John 20:1-18
April 1, 2018 +
The Resurrection of the Lord
I.
Mary Magdalene has this unprecedented and mind-shattering experience in the garden with the risen Christ. After she recognizes him and falls down to worship him, he tells her two things. First, she is not to hold on to him. And secondly, she is to go and tell the disciples that he is ascending to God.
When he tells her not to hold on to him, I wonder if he isn’t saying, “Don’t make this about just me. Don’t cling to my mortal, historical, physical, temporal nature. Certainly remember me. Certainly learn and teach and keep my commandments. Certainly continue to follow me. My life among you is not meaningless or incidental. But it’s also more than history and memory. Don’t reduce me to a figure, however great, who merely lived in the past. I am the way and the truth and the life. I am the resurrection. Do not dwell on who I was to the exclusion of who I am. Don’t make me distant, either relegated to the past, or in some far away heaven, or only coming at the end of time. Realize that I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
So many times in the gospels, and this one in particular, Jesus says “I am.” Only rarely does he say “I was.” It is certainly true that he was. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” His incarnation and earthly ministry is the supreme event in human history. He embodies true humanity, the same humanity we share, which includes having a mortal body and living in space and time. In so doing he blesses and sanctifies our life and the whole creation. He even leaves behind on the earth the water and blood of his crucifixion.
Yet, when Jesus wants to communicate his identity and mission to us, he characteristically says, “I am.” “I am” of course is the name God uses with Moses back in the book of Exodus. In saying “I am” so often, Jesus claims to be one with God, a claim that gets him into a lot of trouble. It means that Jesus is always present. He pre-exists his human birth, and he post-exists his human death.
The point of our focus on Jesus is that we find in him both ourselves and God. We follow Jesus, not as a dead historical figure we revere and cherish in our memories and traditions. We follow him as someone who is present with us now.
That’s why it is so important for Mary to tell the disciples that Jesus is in the process of ascending. Ascension is not going away to somewhere else; it is going everywhere. At the same time, it is not going away; it is going within everything. The image of ascension, of course, is a movement upward, into the sky. That’s the way it is depicted in Luke’s writings. But up doesn’t mean away and gone. It means Jesus rises to God’s all-inclusive, infinite vision. The higher you go the more you see, the more you see the more you know. Ascension means an expansion of Jesus’ embrace until he is present everywhere.
II.
The ultimate act of Jesus is his “lifting up,” something he has been predicting since at least chapter 3. “When I am lifted up,” he says, “I will draw all people to myself.” “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up so that those who believe in him may have eternal life.” His lifting up is the way he saves the world because in his lifting up he embraces the world.
The process of Jesus’ being lifted up starts when he is nailed to the cross and hoisted upright to hang there and die. The next stage of his being lifted up is his resurrection from the dead, which Mary now witnesses. The final stage — and these are all continuous, by the way — is his ascension into heaven. This ascension is the goal and completion of his lifting up, and that’s what Mary is supposed to tell the disciples about.
Her message is not, “Hey guys, Jesus is back, but he’s not going to hang around for long so you better see him quick.” No. Ascension does not mean that Jesus goes away. When he has her tell the disciples that he is ascending to God it is good news because he is losing his limitations, his boundaries, his being subject to time and space. He will be able to be with them far more directly and immediately by the influence and inspiration of his Spirit, which he gives them a week later. It is not that they have to see him now or never see him again; it is that they have to get ready to see and experience him in a completely different way. They have to open their perceptions to discern the presence of the Lord, not so much with their senses as another human next to them, but now in spirit, with, within, and among them.
The point being that now he is with them forever, and by extension, he is also with us forever, in the same way. Now, with a risen and ascended Lord, we find him here. He is not limited to history. In fact, even the Scriptures are given, not just as a testimony to his time in the flesh, but as an aid to unlock our perceptions so we can see, hear, feel, and follow him today.
The resurrection means that Jesus is present with us even now, if we have the eyes to see and the ears to hear. The disciplines of repentance, of gaining a new way of thinking and acting, are to adjust our consciousness so that we can see Jesus’ now. That is Mary’s first exclamation to the disciples when she goes back to them: “I have seen the Lord!”
That is in a sense the primal Christian confession, that we have seen the Lord, that Jesus Christ is alive and real to us, that we have experienced his grace and forgiveness and peace in our hearts. We don’t perceive him as directly as Mary, but our interior knowledge of him is even more convincing.
III.
We, the church, are called to be a community of people who have also seen the Lord. We gather for only one purpose, which is to see Jesus and discern his will for us here and now. We are a people who have awakened to the truth of Jesus’ ever-presence with us, and have come to know and see him at work in our lives.
We see and know him first of all in the Sacrament he gives us by which to remember him, where we share together in his Body and Blood, and his life enters us and becomes us as we become him. We see and know him as well in the Scriptures containing his teachings. He refers to both of these as the Bread of Life because they convey him to us most effectively.
We see him as well in the life of the community. In the joy and forgiveness, the peace and the affection, the healing and the acceptance which we share in together as his gathered people. In the church is where we learn to listen, not to the compulsions and desires of our own egos, not to the demands of society and practical politics, not to the supposed necessities and inevitabilities of economics, but to his Word alone. In the church we learn to subject our every thought and impulse to his example, which is always love. Our only prayer is that we see and know him and his will and that his will be done in and through us.
And because we see him in the life of the gospel community, in Word, Sacrament, and prayer, and in the love we share together, we begin to see him out in the world as well. We see him in the places of suffering and need with which he identifies on the cross. He explicitly joins himself in solidarity with the broken, threatened, victimized, poor, and hurting world, with creation at risk and people liable to harm. We know that when we are serving them, we are serving him and so serving God. We know that when we are subject to suffering, especially for his sake, we are with him.
We see and know him as well in every act of selfless kindness, every act of personal sacrifice, every act of generosity and decency, every act of forgiveness and humility that we perform or witness, especially for enemies, for the hated, and for those who cannot repay.
We see him when we realize that life and love always win, in the end. God has even given us springtime as a planetary parable of resurrection, as the miracle of life emerges from the cold, dead, darkness of winter.
Seeing Christ’s Presence in all of this means knowing that God has breathed the universe into being, and it is all good, it is all blessed, it is all sacred, it is all holy, and learning to live in that knowledge, as Jesus teaches.
This is what Mary has to tell the disciples. “I have seen the Lord, and soon so will we all!” He is ascending into everything. He is infusing the world with his Spirit. He is bringing salvation into all of life. He is here! He is present! He is with and within his people! He is alive! And he is love.
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