Imagine attending a dinner party with some good friends. After everyone takes a seat, one of your friends reads an ancient story that caught their attention. It was titled, “The Resurrection of Jesus according to the Gospel of John”:
Early in the morning of the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. She ran to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they’ve put him.” Peter and the other disciple left to go to the tomb. They were running together, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and was the first to arrive at the tomb. Bending down to take a look, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he didn’t go in. Following him, Simon Peter entered the tomb and saw the linen cloths lying there. He also saw the face cloth that had been on Jesus’ head. It wasn’t with the other clothes but was folded up in its own place. Then the other disciple, the one who arrived at the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. They didn’t yet understand the scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to the place where they were staying.
Mary stood outside near the tomb, crying. As she cried, she bent down to look into the tomb. She saw two angels dressed in white, seated where the body of Jesus had been, one at the head and one at the foot. The angels asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”
She replied, “They have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they’ve put him.” As soon as she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she didn’t know it was Jesus.
Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who are you looking for?”
Thinking he was the gardener, she replied, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him and I will get him.”
Jesus said to her, “Mary.”
She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabbouni” (which means Teacher).
Jesus said to her, “Don’t hold on to me, for I haven’t yet gone up to my Father. Go to my brothers and sisters and tell them, ‘I’m going up to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
Mary Magdalene left and announced to the disciples, “I’ve seen the Lord.” Then she told them what he said to her. – John 20:1-18 (CEB)
Your friend wonders what your take is on it. What is your take on it? I would guess that some of you who grew up in this church, given it’s Fundamentalist and Evangelical roots, simply take the story as a factual account of the events that happened. Back in the day, this church would advocate a view of the Bible as essentially the literal word of God, to be viewed as inerrant (without error) and infallible (incapable of being wrong). To question the veracity of the story was to question God, which could jeopardize God’s acceptance of you. Some of you have come into this church over the last 25 years, however, and have learned that giving the Bible serious thought isn’t only okay, it is encouraged! Wondering how to read, interpret, and apply it to life here and now is a very Jesus thing to do. You have learned over the years to consider the historical context, the biases that are present, and our own biases as we read what is being presented to us. You have learned that taking the Bible seriously is much more important and mature than taking it literally.
Some of you are on the other end of the spectrum, not having had much exposure to the Christian tradition and its stories. You hear this story and have lots of questions. You may hear this story and say to yourself that it sounds like folklore from a time in history long gone by when God lived in a literal heaven above the earth and broke onto the earth’s scene from time to time. You may chuckle at the very idea of a person being more than resuscitated after being dead for thirty-six hours or so. Resurrection is different than resuscitation – the latter is a transformation, not just getting back the heartbeat. Your friend may ask if you think it’s true. You pause. You should. The science-minded part of you strongly questions the veracity of the story on its face. Yet another part of you wonders if the definition of truth itself should be left to the scientific method.
Recent movies you’ve enjoyed come to mind, like Oppenheimer, where you faced the complexity of nuclear energy and warfare in a world of war, power, and politics. A lot of truth told in that film. You think of other films that are not based on historical figures but are fictional creations. Your mind turns to Star Wars. You remember that, woven in with the Sci-Fi adventure are stories of the human experience: lust for power, coming home to personal identity, giving allegiance to Empire or the Resistance, to the Dark Side or the Force. Pure fiction, yet a lot of truth resides in those films.
Since it’s an Easter story, you try to lighten the tone by asking if we should believe in the Easter Bunny, too? Everyone snickers. While you may struggle to believe in a rabbit that lays eggs and delivers candy and chocolate monuments to itself, you may remember egg hunts and waking up to said candy and chocolate bunnies. There was meaning conveyed there, and it was all about love. Love given and received. Easter’s demarcation of Spring’s arrival is a reminder that we may experience winter’s death in many forms yet hope for life to come triumphantly remains!
When we consider the Easter story, we can sometimes get distracted by our need for literalness. I encourage you to embrace the idea that the meaning of the story lies beyond such a need. Truths are being conveyed by the writer of John’s Gospel. It would be a shame to miss the gifts because we don’t like the packaging or the wrapping.
