At first
glance, it would appear to be an odd choice. Why would the Risen Jesus
reveal himself for the first time to Mary Magdalene, the DaVinci Code
notwithstanding? Why not Peter, to whom Jesus gave the keys to the Kingdom?
Why not John, the beloved disciple, the one to whom Jesus gives the
care of his mother at the foot of the Cross? Why Mary Magdalene, when
in Jewish society women were not even considered legitimate witnesses?
And yet all four gospel accounts of the Resurrection place Mary Magdalene
at the empty tomb, and John’s gospel includes this extraordinarily
dramatic and poignant encounter with Jesus who has been raised from
the dead.
Dan Brown
would certainly explain it by virtue of the DaVinci Code’s assertion
that Mary Magdalene and Jesus had been married. I’m not sure how
helpful that is (interesting, but not necessarily helpful) but neither
are the portraits of Mary Magdalene from the Middle Ages and then more
recently in The Last Temptation of Christ portraying her as a notoriously
fallen woman. What is helpful is the recollection from Luke’s
gospel that Mary Magdalene had been healed of seven demons and was among
some faithful women disciples who supported Jesus with money and provisions
and were with Jesus and the other disciples during the climactic events
in Jerusalem leading up to his crucifixion.
It would
then appear to be very natural for Mary Magdalene to have come to the
tomb to provide for Jesus in death as she had provided for him in life,
and that her faithfulness and caring were as deep as any of the disciples’
if not more so. But Jesus was not there, and Mary is crushed that he
cannot be found.
It has
been suggested (by Arthur Gossip) that one reason Mary could not find
him was because she was looking for a dead Christ. How well I remember
my own search for Christ when I went to the Holy Land in 1978 and how
moving it was to participate with other pilgrims in the Stations of
the Cross, winding through the streets of Jerusalem, recalling the agony
of Christ’s having to carry his own cross to the place of execution,
but then to end our pilgrimage at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher,
that place believed to be the site of Jesus’ burial.
A Franciscan
monk had been our chaplain for the Stations of the Cross and when we
came to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, he said: “You will not
find Jesus here, for Jesus is raised from the dead and he is alive in
your heart and in my heart.” In essence, I had been looking for
a dead Jesus, the one who had lived in Palestine 2,000 years ago, when
all of the time he was no farther away than breath itself. I remember
thinking I’ve come all the way to Jerusalem to find Jesus so that
I’d know that I didn’t have to go all the way to Jerusalem
to find Jesus. Like for Mary Magdalene, Jesus was not to be found in
his tomb but in a living encounter.
Returning
to Mary Magdalene, we might think that for all her searching it was
not Mary who came upon Christ, but Christ who found her. That little
truth is the testament of all the scriptures, God’s yearning to
find those who have wandered away from God, those who cannot see God
at work, those who have rejected God because of heartache or disappointment
or anger at life’s iniquities, those who are perhaps looking for
God in all the wrong places.
It is
the image of the Good Shepherd that comes to my mind when I think of
God finding me, not because I’ve become lost through deliberate
wrongdoing but rather through the complexities of life, the novelties
which catch our fancy and our interest, fixated on some web quest or
another. The great African evangelist, Bishop Festo Kivengeri, was once
asked why evangelism in his country of Uganda was so much more successful
than our efforts in this country and he replied, “In America you
have too many distractions.” We’re not lost sheep necessarily
because of notorious sins, we just kind of nibble ourselves lost. If
we have lost Christ in that way or in any way, it is Christ’s
Resurrection that can assure us that he is still searching for us, always
searching for us, and that he will not likely let us go, that he has
missed us and wants us back with him again.
And then
although Mary Magdalene was looking for Christ with her whole being
she did not recognize him when she saw him. We can understand that because
of her grief and the reasonable assumption that he was the gardener.
The story is told of Francis of Assisi who was terrified of leprosy
but found himself confronted by a leper full in the narrow path he was
traveling. His instinct was to recoil, but then ashamed of himself,
embraced the leper out of pity and moved on. Looking back a moment later,
however, there was no one there, and St. Francis was convinced that
it was no leper but Christ himself whom he had met.
Our challenge
has been and always will be to find Christ and to recognize him in one
another but also in the least of those we are called to serve. Can we
recognize Christ in the person we serve at the Soup Kitchen? Can we
recognize Christ in a Lost Boy of the Sudan, in their suffering, in
their faith? And can we recognize Christ in those who seek us harm or
at least in our prayers for them and however Christ would tear down
the walls that separate us?
Author
Philip Yancey has written in Rumors of Another World of how more than
ten years ago in South Africa Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu showed
the world what Easter can look like, what the Risen Christ can look
like. Early in Mandela’s presidency he appointed Archbishop Desmond
Tutu to head the official government panel called the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission. The purpose of the Commission was to break the country’s
long cycle of violence and revenge. As Philip Yancey tells it, for the
next 2½ years South Africans listened to reports of atrocities
coming out of the Commission’s hearings. The rules were simple:
if a white policeman or army officer voluntarily faced his accusers,
confessed his crime, and fully acknowledged his guilt, he could not
be tried and punished for the crime. The approach was highly controversial,
but Tutu insisted that the country needed healing rather than retribution.
At one
hearing a policeman named Van de Broek recounted an incident when he
and other officers had shot an 18-year old boy and burned his body in
order to destroy the evidence. Eight years later Van de Broek returned
to the house to seize the boy’s father. The man’s wife was
forced to watch as the policeman burned her husband alive.
After
the man had recounted his crimes to the Commission, the judge turned
straight to the elderly woman who had lost her husband and her son to
this atrocity and asked, “What do you want from Mr. Van de Broek?”
The elderly woman rose to speak and said she wanted Van de Broek go
to the place where they had burned her husband’s body and gather
up the dust so she could give him a decent burial.
Van de
Broek, his head bowed, nodded his agreement.
And she
added a further request. “Mr. Van de Broek took all my family
away from me,” she said looking at him, “but I still have
a lot of love to give. Twice a month I would like for him to come to
the township and spend a day with me so that I can be a mother to him.
And I would like Mr. Van de Broek to know that he is forgiven by God,
and that I forgive him too. I would like to embrace him so he can know
that my forgiveness is real.”
That’s
what Easter looks like. That’s what the Risen Christ looks like.
That’s where he is to be found, as raised from the dead and by
which we make our song, “Alleluia, alleluia.”
Amen.
