A Morning Beyond Belief
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A Morning Beyond Belief April 4, 2010
Text: John 20:11-18; 31
Ken Shigematsu
Two weeks ago my wife and I brought a potted, pink hydrangea plant to our retired neighbor Lorraine.
Her husband, Bob, had died a year before on that very day, March 20. He had been a perfect neighbour. In the fall, Bob would always rake our leaves (by the time we noticed he was raking and come out, he’d be ¾ done). In the winter when it snowed and we were out of town, Bob would shovel away the snow on the pathway leading up to our house and the sidewalk in front of our house and beside our house (we’re on a corner lot) so it would appear that someone was home.
Bob was 75 years old when he died, and he was in great shape. He had been retired for about 10 years from his job as an elevator mechanic (check facts). As a young person he had been a baseball and hockey player and a golden gloves boxer. Wiry and athletic, at 75 he was still going to the YMCA every morning for a 6:00 AM workout. So it came as a stunning shock when we learned on a Friday just over a year ago that while working out at the Y, Bob had suffered a massive stroke, and within 24 hours he was dead. We experienced deep grief. And whenever the leaves fall, whenever it snows, when we are planting flowers in our front yard, as we did last week, we think of our neighbour Bob.
When you lose a beloved neighbor, a close friend, a father, a mother, spouse, a child, you feel like a part of you has gone with them. You feel a hole in your heart, like something has been torn away from you.
And this is how Mary Magdalene would have felt on the Sunday after her teacher, her guide, her friend Jesus experienced a horrific, unjust death on a Roman cross the Friday before. According to John 20, on that Sunday morning, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the cave where Jesus’ dead body had been laid and saw that the stone had been removed from its entrance.
She stood outside the tomb weeping. She knelt to look into the tomb and saw people sitting there, dressed in white, one at the head, the other at the foot of where Jesus' body had been laid (they were angels but Mary’s vision blurred by her tears wasn’t aware of that). "Woman, why do you weep?" they asked her.
"They’ve taken my Master," she said, "and I don't know where they put him." She turned away from the mouth of the cave and saw Jesus standing there. But she didn't recognize him. She assumed he was the gardener.
"Woman,” he asked her, “Why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?"
"If you’ve taken his body somewhere, tell me where you laid it, so I can care for him."
Jesus looked at her and simply said, "Mary."
As he uttered her name, her eyes were opened…
She said in Hebrew, "Rabboni!" (which means "Teacher!")
She embraced Jesus.
17Jesus said, "Don't cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go to my brothers and tell them, 'I ascend to my Father and your Father, my God and your God’."
18Mary Magdalene went, telling the news to the disciples: "I saw the Master!" (John 20).
When Mary had walked onto the cemetery grounds where Jesus’ dead body had been laid, she simply assumed like everyone else, in the same way that we would have assumed, if we had seen someone crucified three days before, that Jesus was dead. When a soldier had pierced Jesus’ side with his spear as Jesus hung on a cross, she had seen how the watery serum had separated from his blood—a sure sign of death.
Mary Magdalene was also a Jew, and there was nothing in Jewish tradition that would have caused anyone to anticipate that someone in their time in history would rise from the dead. And so when Mary first saw Jesus, she assumed that he must be the gardener.
She was, of course, in the one sense wrong, but in another sense right. As theologian G.K. Chesterton has said, “In one way she was right because the man she saw was God, the Gardener of a new creation he had just ushered in, God the gardener who would take the chaos of creation and bring new order and beauty to it, the gardener who would uproot the thorns and weeds of our world, and replace them with blossoming flowers and rich harvests, the gardener who would make all things new.
She doesn’t recognize who he is until he turns to her and calls her by name, “Mary.”
In that moment her eyes are opened and after the initial shock and fear of seeing him alive, she feels a surge of joy and cries, “Rabboni!” which means “teacher,” and embraces him.
Do you hear the Gardener? Do you hear the risen Christ calling your name?
And Jesus says in verse 17, “Don’t cling to me.” We are not exactly sure why he says that.