There are a couple of really interesting things to note. First, in John’s telling of the Easter story, Mary Magdalene is the first person to discover the empty tomb, the first person to experience the mysterious resurrection of Jesus, and the first one to proclaim all three. She is the first Apostle of Christ! Don’t tell churches that forbid women to hold roles of authority – this could ruin everything for them! As historian Diana Butler Bass shared, the more appropriate title for Mary for a range of reasons should not be “the Magdalene”, but Mary the Tower. She towered in her faith and character and influence – just as much or more than the disciple, Peter. In fact, she is unwaveringly strong in John’s Gospel compared to the foot-in-mouth, Jesus-denying “Rock”. She is a rock star worthy of much more attention than she has received.
Second, she and the other disciples all had weird mystical experiences of the resurrected Jesus. The laws of physics were ignored. Jesus didn’t look like Jesus, but they somehow were convinced that it was Jesus. A little later, Jesus prepared a fish breakfast for some of his disciples after they spent a long night catching nothing – until Jesus instructed them to try once more, yielding a massive haul. What do we do with such things? I believe in mystical experiences – namely because I experience them! I believe Jesus had such profound experiences that it altered the course of his life, reshaped his theology, and emboldened him to teach, pull off some healings somehow, and challenge the power structures of his day – as a peasant!
While I affirm such experiences, I also believe they need to be held carefully and thoughtfully, because I think such events say as much or more about the one experiencing the mystical event as it does the source or message of the event. If we never experience anything we might define as mystical, I don’t think it means anything significant. And I think if we do, we shouldn’t give it too much significance – glean the highly contextualized truth and move forward. We need to treat our own experiences just like we might scripture: evaluate the context very carefully as we strive to understand, interpret, and apply mystical experiences to our lives. As Christians, our lens and standard is always Jesus’s unwavering commitment to love and grace. Shalom is the deeply rich Jewish word for this. Love in its deep complexities is probably the best we can do in English. If our interpretations don’t pass the love sniff test, we need to keep on thinking... I am sure that current, divisive issues exist in the hearts of Christians right now in our country and even in Napa. At the end of the day, if we aren’t aligned with shalom, deep love for everyone and everything, we’re not aligned with Jesus or the Spirit he embodied. Which leads me to how I am engaging the Easter Story today.
What captivates me most (this year) about the Easter stories that conclude the Gospel is what was instructed. In various ways, Jesus instructed those who experienced him to move forward in love. Mary was told to let the disciples know about what she had experienced – the act of proclaiming, sharing the news of what happened, is an act of love. The breathy giving and receiving of the Holy Spirit as an empowering act of love (and its own mystical experience to be sure). Full of the Spirit, Jesus told them what to do with it: spread grace. The divine is all about the flow of love and grace. Human beings have trouble with this, however, and tend to kink the hose, so to speak, blocking the flow of grace. The job of these newly appointed apostles is to unkink the hose wherever there might be a block, starting, perhaps, in their own hearts. Living in this love, fostering this love wherever we are, is what Jesus talked about when we spoke of eternal life. As pastor and author Mark Feldmeir notes:
The ancient Hebrews, Jesus, Paul—they also spoke of a realm, a place, a dimension of God’s creation that transcends this world, where all is as God intends it to be. It’s a realm where that age to come is already happening. On earth as is it is in heaven, we pray, because that shalom of God is happening. It’s not just an aim. It’s a present reality. Somewhere—in some dimension of space we cannot see or touch, in some dimension of time we cannot measure. But not even Jesus told us exactly what it looks like, how it works, where it is, or what form it takes. Jesus spoke of heaven and the afterlife almost exclusively in parables and allegories. He told stories that conceived of heaven not as a place, but as an experience. He often likened that experience to attending a wedding feast, or a party, or a banquet. There are fifteen allusions in the Gospels in which Jesus speaks of eternal life as a party-like experience, most of which suggest that God’s invitation list is long and not nearly as exclusive as we might expect. Everyone is invited to God’s party. Anyone can attend God’s banquet—both the good and the not-so-good. Only many will choose not to attend for various reasons: some have work to finish or businesses to run; others have already committed to attending someone else’s party; still others have scheduling conflicts or an assortment of other very excellent excuses; and a small handful are sadly just too burned out, like lamps that have simply run out of oil. (Feldmeir, Mark. Life after God: Finding Faith When You Can't Believe Anymore (p. 216). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.)
