John 20:1-18
“Also Known As”
April 21, 2019
Whenever the power goes out at night, be it for a couple of seconds or a few hours, it can take a bit of time for our eyes to adjust, especially to total darkness. That deep inky darkness that comes only with sleep is so unusual in our plugged-in world. Most of us, even with window darkening shades or curtains have any number of electric gadgets – cell phones, clock radios, computers, stoves, microwaves, televisions and you can add your own – that emit light of varying degrees, even when they are technically turned off. To be in total darkness is probably a bit more likely here in Vermont as so many of our roads have no street lights but what we lack coming from outside our houses we make up for within them. So, while it was still dark, centuries before electricity and probably using some kind of torch or lantern, Mary finds her way to the spot where Jesus lay dead. Where there was supposed to be something there appeared nothing which leads to a foot race between two disciples vying for the prize of being faster at seeing nothing, nothing but a pile of fabric. Once the race was over they left just as quickly as they arrived, maybe muttering cluelessly between themselves, “Nothing to see there.”
But Mary stayed there in the dark and in her dedication and despair, her grief and her tears, in front of that big empty hole, her eyes adjusted to the image of a man. And perhaps because of the darkness she mistook him as someone who might know where Jesus’ body was. And when Jesus said her name and gave her permission to let him go to God, Mary went back to the disciples that included the two racers who left empty-handed a little while earlier and she delivered the perfect sermon. And she did it in only 5 words. These five words are the legacy that we’ve had passed down to us: “I have seen the Lord.” With a simplicity for the ages, Mary speaking in the first person, handed down to those would-be believers then and we Jesus followers now, the account that is the reason we know and live this story.
“I HAVE SEEN THE LORD.” Through the ages since, the Resurrection story has become the backbone and cement of our faith – a faith in the grace of God. “I HAVE SEEN THE LORD” speaks of a faith that knows that the tombs we see and recognize so well on earth – those containers for the dead, those places where life has turned bad, where people are treated with cruelty or hatred or dismissed as less than or ignored – those will not have the last word. Like the stone that was pushed aside when Mary arrived, there are stones that we need to push aside to let the light in. Every one of us has witnessed dark places in our own lives and the lives of those we love. But every one of us has also been a witness, hopefully many times over, of a light and a life which we experience first-hand and then can say, “I HAVE SEEN THE LORD.”
Like Mary’s experience, it can be a totally unexpected sighting. Just last week, I was admittedly going a bit over the speed limit heading south to an appointment in Bennington on Route 7 and up ahead I saw the familiar flashing lights of a Vermont State Police cruiser and, of course, my first reaction was to ease up on the gas pedal. As I got closer I saw a sight that brought me to tears because sometimes seeing God in the flesh does that to you. There on the shoulder of the highway with cars zipping by, between his cruiser and the woman’s car, the trooper had stopped to assist with what appeared to be a vehicle that had broken down. The young woman was on her phone in her car while the trooper dressed in his full uniform with his gun in its holster, standing with feet firmly planted and moved side to side gently cradling and smiling down at a small baby. I was immediately struck by the gentle strength of that moment that has played over a number of times in my head since then. I HAVE SEEN THE LORD.
There’s a two-word quote that says, “Anticipate resurrection.” (Terry Tempest Williams) Obviously we get to do more than anticipate today on this Easter Sunday amid the scent of these blooming flowers and the notes of familiar hymns and the same story we hear recounted each year on this day where resurrection is all around us but I think it’s much more than that. To anticipate resurrection is to be a part of bringing light to the dark places every other day of the year and, as Gandhi famously encouraged, to be the change we wish to see in the world. Resurrection looks like new life and ultimately recognizing God in another person or place or effort or movement.
What Mary said with her perfect and succinct five-word sermon was that within this human Jesus she recognized and saw God. This was a God, who for some people in the world we know, may feel absent, distant, or even dead. And so we may need to be light bearers and the surest way is through our actions, our deeds, and how we move through the world. Sometimes it is through tears, like Mary’s, that we come to see the God that is right before us, in the midst of maybe not darkness but at least heavy cloud cover. May these words that appeared on my computer when I least expected them, shine a light on the God we might see:
“We know resurrection as something
not merely to be anticipated
but also daily lived
as we reckon with
what abides,
what returns
of the beloved
who cannot be unknown—
who, having passed into us,
will not be so easily shed.
Still, I think of Mary Magdalene
and the secret she carried
when she left
that empty tomb:
how resurrection is
a strange dance
of reunion and release,
how our loving
will always ask of us
a letting go,
yet in the asking
a promise
that what we love
knows how to find us,
even by the path
that will bear us
far away
from here.
—Jan Richardson
On this day when resurrection feels real, let us carry out with us the powerful good news that Christ is alive and may we attune our eyes so that we can continue to say and live the words, I HAVE SEEN THE LORD. Alleluia and Amen.