Now and Then

John 20:11-18

April 17, 2022 (Easter) • Mount Pleasant UMC

The fact that she is still standing is amazing, considering all she has been through. These last hours have been incredibly hard, traumatizing even. Of all of those who had followed him, she was among the few who had stayed to the bitter end. She stayed at the cross, and watched over him up to the moment when the stone had been rolled in front of the tomb. In many ways, that had been a relief; she no longer had to see the brutal wounds on his body that had been inflicted by the Roman soldiers. She could try to remember him as he had been: her teacher, her master, her friend. He had driven seven demons out of her (cf. Luke 8:2); he had literally saved her from death. She owed him her life, and suddenly he was gone. The trauma was heavy; the grief was real (cf. Card, John: The Gospel of Wisdom, pg. 206). She couldn’t quit crying. She kept hoping it had been a dream, but she knew it was not. This was life under Roman occupation.

Still, duty got her on her feet on Sunday morning, as soon as it was light, to finish the burial that had been interrupted by the Sabbath. Other women were with her, we know (cf. Luke 24:1; Mark 16:1; Matthew 28:1), though when John tells the story, he chooses to focus the spotlight on Mary from Magdala. All of those who came to the tomb on that early morning shared a few characteristics. One, their lives had been touched by the man in the tomb in some way. Two, they were all women (the men apparently were sleeping in on Sunday morning). And three, not a one of them came expecting resurrection. They came to anoint a dead body, to finish a burial, to pay respects to their dead friend, not to see if he was alive. In all the trauma and pain of the previous couple of days, they seem to have forgotten how many times he told them that he would be raised on the third day. No, if they had been expecting resurrection, they would not have been surprised when the body was gone.

So Mary gets up early, goes to the tomb and finds it empty. Her assumption is that someone has stolen the body, or maybe that Joseph of Arimathea (who had donated the tomb) has moved the body to a different place. To Mary, a stolen body would be the ultimate insult and injury. Either way, whe’s not able to finish the burial, to say a final good-bye, to properly grieve. As Dr. Ben Witherington puts it, “This was the unkindest cut of all, the ultimate indignity and denigration of his memory. So she is naturally distraught” (OneBook: John [Apple Books edition], pg. 236). She then runs back to the disciples (who apparently are still sleeping) and tells them the body is missing. “We don’t know where they have put him!” she says (20:2). So Peter and John run to the tomb (John makes sure to tell us he outruns Peter—20:4), and after seeing the same evidence Mary saw, Peter is confused and John believes, but exactly what he believes at this point is uncertain because John, in writing this Gospel, whispers to the readers, “They still did not understand from Scripture the Jesus had to rise from the dead” (20:9). And the men disciples then go back to where they were staying, apparently leaving Mary crying alone in the garden with an empty tomb (20:10-11).

Maybe you have a sense of what Mary was experiencing in that moment. Maybe you have lost someone or something and have wondered what in the world could possibly come next. When someone asks why you are crying (as the angels ask Mary), you have responded, “They’ve taken my…my home, my husband, my children, my rights, my dignity, my hopes, my life. They have taken away the thing that meant the most to me. They’ve taken away my master, and I don’t know where they have put him” (Wright, John for Everyone—Part Two, pg. 146). For some of us, the pandemic over the last two years has taken away more than we imagined—a loved one, a job, our hope, our sense of security, the thing we depended on. “Lord, this virus has taken away my…” You fill in the blank. And we don’t know if it is every returning! The grief is real, and it gives us a hint as to what Mary is doing there in the garden. In fact, I believe that unless you have been through deep grief, you cannot possibly understand Mary in this moment. She is looking for some hope, some clue that life might just return to normal one day soon.

Read the text carefully and you notice that she turns around before the person behind her speaks (20:14). I’m told I walk fairly quietly and have had people threaten to put a bell on me so that I don’t sneak up on them. Did Mary hear something, the shuffling of a branch or feet scraping against the dirt? Somehow, she senses he is there, that he has appeared just when she needs him the most. She doesn’t recognize him at first, perhaps because of her grief, maybe because of her tears, or just possibly because Jesus’ resurrection body is different enough that he doesn’t look quite the way she remembers. Whatever the reason, it isn’t until he calls her name that she knows who he is. There is something in the way he says her name that gets past her grief and her sense of deep loss and allows her eyes to be opened. He speaks her name the way he had so many times before, and she suddenly knows that this one she assumed to be the gardener is actually her teacher. And Matthew tells us she bows and grabs onto Jesus’ feet in an act of worship (cf. Matthew 28:9).