Feldmeir noted that even though we like to think of God as a judge, Jesus only offered one parable using that metaphor. In that scene, the ones who received the reward of heaven were the ones that showed love in a multitude of ways. We would be wise to focus more and more on how we might welcome and even help host such “parties” in our life here and now than worrying much about the one post-grave. In fact, I am sure that when we attend to the former, we won’t worry much at all about the latter.
A final scene in John’s remembrance has Jesus reminding Peter that love is everything, and is worth everything, even if it brings about personal suffering. The bottom-line reality of the human experience is that there will be suffering on multiple levels throughout our lives. Yet God meets us with love even in our suffering, and even helps redeem it. A CrossWalker shared her story with me, one that reflects Easter’s hope:
This past fall after over a year of trying for baby #2, my partner and I were filled with happiness when we found out we were pregnant! We immediately started planning for what our new life was going to look like now that our family was growing. We were going to need a bigger house. A bigger car, etc. But none of that mattered because we were going to have our angel that we have been trying for, for so long. After 8 long weeks, we finally made it to our first ultrasound appointment. We had waited very impatiently (at least on my end) to get to see our little baby on that black and white screen. We held each other's hands as the image of our newest member came into focus. Unfortunately, our excitement was short lived. " I'm so sorry" says my doctor, " But I don't see a heartbeat." We had lost our baby we had prayed so hard for. Even now as I write this, I can still hear her words as clear as they were the day she said them to me. And they still hurt just as much.
A week after that appointment I had to have a procedure to help me move forward after the miscarriage. I was now dealing with both the emotional and physical trauma from losing my baby. A week after my procedure I unexpectedly had to say goodbye to my cat of 17 years. She was my emotional support when things were difficult. And in those 2 weeks, my life had never been so hard. But it was her time to go, and I had to accept that. That was the piece that broke me. It broke whatever bit of spirit I had left in me to try and put on a happy face for my family and friends.
Over the next few weeks, I found it hard to find a reason to get out of bed. Nothing made me happy. I was riddled with anxiety that something else bad was going to happen to me, because how could it not. That anxiety would soon turn into panic attacks anytime I left my house. I no longer recognized the person in the mirror. I was consumed by my grief and pain. I couldn't sleep at night because every time I would lay my head down all the thoughts that I was trying to ignore throughout the day were now screaming at me for attention. The only place I could somewhat quiet my mind was laying on the floor next to my son's bed. Hearing him breathe and knowing he was okay, somehow made me feel okay. Night after night I would lay on his floor, listening to him breathe while I prayed with what little energy and strength I had left, for God to please help me through this time in my life. Please help me through this because I don't know how to survive this season in my life. I prayed for God to give me strength to fight for a life I didn't know how to live. I prayed for God to love me enough so I can someday love myself again because I, like a lot of mothers, blamed myself for the miscarriage. I prayed for the anxiety and panic attacks to stop. I prayed for the fear that something bad was going to happen to me or my son if I left the house to stop. I prayed for God to show me how to take all this pain and sadness and continue to live my life. And slowly but with absolute and undeniable certainty, God did.
Each day God placed things in my path that made my pain ease a bit more. Made my anxiety a little less than the day before. I talked with God, some days all day, every day. But most days multiple times throughout the day. God quite literally carried me when I could not carry myself. And before I knew it, I was living a life that was free from panic attacks and free from anxiety. I know that the grief from losing my baby will never fully go away, but it is no longer so white hot that I cannot touch it. It is now at a place where I can approach it, hold it, and appreciate it for what it is. I know in my heart with unquestionable conviction, that the one and only reason I made it through the absolute darkest and lowest season of my life, is God and God’s love for me. There was no way I alone could have pulled myself out of that deep and dark hole of grief I had fallen in. And now, I am closer to God than I have ever been in my entire life. I pray to God differently. I experience God differently. I see God’s beauty, grace, and love in everyday miracles that I didn't before. The color of flowers. The birds singing. The clouds moving across the sun as it rises. The stars in the sky at night. Things that I always looked at but never really stopped to look at it through the eyes of God as gifts to us. Now, I see God’s love for us everywhere. As painful as it was to go through that season in my life, it has brought me closer to God than I've ever been, and I am thankful for how I see the world now.
