An affirmation of faith as we begin here this morning.  The good news in which I believe as a follower of Christ: “I believe that Jesus really has been raised from the dead; that he really is Lord; that death really is defeated; that everything Jesus said is true; that this is the single most important and astonishing fact and event in world history.”

It is not insignificant on this day – Easter Sunday, Resurrection Day – that we come to the tomb along with Mary Magdalene.  She stood near the cross on Friday along with Jesus’ mother, and Mary the wife of Clopas, and the disciple whom Jesus loved.  God’s “I love you” to humanity and to all of creation had been poured out on the cross (literally).  God’s “I love you” not simply a sentiment or a feeling, but an action.  What is love at all if it is not willing the good of another and showing the desire of good for another in word and deed?

Mary had taken those words of Jesus seriously.  Abide in me.  Remain in me.  Stay with me.  We remember the question that had been asked at the beginning of the story when things seemed much more carefree, “Rabbi, where are you staying?”  We want to be where you are!  “Come and see,” was the answer.  In life and in death, Mary wants to be where Jesus is.  Jesus has died.  Jesus has been executed and so Mary goes to the place of death.  Death – the great unknown adventure.  Death – surely the end of all hope.  The end of any expectation of good.  British writer Pico Iyer wrote about death this way,  “One reason [why we cannot seem to learn to die], of course, is that death is the one great adventure of which there are no surviving accounts; death, by definition, is what happens to somebody else. Empiricism (the belief that what we know is derived from experience) falters before death. Yet [death] is more certain than love and more reliable than health.”

Is it more certain than love though, when the love of God is involved?

Mary goes to the place of death and we go with her.  She wants to be with Jesus and this is a good place to be. It’s good to be with Mary from Magdala this morning as we are reminded that it is the first day of the week.  Sure it’s early and it is still dark, and we don’t close our eyes to the darkness or simply wish it away.  We recognize it just as John did at the beginning of his good news and we remember what he said.  “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.”  We remember how John talked about the beginning of everything.  In the beginning, was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.   All things came into being through him.  On the first day, God spoke something new into creation.  The Word became flesh and lived among us and we mocked him and scorned him and held him in contempt and we killed him.

On Easter Sunday we are pointedly reminded that death does not have the last word.  It may be early.  It may still be dark, but God is doing something new!  There is light enough to see that the stone had been removed from the tomb.  There is light enough to run.  She ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid.”  What else is one to think when one comes upon an empty grave?  As if it weren’t bad enough that they killed him.  Even in death, they won’t leave him alone.  There is so much running on here.  The two disciples set out and were running together.  The disciple whom Jesus loved outruns Peter.  He looks in the tomb and sees the linen wrappings lying there. Peter arrives,  goes in, and sees the linen wrappings lying there, along with the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head rolled up in a place by itself.  Carefully placed.  What kind of grave robber would have done that?  We read that the other disciple then went in and he saw and believed. (20:8)

We’re going to be focussed on hearing today, but I want us to stay with this disciple whom Jesus loves for a little while.  He saw and believed.  They did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead (and none of us fully understand), but he believed.  The matter of belief is of paramount importance for John.  We said from the beginning of Lent that John states the reason that he wrote his account of Jesus is “So that you may come to believe” or “So that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God and that through believing you may have life in his name.” (20:31)  Belief in Jesus is not simply a proposition to which we give a cold and analytical assent or dissent.  Belief in the Gospel of John is always a verb.  It’s an action.  It is seeing, hearing, remembering.  Belief is receiving a gift given without measure.  Belief is entrusting one’s life, one’s everything.  Belief is a devotion to, a desire to stay with.  Belief is abiding, staying in, living in, resting in.  Belief is serving, worshiping, praising.  Belief is knowing our need for God, our dependence on God in the same way we depend on water and bread.  Belief is entrusting ourselves to Jesus' care in the same way that sheep are entrusted to a shepherd.  Belief is looking for guidance – a desire to walk in the light of the light of the world.

