Transformation

John 20:1-18

Somebody took Jesus away from us!

That’s how John’s story starts, today: Jesus is missing. And we don’t know where to find him.

Mary Magdalene’s discovery of the gaping entrance to the tomb triggers a new sense of loss and fear that she runs to share with her fellow disciples, and this contagious anxiety triggers a cascade of searching and misunderstanding that wouldn’t be out of place in a TV comedy: half an hour of rushing around, trying to figure out why one character is missing, only to recognize at the end that he’s been right there, in the middle of their search all along – they just were too caught up in the search to understand.

It’s not funny to Mary and Peter and the other disciple. It’s painfully tragic, this loss of their dearest one, not only to death, but after; a pain many of us have shared in one way or another.

But the vivid, bizzare details John provides – the footrace to the tomb, one entry after another, the puzzle of the abandoned shroud – are all funny in the way that panic is funny when we see it from a place of security, when we laugh at it later after everything is resolved.

Peter searches the tomb; the beloved disciple does one after another, but they don’t find Jesus.

Finally, Mary goes in, weeping (we know he’s not in there; they all keep looking in the one place he’s certainly not) and he’s still missing.

But now there are angels. Ah – perhaps we’re getting somewhere. Angels are God’s messengers, after all. They should surely know what’s happened to Jesus. But they are messengers without a message, a clue that doesn’t lead to the solution. They just ask a question that refocuses Mary on the loss that has seized her heart and mind to the exclusion of all else.

Then, at last, the missing character appears. We know it’s Jesus; but Mary does not.

He too asks her why she is weeping, and she again says what’s at the top of her mind; she asks help in finding Jesus.

And then, finally, the tension breaks:

he calls her by name, and she knows him.

At last!  It’s all been a misunderstanding. He was here all along; we just couldn’t tell,

and we’re finally at the feel good ending.

Except… now there’s a theological addendum that un-resolves the plot and changes the ending.

“Don’t hold on to me,” Jesus says, in one of the most reunion-wrecking lines in all literature.

And in a few sentences jam-packed with layered theological meaning, he turns satisfying comic closure into redemptive mystery.

This part of the story, it turns out, is for the real geeks; the ones who remember the details of all the other stories in this series, and spend hours on the internet debating the hundreds of possible meanings of tiny details. (Talk to me about the plot holes in Star Wars, sometime; you’ll know what I mean.)

But the geeks have good news for all of us, here.

When Jesus tells Mary, “Don’t hold on to me, but go to my siblings, tell them I am on the way to be one with my Father, who is their Father.” He is telling her that a promise is fulfilled – one the disciples didn’t understand, that probably we didn’t understand, at the time since, let’s be honest, Jesus doesn’t always make sense.

But in their meal together only days ago, in their last conversation, Jesus told them that when he is gone and glorified; when he has returned to and is one with the Father, his disciples will be transformed: we will have Jesus’ intimate relationship with the Father; we will become children of God.

Don’t hold on to me, he tells Mary, because I am still in the middle of this; it must be completed.

The “glorification” that Jesus has been talking about – his great work of redeeming and transforming the world, that begins with the lifting up of Jesus on the cross, and moves in a single arc through the ascension to Jesus reunited with the Creator – is still in process.

This moment of resurrection – the defeat of death itself, the healing of loss, the overwhelming joy of being face to face with living Love, any of which would be enough cause for joy

is just a quantum moment of the whole, a tiny concrete slice of a process that can’t be measured and seen and known except by its results: that you and I are transformed in our relationship with God.

And Mary somehow understands this deep but confusing truth. She lets him go. And she knows her own transformation.

She is transformed in this story from the anxious lead in a comedy of misunderstanding to an angel herself, a messenger of God. Transformed from an insignificant bystander into the first apostle, child of God, sibling of Jesus, bearing in herself, like Jesus, the words of God to be shared and made known.

The words with which she brings the news to the other disciples are radiant:
“I have seen the Lord,” she proclaims, and tells them what she has heard from him.

It’s the absolute reverse of the anxious tidings she brought to them in the dark of morning.

He is not missing. Instead he is exactly where he is supposed to be; in the midst of salvation, going to God and transforming us all.

You and I come to the Easter tomb in an entirely different way than Mary, or Peter, or the disciple whom Jesus loved. We come with flowers and fanfare, candy and eggs – not the anxious fear of discovering that we have been robbed of our greatest treasure. We can watch the comedy of the empty tomb unfold because we know the ending will be happy.

But many of us come to today’s fanfare full of loss and grief. Others of us come full of busyness, with other things on our minds because we’ve heard this story so often before, or numb in parts of our hearts and spirits that have been worked too hard or hurt too often. Others still come drawn by the brightness and eager for good news.

Any of this – like Mary’s panic over the opened tomb – can both trigger our search for Jesus, and keep us from seeing that he is right here, all along, fully immersed in the whole complicated work of our salvation.

But Jesus is there, no matter what has seized our attention, no matter what we are seeking. He has been there all along, and meets us, like Mary, with a gentle prodding to name the cause of our weeping – or our indifference – or our hope – to name what you are missing, or seeking, or even bored with, whatever has taken hold of you above all else, so that when we lay that noise within us bare, we can hear him call us by name, and invite us into that sudden solid moment of resurrection, from which we can know ourselves loved and see God’s promises being made true, for you and for the world.

Sometimes our road to this moment is tragic. Sometimes it’s comic, accidental. Often it is both at once. But we each get here today because we all need to hear, to recognize and believe, the news of God’s mysterious promises actively being fulfilled. We all need to receive the truth of our own transformation.

Mary came to the gaping tomb that dark morning in grieving panic, in pain and loss, and returned to her fellow disciples radiant with the revelation of Jesus’ presence and the news of God’s work being completed right now.

We come this morning to brightness and celebration, in all the different shades of hope and indifference, pain and happiness, that both draw us to God, and make it hard to recognize Jesus when he meets us.

And Jesus has the same news for us all: that this morning’s glimpse of resurrection means that the mission of God is actively being completed, right this moment, and that our relationship with God has already been transformed into the intimacy of a family bond that nothing can break.

So, here this morning at the empty tomb, will you, like Mary, name for Jesus the root of your weeping – or your hope, or your numbness, indifference – whatever is occupying your mind while you seek God?

Can you hear Jesus call you by name, and know yourself loved?

And will you go home today, like Mary, fully aware of your own transformation,

radiant to share the news that you have seen the Lord?