John 20:11-18... Witnesses to the resurrection: intro and Mary Magdalen

 

I can’t help but think Mary’s reactions on that first Easter Sunday summaries for us the wonder of the resurrection. It is a day that starts in darkness, with tears and grief, dead hopes, a dead teacher…  then confusion, the tomb is empty…where have they taken the body? But it finishes with the joy of her wonderful affirmation “I Have seen the Lord”. The resurrection changes everything. Jesus was raised to life again.

That is the central tenant and pivotal event of the Christian faith; Jesus resurrection. When a non-Christian professor of philosophy was asked if they could speak to any historical figure and ask them one question he answered… “I’d want to speak with Jesus Christ, and ask him the world’s most important question… did he or did he not rise from the dead?” over this Easter season, that’s from today right through to Pentecost at the end of May, we are going to explore the resurrection and we are going to do it through the eyewitness accounts we have in the gospels, of people like Mary Magdalene ‘who have seen the Lord’… It’s my hope in doing this that our confidence in the historical physical resurrection of Jesus maybe strengthened ‘and we may gain more insight into what it means for us today.

We are used to wanting scientific evidence to believe something, and when it comes to the resurrection we can’t simply run an experiment and see if we get the same results. Firstly because the resurrection is a unique event in history, and it points us to the unique person of Jesus himself. It validates his claim to be the unique son of God. That can’t be replicated. We do need to use a different form of exploration, like with legal case or any other historical event we need to see the evidence, hear from witnesses and then weigh their testimony, and see the impact it has. Val Grieve in his book Your Verdict: On The Empty Tomb of Jesus quotes a famous lawyer who said   when I have a weak case I make long speeches in court, when I have a strong case I simply call the witnesses’. I can’t vouch for short sermons, but we are going to call the witnesses.

In our reading from 1 Corinthians 15 this morning Paul sets out for us a list of witnesses we could call on. It’s an interesting list of individuals and groups. Jesus brother James, that is the James mentioned in this list, could be called a hostile witness as we know from the gospels that with the family he came to get Jesus at one stage because they thought he’d gone mad with this messiah stuff. But after the resurrection we see James the brother Jesus becomes a key leader in the church in Jerusalem. We have no record of the appearance to the five hundred. Paul places himself on the list, but affirms that he is an anomaly, we have accounts in Acts of his meeting with the risen Jesus Christ, which as he puts it is like an untimely birth. When we have a look at the list of the witnesses we see that most of them actually suffered and died for witnessing to the fact that Jesus was Lord, because he had been raised to life again. If it was a made up story then all they needed to do was admit it to save their lives… no one dies for a lie.

We have gospel accounts for many of these encounters with the risen Jesus, but it’s also important to note that we are going to look at witnesses that Paul does not mention. If this was an American courtroom drama you could imagine there being an objection to the judge here, objection your honor… these people were not on the list. Mainly that is the women, and in particular Mary Magdalene. Paul is very much a man of his culture and time, and as a first century Jewish man as he presented his list of witnesses he would not have included the women as, women could not appear as witnesses in legal cases.  But the fact that the women were the first to meet Jesus risen from the dead and the first to proclaim it is significant. If the resurrection were a made up story you can guarantee that he would appeared first to a man- as Val Grieve suggests probably to a significant figure like Peter or even to his enemy like Caiaphas the high priest. But instead Jesus chooses to appear to the women and to Mary Magdalene. So let’s look at her encounter, as told in John’s gospel. 

Mary Magdalene is mentioned in all four gospels, as a women who followed Jesus from galilee, she is a wealthy woman as she is said to have been one of the women who supported Jesus and his followers. She is mentioned twelve times in the gospels, more than most of the apostles and more than any other woman except Jesus mother. Magdelene is a name differentiating her for the other Mary’s by the fact that she comes from the town of Magdala, it’s a toponymic surname. In Mark and Luke it tells us she had a significant encounter with Jesus where he cast out seven demons from her. She was committed to him because he had restored to her to wellness. All four gospels say she was a witness to the crucifixion. She followed them as they took Jesus body to be buried in Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb. She knew where he was buried. So after the Sabbath she went to the tomb. In some of the other gospels we are told some other women went with her, and they were going to finish preparing Jesus body for burial. John’s focus is on Mary alone and her encounter with Jesus.

John tells us when she got there the stone had been removed from the entrance so she runs to get Peter and John. Peter and the disciple Jesus loved, often considered to be John,  look in the tomb and saw the grave clothes there. It tells us they believed but simply went back to where they were staying. At that stage they may have simply believed the body was not there.

But Mary stays. She is alone and still full of grief and confusion and tears. Now she looks into the tomb. There are two figures identified as angels in the tomb who ask her why she is crying. They don’t get to tell her the good news, as they are interrupted by a figure behind her, who asks her the same question “woman, why are you crying? ’.

All the way through Mary has repeated the refrain they’ve taken his body, where have they it, she has no expectation what so ever that Jesus has been raised from the dead. Even with this figure behind her she does not expect to see Jesus she just thinks it’s the gardener and if anyone may know what had happened it would be him.

It is only when Jesus says her name… recorded in the Aramaic not the Greek... that Mary recognizes who it is who is speaking to her… it is Jesus… and she replies “Rabboni” again an Aramaic word which John feels he has to translate for his Greek readers. . A word which she probably used of Jesus during his life, but like her name one spoken out of personal relationship. A word seared into her memory of this event.  One of amazement and great joy that here was Jesus. This use of Aramaic words gives this a real sense of being an eyewitness account a true record of events, not just a made up story. 