Underpinning all of this is love.  God’s love for us.  Our love for God.  May it ever be growing.  I heard a preacher once ask “Who loved you to life?”  This is a good question.  Who loved you to life?  From whom did you first know what unconditional love that seeks nothing but your good looks like?  Thank God for that person or those people.  If you’re saying “No one has done that up to this point in my life,” then please get to this church (or we’ll come to you) or another church which is full of the love of God.  Ask God who we are called to “love to life.”  Ask God to give ourselves eyes to see where people are being loved to life all around us.  This week I was at Christie Gardens Long Term Care home to lead two services for the residents on Wednesday morning.  I was waiting for the second service to start and watching a lady who was volunteering to get everyone situated and set up with a hymn book.  Rita leaned down toward a fellow resident and was telling her how she had been unable to help her get to church on Palm Sunday, but had heard that the young lady who “was in charge of the whole place” had been there to help her.  She wasn’t normally there on a Sunday but had been on Palm Sunday and had been able to help.  Rita asked this woman, “Do you know what she said about you?”  “No,” replied her friend.  “She said you were a very nice lady!” The woman beamed.  Loving one another to life.  Our words building up.  Wonderful!

Then the disciples returned to their homes.  Mary weeps.  Mary stood weeping outside the tomb.  Let us stand there with her, whether we have reason to weep this morning or not.  We don’t have to look very far to find people weeping.  People saying, “They have taken away my ___”  Two angels in white are sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying.  They ask her “Woman, why are you weeping?”  The first question of pastoral care or any care that we are called to extend to one another.  “What’s wrong?  What happened?”  Why are you weeping?  “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”  “When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus through her tears, but she did not know that it was Jesus.  It’s the first day of the week!  Jesus asks her the same question, just as God has been asking questions of us all along.  “Where are you?”  “What are you looking for?”  “Do you want to be healed?” 

“Woman,” Jesus asks, “Why are you weeping?  Whom are you looking for?”

I want us to hear Jesus’ voice today.  We want to encounter Jesus when we worship together.  Our worship time together is not simply so we can hear some good words and good music (though we like good words and good music).  May our times of worship together be times of encounter with God.  They say seeing is believing, but we may see things very differently.  We may not be able to see because we’re blinded by tears.  We may say we’re seeing very clearly with eyes of faith this morning.  We may say we see with a jaded or even jaundiced view – a world-weariness that says there is nothing new under the sun.

Mary can’t see and she thinks Jesus is the gardener.  When is a gardener, not just a gardener?  When we remember how badly things once went in a garden when we thought we were better off on our own.  When we consider the result of that garden action was that we were going to have to deal with thorns and thistles (Gen 3:18) and don’t we know all about thorns and thistles?  This particular gardener is here to make all things right.  Hear the song swelling in the background as we’re invited to hear it this morning.  Hear the song that goes “No more let sins and sorrows grow/Nor thorns infest the ground/He comes to make His blessings flow/Far as the curse is found”  This is the Good News of Easter Morning!  “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away,” says Mary through her tears.

Jesus calls her name.  “Mary.”

Could we hear Jesus call our name this morning if we just stopped and listened?  I’m going to play an African-American spiritual called “Hush, Hush, Somebody’s Calling My Name.”  May we hear Jesus calling us.  (Play song)

Mary joins a long line of people in John’s Gospel who give the good and right and fitting and proper response to Jesus.  “My teacher.”  My Lord and my God.  My teacher.  “Don’t hold onto me,” Jesus tells her, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”  First time he’d ever said anything like that.  My Father.  Your Father.  Adoption into the family of God.  Participation in and fellowship with the Father, Son and Spirit.  We have been granted an all-access pass into the life of the Divine.  A whole new way to relate to God through the Holy Spirit of the risen Christ.  Mary Magdalene becomes the first to see the risen Jesus and the first to go and tell.  She’s given a job to do.  “Oh Lord what shall I do?” was the question we heard in the song.  Jesus tells her.  “But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” (17)  Mary goes and tells.  She becomes the apostle to the apostles.  “Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her.’” (18)

Have we seen him?  Have we heard him?  Let us remember together some of the things he’s said to us.  “Come and see.”  “I am the light of the world.” “I am the good shepherd.”  “Abide in me as I abide in you.”  “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you.  I do not give as the world gives.  Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” “Love one another just as I have loved you.  By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.”

The defeat of sin and death.  New life in the risen Christ.  Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift. Amen