I love the fact that he only had to call her name to ease her grief and her pain. Earlier in John’s Gospel, Jesus had told his followers that those who recognize his voice are his “own sheep.” They know his voice and they follow whenever he calls (10:3-4; Whitacre, John [IVPNTC], pg. 476; Witherington 237). But notice the way things have changed between the disciples and Jesus just because of his resurrection. Everything has changed. Listen again to the instructions he gives to Mary: “Go…to my brothers…” (20:17). Brothers. That’s new. In the Gospel of John, Jesus has called them disciples, and servants, and, most recently, friends. Now that has all changed. Something has decisively altered. They are his brothers, closer than anything before. Biblical scholar N. T. Wright puts it this way: “A new relationship has sprung to life like a sudden spring flower. The disciples are welcomed into a new world: a world where they can know God the way Jesus knew God, where they can be intimate children with their father” (145). This is resurrection life now: our status has changed. We are no longer only students; we can be fully children of God.

This past week, I met Rachel at Chick-fil-a for breakfast and to help her with an errand. I got there early, which means I had to buy the breakfast (I’m still not sure that wasn’t the plan all along), but as I sat in the booth eating my Chicken Minis, I noticed across the way a father and a very young daughter, obviously on a breakfast date. They were talking—actually, she was doing most of the talking, and I couldn’t help but notice that Dad was completely tuned in to everything she was saying. He was looking directly at her and probably had no idea there was anyone else in the restaurant. The first thing that went through my head was how much I missed times like that with my kids, but the second thing I thought of was how I was getting a glimpse of God (and a great sermon illustration on top of my yummy breakfast). When Jesus was raised from the dead, something changed. We no longer have to wait until the life after this one to experience eternal life. Eternal life begins now, and it’s evidenced by our new status with God the Father. We are brothers and sisters with Jesus, children of the Father, and he is completely tuned into you and me. He is crazy in love with you and he constantly has you in his gaze as if there is no one else around. And he still loves you even when you’re not so completely tuned into him. I watched as the little girl ran out of words to say and started to get down from her chair. “Can we go now?” she said, and I couldn’t hear what Dad said, but I watched as she got back in her seat and looked back at him. And I thought how sometimes we are like that with God. We say everything we want to say and then we just take off. God longs for us to linger awhile, spend time with him, truly and fully experience resurrection life now. Jesus was raised from the dead so that we can be welcomed into a new relationship with the Father. Resurrection life is now.

Not only do we get a new relationship, the resurrection promises us a new residence. Jesus tells Mary not to hold onto him, “for I have not yet ascended to the Father” (20:17). Growing up, I heard a lot of explanations of that command, some of them very strange. One I remember in particular was that Jesus’ resurrection body wasn’t “done” yet—you might say he was only “half baked”—and he didn’t want her to damage it. That sounds like it came more out of a science fiction movie than the Bible. I also heard once that maybe Jesus’ wounds were still sore and he didn’t want her touching them, but if that’s the case, then all our talk of eternity bringing perfect healing seems untrue. No, I think there’s a simpler reason why Jesus tells Mary not to hold onto him: he’s not going anywhere just yet. She doesn’t need to try to keep him here. Mary holding onto him is almost her way of saying, “Now we can get back to the way things were.” That idea underlies all of the resurrection appearances, and we get that. Especially after the trauma of the last couple of days, it’s normal they wan to get back to normal. But normal is not in Jesus’ plans. I think Jesus is saying something like this to Mary: “You don’t have to hold onto me because I’m not going anywhere just yet, but things are not going to be like they were before” (cf. Card 207; Witherington 237). Resurrection means Jesus is back, but he is headed to the home he has been promising all along. Eternal life is not just for now; it’s for then as well.

Right now our relationship has changed, and one day (then) our residence will change. During Lent, we have been reading and studying some of the last words, the final teachings Jesus shared with his disciples on the last night he spent with them. As he tried to prepare them for his departure, for his death, he offered them comforting words, words that Pastor Rick and I often share at funerals. He told them, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me” (14:1). And in the midst of that comfort, he offers these promise: “Because I live, you also will live” (14:19). If those words gave them any hope, it likely evaporated as they saw him arrested, beaten, murdered and buried. I mean, he wasn’t living anymore; obviously his words were just empty platitudes. But now, here he stands in front of Mary, and soon in front of all his disciples. He is living, breathing, back from the dead. And he says he is going to the Father. Because he lives, we too can live, a new and different kind of life. A life without end in a place where there are no more tears, no more death, no more mourning or crying or pain, no more cancer, no more separation, no more hopelessness, no more COVID, no more bankruptcy, illnesses, hatred, exclusion, or war. Eternal life then will be life in which God himself will be the center of the world and everything will be made new (cf. Revelation 21:4-5, 22). Resurrection life that begins now continues then.