Now some people have speculated that this was a grief induced hallucination. But it’s important to realize up to this point Mary had no expectation of anything other than someone had moved the body. In classic grief induced hallucinations people will think they see the person they are grieving for, elements of a face or stance that remind them of their loved one and then they will realize that they were mistaken. Maybe you’ve walked up to someone and started to say Hi, and then realized that they were not the person you though they were. But here it is totally the opposite, she thinks it’s someone else but it is in actual fact Jesus. These elements like the use of her name and her response to Jesus give us a picture of an eyewitness encounter. Evidence that Jesus has been raised to life again.

She does what anyone one would do she grasps Jesus, maybe even as one of the other gospels talks of the women she falls at his feet in worship… ‘Rabboni’ as well as being teacher can also be used in prayer as an address to God. Jesus then tells her not to hold on to him but to go and tell ‘his brothers that he is ascending to my father and your father, My God and Your God” and she goes and tells the disciples ‘I have seen the Lord’.

What this means and what it means to us is best looked at through Jesus words.

Firstly “Mary” there is a sense that this is the same Jesus who had walked and lived and laughed and taught and healed and got to know and care for people. He genuinely cares for Mary Magdalene, and wants to console her in her grief. Yup this is Jesus, a very human Jesus. Concerned for the poor and the hurting. In that personal care we see that Mary has the privilege of being the first to know and to proclaim Jesus has risen to life again. You can see the same thing in Jesus appearing to James, his Brother, concerned for him and wanting to show his brother who he really is. We see it in his reconciling peter to himself, by asking Peter do you love me three times, his willingness to address Thomas’ doubts, “I’ll only believe if I see him and place my hands in his wounds.”   The risen Jesus shows the same care, concern and compassion.

However there is something different as well. Jesus tells Mary… do not hold on to me” or more precisely do not grip me. Now some people think this is like with a renovation or piece of handiwork, that you reach out to touch, but are told don’t touch it… the paints not dry. But by associating that don’t hold on as I am ascending to the father, Jesus is saying that while he has a body and is the same somehow he is different and how we will relate to him is going to change as well. It is not going to be the same earthly walking touching sharing meals with Jesus although he does all those things. Jesus is now going to ascend and be with the father. Resurrection is not the same as reanimation, Jesus isn’t a glorified zombie, or resuscitation, it wasn’t as one of the theories used to disprove the resurrection goes that Jesus simply swooned on the cross and then was able to resuscitate, roll the stone away and show his disciples that he was really alive. For one thing the Romans knew their stuff, they knew when someone was dead. They broke the legs of the thieves on either side of Jesus to make sure they died. Also in Luke’s gospel the image of blood and water flowing from Jesus side is a sure medical sign Jesus was dead. Rather here Jesus was resurrected, he was now in a body that was fit and right for eternity with God in heaven. A body mot limited by time and place, death and decay. The reading we had from 1 Corinthians 15 was the opening paragraph of what NT wright calls Paul’s longest argument about anything, where he tries to explain to the Corinthians, the difference between our bodies now and resurrection bodies. One is open to decay and death, the other is imperishable and fit for eternity. Here Jesus talks of the start of a different way that we will relate to him, as he ascends to the father. John had started his gospel with connecting Jesus with the word which was with God and was God in creation, now in the garden on the first day we catch a glimpse of the new creation and the word returning to God.  

That brings us to the rest of what Jesus says, as Jesus starts to articulate a new way of being, he also articulates how his crucifixion and resurrection has effected how his disciples relate to him. He tells Mary to Go to my Brothers and tell them ‘ I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’. This is the first time that Jesus has called his disciples brothers, now some people have said maybe he meant for Mary to go to James and his other brothers, however she understood him to be speaking of his disciples. He had up to know called them his disciples, servants even at the last supper friends, but know we hear the word brother. He speaks of ascending to the Father but the emphasis is on My Father, Jesus unique relationship with God, but also your Father, My God and Your God… there is a sense here of family, that because of Jesus death and his resurrection the disciples and we who also believe in Jesus are in a changed relationship with God.  Way back at the prelude to john’s gospel the gospel writer had said that to all who received him, and believed in him, to them was given the right to be called the sons and daughters of the God most high. Now after the crucifixion and resurrection we see that echoed and reinforced in Jesus first words to his disciples. It is because of the crucifixion and the resurrection that we are bought into that new and right eternal relationship with God. As Paul speaks about it in his epistles we are adopted into god’s family, we are coheirs with Christ. The things that separate us from God have been defeated at the cross and in Jesus resurrection there is the new creation a possible restoration of the relationship between God and humanity. One that we can all know and experience because the risen Jesus has ascended to the Father, is alive and still meet with us today and calls us to himself by name.

The resurrection changes everything. We have these eyewitness accounts of people who have seen the Lord, that can give us confidence that Jesus is not just a dead good teacher, sadly killed by an occupying force in a move of political expedience. Rather he is alive and is seated at the right hand of the father, he is who he said he was the Son of God, and we can share in his new creation life today.  That is why the question did Jesus rise or not rise from the dead?... is the most important one in the world.