Mary is not offended by his words. Biblical scholars like N.T. Wright have argued that when Jesus said to Mary, “Don’t cling to me,” he was saying that her new relationship with him was not going to be like the old one. He would not be going around Galilee with her and his 12 disciples, walking the lanes with them, sharing meals, talking face to face. They would see him, but it would soon be time for him to ascend to the God, his Father and send his Spirit to indwell us.
Jesus tells Mary, “Go tell my brothers and sisters I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”
Up until this point in Jesus’ ministry, Jesus has typically spoken about God as the Father--as the Father who sent me, or my Father. He has called his followers disciples, servants, and friends. But now, all this has changed. In verse 17 Jesus says, “Go and say to my brothers and sisters that I am going to my Father, and to your Father, to my God and your God.” As a result of Jesus Christ’s death on the cross for our sins and his rising again, something astonishing has been achieved—a door to a new relationship with God has been opened. We are being welcomed into a new world, a new beautiful garden where we can know God the way Jesus knew God, where we can enter into an intimate relationship as sons and daughters with a perfect Father who loves us more than we can imagine…a garden, where like Eden, we see God as our God, as our Father without any barriers.
That is why we celebrate Easter, because through the death and resurrection of Christ, a door has been opened to a new garden where we know God as our Father, Jesus as our Brother… a Garden where we can experience the life that we have always longed for…we can come home.
When Neil Armstrong became the first man on the moon, he said those famous words: “One small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.” When Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose again, it one was small step out of a tomb, but the greatest leap for mankind as he opened the way for us to experience life with God in the way he had experienced life with God. He opened the way for us to experience life of God now and forever.
When Christ died on the cross, he absorbed our sins, opening the door for us to be cleansed and enter into a new garden where God is our Father, and where Jesus in our brother, and a garden where we will one day be re-united with lost family members, friends, a beloved neighbor who has received the gift of grace of God…a garden where we know that like a seed that falls into ground and “dies” and then rises out of the ground as a hydrangea in the spring, life and not death will have the final word.
This is why we celebrate the promise of Easter: it was a morning beyond belief, a morning when through Christ rising from the dead, a new garden was created.
Pray:
A Morning Beyond Belief April 4, 2010
Text: John 20:11-18; 31
Ken Shigematsu
Two weeks ago my wife and I brought a potted, pink hydrangea plant to our retired neighbor Lorraine.
Her husband, Bob, had died a year before on that very day, March 20. He had been a perfect neighbour. In the fall, Bob would always rake our leaves (by the time we noticed he was raking and come out, he’d be ¾ done). In the winter when it snowed and we were out of town, Bob would shovel away the snow on the pathway leading up to our house and the sidewalk in front of our house and beside our house (we’re on a corner lot) so it would appear that someone was home.
Bob was 75 years old when he died, and he was in great shape. He had been retired for about 10 years from his job as an elevator mechanic (check facts). As a young person he had been a baseball and hockey player and a golden gloves boxer. Wiry and athletic, at 75 he was still going to the YMCA every morning for a 6:00 AM workout. So it came as a stunning shock when we learned on a Friday just over a year ago that while working out at the Y, Bob had suffered a massive stroke, and within 24 hours he was dead. We experienced deep grief. And whenever the leaves fall, whenever it snows, when we are planting flowers in our front yard, as we did last week, we think of our neighbour Bob.
When you lose a beloved neighbor, a close friend, a father, a mother, spouse, a child, you feel like a part of you has gone with them. You feel a hole in your heart, like something has been torn away from you.
And this is how Mary Magdalene would have felt on the Sunday after her teacher, her guide, her friend Jesus experienced a horrific, unjust death on a Roman cross the Friday before. According to John 20, on that Sunday morning, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the cave where Jesus’ dead body had been laid and saw that the stone had been removed from its entrance.
She stood outside the tomb weeping. She knelt to look into the tomb and saw people sitting there, dressed in white, one at the head, the other at the foot of where Jesus' body had been laid (they were angels but Mary’s vision blurred by her tears wasn’t aware of that). "Woman, why do you weep?" they asked her.
"They’ve taken my Master," she said, "and I don't know where they put him." She turned away from the mouth of the cave and saw Jesus standing there. But she didn't recognize him. She assumed he was the gardener.
