(This Easter I’m posting my sermon notes here on The Waiting Country. Normal once-a-week service resumes shortly. Apologies for the overwhelm!)
A mere 40+ years into his musical career, Paul McCartney released an album in 2005 with the title Chaos and Creation in the Backyard. It was mostly well-received, given its appearance when many felt he was past his prime. What we have here in John 20 is Chaos and New Creation, not in a backyard but in a garden.
The whole scene is awash with chaos. We find Mary Magdalene arriving at the tomb of Jesus — we're not told of the others who are with her but she wasn't there on her own — and she sees the stone has been rolled away.
She just doesn't know what to make of it all, so in her panic, in her fear, she runs to tells Peter and the disciple Jesus loved (we'll assume it was John). They then run to the tomb - John gets there first and stands are the entrance, pondering, but Peter getting there second bursts right on in. There's strips of linen, arranged neatly, and the cloth that was around his head but no sign of the dead body they expected to find.
Chaos. Fear. Confusion.
But there are also hints of a new creation. If we have eyes to see, it’s there in chapter 19 when Jesus is laid in a new tomb, in a garden. And now we're here early on the first day of a new week and we're in a garden - overtures of the Genesis story abound. We're meant to pick up these hints, like the first strains of a melody that is going to be central to the most captivating symphony.
But for Mary the chaos continues. She sees two angels in his tomb and probably assumes they're regular people (she's too upset and confused to ask, Who are you and why are you in here?). She stands there weeping. Tears are a poignant reality and say so much to us and about us. As she stands there, she just doesn't know what to make of it all. But then she's met by someone - she thinks he’s the gardener - and says to him, "If you've carried him away, tell me where you've put him, and I will get him." I'll somehow go and carry his lifeless body back here so we can do for him what we came to do, make his body ready for long-term burial. Until that day when the dawn breaks and the shadows finally flee…
In her grief she is completely unrealistic (could she really carry a lifeless body?) and doesn't know what she's saying nor what to make of the mysterious events that are unfolding in that early morn.
I wonder if that is you sometimes, in life and in your life as a Christian? You weep. You weep real tears, often, and your heart is choking, full of grief. You're deeply confused about life, about God, about everything really. You just don't know if you're coming or going.
And the bottom line seems to be, I'm just going to have to somehow sort this out for myself. No one else either can or will. And the Lord? Well, I just can't seem to see him either. I feel all alone in the awful chaos that litters the backyard of my life.
God bless you this morning, in the resurrection power of Jesus! God bless you as we continue in this passage — because chaos does not reign and the gift of new creation is being held out to you.
Called by name, by the risen Lord of life
Mary is asked a question twice, first by the angels and then by the Lord Jesus himself: Why? Why are you crying? Why are you so upset? Why are you so enmeshed in all this chaos? Why aren't you making progress? Why aren't you walking in love and joy and peace? Why can't you see? Why aren't you savouring not just hints but the reality of new creation?
Why am I crying? Isn't it completely obvious? But everything is going to change. And it changes when the risen Lord calls his distraught and beloved disciple by name. Every part of that sentence is significant.
It is the risen Lord who speaks. This is not an apparition. This is not the force of memory playing tricks with Mary. This is not a fond but forlorn daydream of happier times. He. Is. Risen. Alive from the dead. Not resuscitated, as though death hadn't actually claimed him in the first place. Truly risen having really died. Risen as "victor from the dark domain."
That's who he is. And as the one with all power he speaks, calling to his distraught disciple and to desolate disciples today. And to all who hear. He finds us where we are and how we are. His voice is full of resurrection power. His voice is full of the authority of the living One who was dead and now is alive for evermore. There is no voice like the voice of the risen Lord Jesus Christ. No voice as clear, as compelling, as full of new creation as the voice of Jesus.
And it is personal. This is not a voice calling out over a faceless crowd but he calls her by name: Mary. It elicits the deepest recognition in her heart — "Rabboni!" Teacher - my teacher! The powerful and profound becomes at the same time deeply personal. That's the Christian life. Jesus the Good Shepherd knows you to the very core and calls you by name. Right where you are in all your distress, where chaos reigns. And he calls you into the truth and into the beauty and into the captivating newness of his resurrection.
Everything changes from here, when we hear that voice calling us.
Don't hold on to me
Well, Mary's perfectly understandable reaction is to cling to him (Matthew tells us the women at the tomb clasped his feet). When everything around you says it's hopeless, you're on your own, thrown back on your own ingenuity and resources, onto your ability (or lack of) to endure, to tough it out, and you suddenly hear the Saviour's voice, you see him in his risen glory when you had assumed everything had ended in his devastating slaughter - well, what else would you do but want to hold on to him?
I don't have any trouble believing I’d have done exactly the same as dear Mary. You're going nowhere. Never am I letting you out of my sight again! Here might I stay and sing. Oh yes. Amen, amen to that.
But he won't allow it. "Do not hold on to me." Holding on would mean localising Jesus - you're here for me, Lord, for me, me, me. Which is true, but it's not wholly true. It's not true enough. He wasn't raised to be Mary's mascot through life, her cosmic comfort blanket, the one who would weave divine details around the edges of her garment.
No, there is so much more to come, so much more to be unveiled. This was never meant to be a private experience of blissful wonder for Mary to bind on her heart, hold on to with all her might, stored in a locket to forever wear around her neck.
That simply isn't the Christian faith. And if we live genuinely, as the Lord's people, we won't be able to containerise it. It simply isn't possible. It's an overflowing river of blessing, a cloudburst that deluges parched ground, even when your own eyes can't perceive it.
If we feel, I have my Jesus and that's enough for me; the world can just go on it's merry way, we've not got hold of Jesus as much as we might think. He disallows this. And he is the Lord.
And he disallows it for the most significant reasons.
Ascending and Sending
Don't hold onto me because the news is even greater than 'mere' resurrection. Having risen he is going to ascend, just as he told them he would. The proper place now for the resurrected Lord is at the Father's right hand, having begun his eternal reign of justice and joy, from where he will direct the whole of history for the sake of his people and the sake of his purposes.
No, don't hold him back Mary. And let us not live attenuated lives as the Lord's people fixated upon one aspect of joy to the exclusion of the fullest unveiling of the glory of God. Because that glory includes this: "I'm going to my father and your father, to my God and your God."
You belong to me and with me in relationship with the Father. Disciples of Jesus are in the family and they call Jesus' father their father too. It could not be a closer connection.
When you read through John's gospel and consider how Jesus speaks of his Father, how close their relationship is, how intense, how intimate, and then factor-in that he's telling all disciples (not just these ones) they are now ushered into that same relationship, that the love the Father has for the Son is also for them, well it's a staggering thought, radiant with the powerful glory and beauty of God himself.
This is the breath-taking and life-giving truth that hits us this Easter morning. That in all our anxious striving, in all our agonised struggles, the risen and now ascended Lord speaks our names and calls us to enter newness of life in him, into the depths of the Father's love.
We are known and held and honoured - and, like Mary, commissioned to take this astonishing news to all who need so very much to hear it and to receive by faith its healing, saving power. That he is risen and his Father is our Father too.
You may have come here this morning with the backyard of your life in utter chaos but there is new creation in this garden. And we're brought into the very centre of it and sent to take it, with joy and wonder, into this still chaotic world. God bless us as we do so.
What an uplifting sermon, Richard. Thank you so much.