even when the best is within reach.  To let go, to reach, means risk.  I’m afraid the prospect of loss is much more powerful, much more real to us, than the prospect of gain.  Mary loved Jesus, needed Jesus.  They had taken him away from her; now he was here—she didn’t know how, but she knew he was there, with her.  And through it all, now, was a new joy, the promise of a new joy.  Jesus had spoken; she listened.  To have the best, she let go of what she had.  Jesus told her to do something.  She went and did it, trusting, joyfully.  Let’s do the same.