This CrossWalker’s story is what living Easter looks like. Death experienced with great pain, yet life breaking forth in new, unexpected ways by the love of God. When we choose love in its depths, we experience more love, spread more love, and open ourselves to the very source of love, and create more love in the world that we will one day leave behind as we ourselves are welcomed into the heart of love itself. Love is worth it.
May you find wonder anew this Easter. May you have room to engage this story beyond the literal. May you be open to the “more” that is always in and around us. Most of all, may you feel loved, strengthened by love, in order to love.
SALT Commentary: Easter Sunday (Year B): John 20:1-18 and Mark 16:1-8
Check out SALT’s “Strange New World” podcast episode on these passages, “Understanding Easter - Part Seven: Rethinking Easter.”
Big Picture:
1) Easter Sunday! Today begins the season of Eastertide, fifty days of celebrating Jesus’ resurrection, all the way to Pentecost — outpacing the forty days of Lent, and at the same time making up roughly one seventh of the entire year, in effect a “sabbath” writ large for the year as a whole. The resurrection is so great a mystery, and calls for so grand a celebration, that merely one day won’t do.
2) Easter Sunday! At the outset of Luke’s Gospel, the priest Zechariah (Elizabeth’s hubby and John the Baptizer’s dad) sings a song known today as the “Benedictus,” including the line: “By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:78-79). Now — at last — that dawn has come!
3) But dawn is not the day. Easter Sunday is only the beginning: Jesus’ resurrection is the “first fruits” of the harvest, an encouraging glimpse of what’s ahead (compare 1 Cor 15:20-23). But “what’s ahead,” by definition, isn’t yet here. We call it “dawn” because its rays of light break through the shadows — but it’s also true that for the time being, the shadows remain. Accordingly, Easter comes not as the solution to creation’s problems but rather as profound assurance that a new, irrevocable era has begun — and in the end, love, and justice, shalom and joy, will have the final word. The sun will rise!
4) And sure enough, shadows are everywhere today. Violence, despair, rancor, war, and rumors of war… But this fifty-day season of Eastertide presents an opportunity: redoubling our commitment to create a graceful, peaceful, beautiful world in which all may live and thrive.
Scripture:
1) Ask ten Christians why the women come to the tomb that Easter morning, and nine will tell you that they bring spices to anoint Jesus’ corpse — but that’s not the story John tells. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus have already wrapped the body in linen, myrrh, and aloes, and when Mary Magdalene arrives alone before dawn, she has no spices in tow (John 19:38-42).
2) Why does she come? Is it sheer grief, a longing to be close to Jesus, even in death? Or is she concerned that Jesus’ body, already disgraced in mockery, torture, and crucifixion, will be degraded even further — even stolen? Or is she holding out hope-against-hope that what he said in his last public teaching (“when I am lifted up from the earth“ (John 12:32)) somehow means that death is not this story’s final chapter? Or some combination of these motives?
3) We can’t know for sure, of course, but in any case, the story resonates with a longstanding theme in the Bible’s library: women as bold, resourceful, tenacious defenders of life and of the dignity and honor of the human body. Shiphrah and Puah, for example, the midwives who shrewdly subvert Pharaoh’s order to kill Hebrew children (Exodus 1:15-21). Or Rizpah, Saul’s widow, who camps out on a hillside beside her dead sons’ corpses for something like six months, day after day, night after night, defending their bodies against scavenging birds and animals (2 Samuel 21:10-14). Or indeed the women who stay near Jesus even after most of the male disciples have scattered in fear: in John’s telling, “his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene”; and in Mark’s telling, “Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome” (John 19:25; Mark 15:40).
4) Mary Magdalene initially draws the conclusion that Jesus’ body has been moved — but the presence of the linen wrappings and face covering suggest otherwise, since anyone who moved the body would have no reason to remove the linens, much less neatly “roll up” the face covering. Peter sees the scene and apparently doesn’t know what to think; “the other disciple” sees “and believed”; and the two men return to their homes (John 20:8-9).
