Acts 10:34-43
Colossians 3:1-4
John 20:1-10(11-18)
Psalm 118:14-29 or 118:14-17, 22-24
I had a foster daughter who lived with us only for a few weeks. At thirteen this kid was awkward and overweight, self conscious and timid, with a shy smile that would break your heart.. Soon after she moved back with her mother, they moved out of state, but I treasured the memory I had of this particular kid.
Nine years later, at Crossroads in St. Cloud, I heard someone call out, "Mom!" (Having had some fifty-six foster kids I still answer to that without thinking.) I turned around and saw no one at all familiar, but just as I began to turn back, a slender, poised woman in a Marine Corps uniform stepped confidently out of the crowd, and said "Patricia?" Same kid! No more awkward, overweight, timid girl.
The image of her that I had frozen in time, and onto which I had held, had to be changed. Probably all of us have some sort of similar experience.
Who, among you, who has been married for some time has not thought at least once, "this is not the man, this is not the woman, about whom I said ‘I will and I do' some time ago."
Who among you, who is employed or a member of a particular group, has not said, "This is not the community or job that I expected when I entered it."
Who among us has not desired at one time or another to have things "put back the way they used to be"?
We only need look at Ground Zero in New York City to wish for things to be the way they were.
I read a report recently about a father who had two sons who were part of the Port Authority of New York. They both died at the World Trade Center. One body has been found. The other is still missing. Each day the father goes and stands and watches the work. And waits.
Mary Magdalene would understand this father well. She went to the tomb that early morning. She knew her Beloved Teacher was dead. She went to stand at her own Ground Zero, to weep at that dark place where hope was dead.
When Jesus comes to her there, she no more recognized him than I did my foster daughter. Something has changed. And then, suddenly through the tears, everything is changed. "The gardener" calls Mary by name and she recognizes him as her own Beloved Teacher.
And then he asks of her the most incredibly difficult thing. Jesus said to her, "Do not hold on to me"
Having lost the person she loved, and miraculously somehow having got him back, how could she possibly now let him go?.
If that father waiting beside the rubble of the World Trade Center suddenly had his son walk up and stand beside him, would he be able to let him go?
The hope beyond despair has happened. Mary is on the brink of joy and ready to take hold of what she most desires, and Jesus says, ""Do not hold on to me." How can this be? Doesn't Jesus understand what it is to be human after all?
What Jesus understands is LIFE. Jesus Christ is ALIVE. To be alive is to grow and to change. And Jesus has just undergone the greatest change of all. In him death has been transcended and life is finally and absolutely victorious.
Mary's Beloved Teacher is still himself and he is also something new. He is changed far more than my foster daughter. To be alive is to grow and to change. And Mary needs to let Jesus go so he can be truly alive in her life. When we hold tightly onto a person, we may be too close to see how that person changes with time. We may be stuck in an image of that one which no longer fits that person, and may act towards him or her as if what was true in the past were still the case. They may have grown and changed in many ways, but we keep our own image of them tightly bound up with something that had been true in the past, and we mistake them for what they are no longer.
"Do not hold on to me". Jesus had to say that to Mary in part, because she had to grow in the way she understood him. He was not "an event" in her life, like something that could be captured on film. Jesus was an entirely new way of living that was happening in her.
We are told that Jesus had cast seven demons out of this woman. Her life began anew, and she didn't want to lose that. But if she were to freeze Jesus at any particular moment, either at the exorcism, or at the cross, or even at this glorious resurrection, she would not grow.
"Do not hold on to me," he said. Because Mary needed to grow.
And because if she clung tightly to the Jesus of the past, she would not be allowing him to live. She might has well have locked him up in the tomb. Christ is alive! Being alive means growing and changing. "Do not hold on to me," he said. Easter is time to let God be God, rather than our idea of God. The Lord is risen! Christ is truly alive, growing and changing, and walking with us. It's time to let our picture of Jesus change.
Have you met anyone who is holding on to Jesus as they met him years or even decades ago, and who has not grown in depth or breadth of faith just because of that?
Many good Christians still live with and love the Jesus they met in their confirmation class. Many others have left the church, because they reject that same Jesus as simplistic and childish. But Christ is alive. "Do not hold on to me!" he says to us too. Christ is bigger than our understanding of Christ will ever be. Over and over again, we need to let go of our understanding of Christ. Over and over again, we outgrow our picture of God.
Sometimes we our outdated pictures of God look as helpless as an ordinary gardener because our old understanding is not big enough for our own changes and growth. The Living Christ no longer matches our old picture.
Yet if we, like Mary, persist in seeking him, we will find him ... Or he will find us and he will call us by name so that we might find and recognize our Lord once more.
Jesus said to Mary, "Do not hold on to me" And there's more to this than just letting go. Jesus adds, "Go to my brothers and tell them...."
Jesus says to all who meet him, "You have to go" And he sends us to "his brothers and sisters", who do not yet believe that he is risen, to tell them about the one whom he called, "my God and your God."
It is great to be in the fellowship of God's people. It is wonderful to be in the courts of the Lord. Mary couldn't be blamed for wanting to hold on to Jesus when she met him. It is just that good to be with Him. But he wouldn't let her. He keeps saying, "Do not hold on to me.... Go and tell..."
In telling her not to hold on to him, in telling her to go, Jesus did not abandon or reject her.
His appearance to Mary by the tomb was not the only one he made to his disciples. That same night, he appeared in the locked room where his other disciples were gathered, and he breathed on them so they received the Holy Spirit, to be with them as comforter and companion.
And on the Mount of the Ascension, he told them, "I will be with you always." Jesus didn't abandon them, nor has Jesus abandoned us, no matter what our situation, no matter what our lack or loss of faith, no matter what our sickness or sin. Today we celebrate the Resurrection. His resurrection, our resurrection, and the hope we have received.
But don't hold on to today, either. You have to grow. You have to Go and tell the others. And the Living Christ walks with you, through all your days.
Much of this sermon originated with David Alexander.