"Woman,” he asked her, “Why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?"
"If you’ve taken his body somewhere, tell me where you laid it, so I can care for him."
Jesus looked at her and simply said, "Mary."
As he uttered her name, her eyes were opened…
She said in Hebrew, "Rabboni!" (which means "Teacher!")
She embraced Jesus.
17Jesus said, "Don't cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go to my brothers and tell them, 'I ascend to my Father and your Father, my God and your God’."
18Mary Magdalene went, telling the news to the disciples: "I saw the Master!" (John 20).
When Mary had walked onto the cemetery grounds where Jesus’ dead body had been laid, she simply assumed like everyone else, in the same way that we would have assumed, if we had seen someone crucified three days before, that Jesus was dead. When a soldier had pierced Jesus’ side with his spear as Jesus hung on a cross, she had seen how the watery serum had separated from his blood—a sure sign of death.
Mary Magdalene was also a Jew, and there was nothing in Jewish tradition that would have caused anyone to anticipate that someone in their time in history would rise from the dead. And so when Mary first saw Jesus, she assumed that he must be the gardener.
She was, of course, in the one sense wrong, but in another sense right. As theologian G.K. Chesterton has said, “In one way she was right because the man she saw was God, the Gardener of a new creation he had just ushered in, God the gardener who would take the chaos of creation and bring new order and beauty to it, the gardener who would uproot the thorns and weeds of our world, and replace them with blossoming flowers and rich harvests, the gardener who would make all things new.
She doesn’t recognize who he is until he turns to her and calls her by name, “Mary.”
In that moment her eyes are opened and after the initial shock and fear of seeing him alive, she feels a surge of joy and cries, “Rabboni!” which means “teacher,” and embraces him.
Do you hear the Gardener? Do you hear the risen Christ calling your name?
And Jesus says in verse 17, “Don’t cling to me.” We are not exactly sure why he says that.
Mary is not offended by his words. Biblical scholars like N.T. Wright have argued that when Jesus said to Mary, “Don’t cling to me,” he was saying that her new relationship with him was not going to be like the old one. He would not be going around Galilee with her and his 12 disciples, walking the lanes with them, sharing meals, talking face to face. They would see him, but it would soon be time for him to ascend to the God, his Father and send his Spirit to indwell us.
Jesus tells Mary, “Go tell my brothers and sisters I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”
Up until this point in Jesus’ ministry, Jesus has typically spoken about God as the Father--as the Father who sent me, or my Father. He has called his followers disciples, servants, and friends. But now, all this has changed. In verse 17 Jesus says, “Go and say to my brothers and sisters that I am going to my Father, and to your Father, to my God and your God.” As a result of Jesus Christ’s death on the cross for our sins and his rising again, something astonishing has been achieved—a door to a new relationship with God has been opened. We are being welcomed into a new world, a new beautiful garden where we can know God the way Jesus knew God, where we can enter into an intimate relationship as sons and daughters with a perfect Father who loves us more than we can imagine…a garden, where like Eden, we see God as our God, as our Father without any barriers.
That is why we celebrate Easter, because through the death and resurrection of Christ, a door has been opened to a new garden where we know God as our Father, Jesus as our Brother… a Garden where we can experience the life that we have always longed for…we can come home.
When Neil Armstrong became the first man on the moon, he said those famous words: “One small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.” When Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose again, it one was small step out of a tomb, but the greatest leap for mankind as he opened the way for us to experience life with God in the way he had experienced life with God. He opened the way for us to experience life of God now and forever.
When Christ died on the cross, he absorbed our sins, opening the door for us to be cleansed and enter into a new garden where God is our Father, and where Jesus in our brother, and a garden where we will one day be re-united with lost family members, friends, a beloved neighbor who has received the gift of grace of God…a garden where we know that like a seed that falls into ground and “dies” and then rises out of the ground as a hydrangea in the spring, life and not death will have the final word.
This is why we celebrate the promise of Easter: it was a morning beyond belief, a morning when through Christ rising from the dead, a new garden was created.
Pray:
posted by Shigematsu at 5:09 PM
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