5) Only Mary stays behind. She’s weeping, so she seems to have drawn the conclusion that, as she puts it to the two angels, “They have taken away my Lord” — perhaps revealing the fear that brought her to the tomb in the first place (John 20:13). She then mistakes Jesus for the gardener, only recognizing him when he calls her by name — a clear echo of Jesus’ teaching that the Good Shepherd “calls his own sheep by name… they know his voice” (John 10:3-4).
6) The garden setting itself evokes the Garden of Eden, as if the story of salvation has come full circle, redeeming the original gardeners, Adam and Eve, divinely called to “till and keep” the garden (Gen 2:15).
7) Jesus’ words to Mary frame what is happening not as resurrection alone, but rather as resurrection-for-the-sake-of-ascension: “I am ascending… to my God and your God” (John 20:17). Just as he had promised in his last public teaching, he is ascending, and drawing his followers — and indeed “all people” — with him: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32). In other words, the resurrection, astounding as it is, isn’t an end. It’s a new beginning.
Takeaways:
1) It’s Easter Sunday, but the readings from John and Mark are hardly simple stories of triumph. Today is only the beginning — and rightly so, since a mystery as fathomless as Easter can only begin on a single day, beckoning us to enter into its depths and riches for the fifty-day season to follow, and beyond.
2) Accordingly, Mary Magdalene arrives on “early the first day of the week,” a poetic turn suggesting a new start (John 20:1). Thus Easter Sunday is not the end of Lent — it’s the beginning of Eastertide, and in a deeper sense, the beginning of Christian life, a life lived in the light of God’s resurrection. The trumpets and lilies signal not a final victory, then, but a commencement, a launch, a kickoff — a dawn of a new day.
3) And this morning twilight still has plenty of shadows, and wounds (Jesus rises, please note, as a still-wounded savior), and struggles, and fears (Mark 16:8). Indeed, if our first reaction to a report of resurrection is cynicism or skepticism, we’re in good company. Some among Jesus’ own disciples, the ones who arguably knew him best, initially refuse to believe. And as we’ll see in the weeks ahead, Easter faith is often a mix of trust and doubt, belief, and disbelief. For after all, there are at least two ways to miss a miracle: first, to dismiss it, to reject it too readily, as if astonishing things never happen; and second, to domesticate it, to accept it too readily, as if it isn’t astonishing at all.
4) Key women in the story, however — Mary Magdelene in John, and the two Marys and Salome in Mark — refuse to withdraw, whatever doubts or despair they may feel. They stay close. They bear witness. Like their ancestors, Rizpah, Shiphrah, and Puah, they insist on honoring and protecting Jesus’ body. And eventually, as John tells it, Mary Magdalene proclaims the mystery: “I have seen the Lord” (John 20:18). She is the original apostle, staying with Jesus on the cross, coming to the tomb before dawn, and in the end, declaring the good news. To anyone who argues that women should not be leaders in the Christian church at the highest levels, the Easter stories in all four Gospels together stand as a luminous, devastating reply.
5) Easter Sunday! What’s the good news of the Gospel today? For those who despair that death-dealing powers have the upper hand — fear not. Easter means God ultimately is and will be victorious over the powers of death. For those who feel isolated and lonely — fear not. Easter means we are all together in the risen Body of Christ, even if we’re separated in time or space. For those who despair that our guilt is too great for God to forgive — fear not. Easter means God has cleared all accounts, liberating humanity from shame, reconciling us to God and each other as God’s children. For those who despair in the midst of pain or anguish — take heart. You are not alone: Jesus suffers with you in solidarity and companionship, and Easter means you will rise with him. For those who despair over a world filled with hate, violence, and scapegoating — be encouraged. In Christ’s passion, God has taken the place of the scapegoat in order to expose humanity’s violent ways — and Easter means God one day will overcome violence once and for all. Indeed, Easter means that God has taken one of the worst things in the world (the Roman cross) and remade it into one of the best (the Tree of Life), a sword into a ploughshare — and if the worst, then also the whole creation in the end! Like the cross, the empty tomb is a great divine mystery, a rising sun dispelling shadows in multiple directions. Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
Check out SALT’s “Strange New World” podcast episode on these passages, “Understanding Easter - Part Seven: Rethinking Easter.”