Faith Lutheran Church Pastors

Easter Sunday
John 20:1-18
April 8, 2007

A longstanding tradition I had when our boys were young was to get up early while it was still dark on Easter morning and Marty and I would bundle up for the crisp ocean air and head off to the Santa Monica Pier for the Ecumenical Sunrise Service. I didn’t have Marty with me this morning, or a pier to run to, but the labyrinth in our Parish Hall bid me come – so near dawn, before the sun rose, I stole away to the Parish Hall for an early morning walk. It is a Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter and John the Beloved Disciple tradition. They all rose early on that first day of the week – while it was still dark.

It is probably sheer grace that John’s Gospel begins in the dark – that it doesn’t all of a sudden blind us with the full light of Easter. As the story moves forward our eyes and hearts are given time to adjust to the ever increasing light.

Simon Peter and John arrive at the tomb after Mary and by the time they get there the sun has risen a bit. There is by now enough light to see the linen cloths lying in the tomb and to see clearly that the body of Jesus is not there. But Peter and John, like Mary, are still in the dark for they cannot yet see the greater thing that has happened.

The truth about the way things really are often dawns on us gradually so that we can stomach it. We cannot stomach too much truth all at once, even when the truth is good in the long run. Like the truth Jesus was trying to get the disciples to see.

He had told them that though he would be rejected and killed he would be raised and his return to the Father would open up a whole new world. But they hadn’t understood a word Jesus said. Even after they saw the linen clothes in the empty tomb, John’s Gospel still says: “they did not yet understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.”

But on that first Easter morning the light begins to dawn when Jesus calls Mary by name. It is then that she sees it is Jesus. But she does not yet see fully for she does not see what God is up to. More light is needed. And Jesus helps shed that light by giving her a command – his first command as the Risen Christ. He says to Mary, “Do not hold me.”

“Do not hold on to me” is a hard saying. Letting go can be hard to do. Mary must have been delighted to see Jesus – how difficult it must have been to hear these words: “Do not hold on to me.” But Jesus doesn’t give her time to argue. Instead, he spoke the second command of his risen life. “Go and tell my brethren that I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”

Wisely Jesus calls grieving Mary to something meaningful; to some way to not be isolated and alone. He directs her back into community. Mary was to let go of how she had known Jesus in order that she might receive him now in a larger way. She was being invited to participate in the ever expanding vision of God. But if it were us, if we were Mary, I wonder if we or I would have had what it takes to let go of the past and be open to a new future.

How easy it would be to argue with Jesus. “What do you mean ‘do not hold on to you’?” How can we love deeply and not want to cling to a friend like Jesus? How can we invest in our faith fully and not want to hold on to what has nurtured us over the years? But Jesus says to Mary and to all disciples, “Do not hold on to me.”

Jesus was not being heartless or unfeeling in this command. To the contrary, he saw what Mary could not yet see. Much light had dawned for her. She sees that Jesus is no longer dead, but she was still in the dark in terms of his risen life. Letting go of the earthy Jesus is necessary in order to receive the even more amazing reality God has in store through the risen Christ. “Do not hold me,” Jesus says, “but go to my brothers, my sisters, and tell them I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”

There is an incredible Easter gift in these words not only for Mary, but also for us. A gift more glorious even than the giant chocolate rabbit they are raffling off at Shubert’s Ice Cream store. I entered the raffle, and if I win, Ill share. But the gift in today’s Easter Gospel is even greater than that.

The gift is that Jesus had been denied and abandoned by those he now calls brothers and sisters. That is no light thing. In one of his Easter sermons, Martin Luther says “There is no greater word in all Scripture than this one, “Go say unto my brethren.” Luther writes, “Peter had denied; the others had fallen away. How did they deserve to be called “brethren”? But the words are there. One only has to believe. “But how?” asks Luther.

And the question of “how” was answered by Jesus ahead of time. He knew his followers would need each other if they were to believe this amazing gift of Jesus calling them not just friends now, but family – no less connected than an adopted or birth brother or sister.

The Greek word for brethren: “adelphos” really means “community.” The word is not gender limiting, but identifies all of Jesus’ disciples as his family. “Go to my community, my family,” says Jesus.

During Lent I had the joy of meeting weekly with a dozen or more children preparing for first communion, some of whom are receiving for the first time today. I shared that in Baptism we become brothers and sisters to each other – as much so and sometimes more so even than with the brothers and sisters in our nuclear family. When one of the children heard me say that she giggled and put her arm around the child next to her and said, “Hi sister!”

As three children are baptized today at our 11:00 service, they become our sister and brothers in Christ. We accept that happily and easily. But Easter makes this much more than just a nice saying. When the risen Jesus calls us family he makes this real.

But real as it is, it is still hard to believe, let alone live. It is hard to let go of the earthly Jesus and of our narrow view of what it means to be sisters and brothers of Jesus and of each other. We want to be held and to hold and so we cling to the earthly Jesus forgetting – or not recognizing – like Mary, that somehow life is different now – that somehow we are different – that family is now different. To cling to the earthly Jesus is to refuse God’s nudges towards an even greater gift.

Jesus has more in store for Mary, and us, when he says, “Do not hold on to me.” This more that Jesus has in mind is that we would now know God with the same intimacy that Jesus knows God. And by opening that for us, Jesus opens it as well for all whom Jesus calls brothers and sisters.

In the risen life walls are broken down because Jesus’ God is our God and we are all brothers and sisters. This has great implications for our divided world.

Jesus the Jew lived among Gentiles