Since I’m a pastor, people sometimes ask me questions about eternal life—because we want to know. The unknown is unnerving for most of us. Are there literal streets of gold or is that just a metaphor? (I don’t know.) Do we sit on clouds and strum harps all day? (I sure hope not.) Does an angel really get its wings every time a bell rings? (I’m pretty sure that was made up in Hollywood.) When, exactly, do we arrive there? Right after we die or when Jesus returns? (I don’t think time works the same there, and either way, the next thing we know, we will be there. Paul said to be absent from the body is to be present with Christ—2 Corinthians 5:8.) Here’s what I do know: whatever it is like and whenever we get there, we will be with Jesus, our brother. I’ve been privileged a few times to be present with someone who is graduating from this life into the next, and I have heard affirmed over and over again the lack of fear for those who know Christ. Many have said to me it’s the process of dying that concerns them the most, not death itself, because they know that, to the Christian, death is not a period, but a comma (cf. Dunnam, With Jesus in the Upper Room, pg. 196). I believe that whenever I get there, I will know fully, even as I am fully known (cf. I Corinthians 13:12) and I will be loved as I never have been before.

And I’m looking forward to seeing some people; the witness of the Scripture seems to be that we will still be “us.” You will still be you and I will still be me, only better, perfected, the way we were meant to be. We will have resurrected bodies like Jesus, so it may take hearing our name called for us to fully know who that other person is, but when we hear our names, as Mary did in the garden, we will know. I want to see my grandparents again, and maybe to meet my Grandpa Ticen for the first time as he died before I was born. I want to see some of the pastors I have known who made a difference in my life, like Tom Rough who went to be with Jesus this past year. We all want to see Cathy’s mom Sandy again; she left us so quickly and unexpectedly. We want to see our college friend Sherry who was taken by a horrible disease far too early in her life. I could go on and on, but most of all, I want to see Jesus. There’s an old Gospel song that puts it this way:

As I entered the gates of that city,

My loved ones all knew me well.

They took me down the streets of Heaven;

Such scenes were too many to tell;

I saw Abraham, Jacob and Isaac

Talked with Mark, and Timothy

But I said, "I want to see Jesus,

'Cause He's the One who died for me."

Resurrection life now. Resurrection life forever then.

Jesus’ resurrection isn’t just a promise of life to come; it makes a difference here and now. A couple of years ago, atheist Bart Ehrman tried to unravel history’s greatest mystery. Here’s the way it was described: “How did a first-century movement launched by a dozen or so Galileans gain traction in the ancient world and go on to become a catalyst for cultural change that shaped the modern world? How did it come about that Rome replaced their entire pantheon of gods with a Galilean rabbi crucified by one of their own governors? A rabbi who claimed to be a king and thus a threat to the empire. No one denies any of this happened. The question is how?” (Stanley, Not In It to Win It, pgs. 61-62). How? The reality of the resurrection didn’t just give them hope for eternity; it gave those “dozen or so” men and women hope for now and courage to go and change the world. In other words, “The proof of the resurrection is not the empty tomb, but the incredible transformation in the lives of the disciples” (Dunnam 195). And, more than that, the way this small band of believers turned the world upside down, so much so that you and I are still reading their stories, talking about their lives and worshipping the Jesus they knew today, two thousand years later. We’re here because he lives. We live now because he lives. We will live then because he lives.

Every Easter, I come here wanting to convince you of the truth of the resurrection, but over the last couple of years I’ve come to realize that I can’t do that. I can’t convince you; only the power and the presence of the living Christ can do that—the same power and presence that convinced the first disciples that he was alive. But to experience that, you have to stand with Mary at the tomb and allow his presence to surprise you. You have to listen for him to call your name in the way only he can. You have to recognize that he is loose in the world for good. I can only tell you what I’ve experienced, and I don’t think I can really say it any better than through the words of an old hymn [9:00—that we’re going to sing at the end of worship today]: “You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart.” Like Mary, I am simply here to tell you this morning, “I have seen the Lord!” (20:18). I know that I know that I know that he is risen because he is living and working in my life. I would not be who I am without him. Jesus is alive and present this very day—right here, right now. And he will take me to be with him when my life is done—then. I not only believe that eternal life, resurrection life, is real. I’m counting on it. I have put all my hope in that truth, and my prayer for you this Easter is that you will as well.