Knowing Life
Here are two versions of this sermon. The bottom one felt a little off-point, so I reworked it.
I don’t know, they didn’t understand.
How often do we live life in this, I don’t know or I don’t understand?
Yet, partially out of necessity, we move around and live with a whole bunch of assumptions
One of the biggest ones is that death defines us. 3 times we hear people come face to face with new life, 3 times we find them not understanding and 3 times we find them assuming death.
Mary searching for death and a goodbye
The disciples seek understanding but only find partial belief
Mary being wrapped up in her moment that she does not see what is right in front of her
What does this assuming death look like in our life?
Maybe it is a perspective on scarcity like there isn’t enough time, money, energy, or sleep.
Maybe it is that you are trying to make every moment count and appreciate everything
Maybe you have a lot of fear and worry hanging over you, haunting you
Maybe it is blinding you from real meaning and significance
Maybe it makes you chase after the next experience
This is not what God has meant for us. Our lives are not defined by death, only sin is. As the stone is rolled away God wants to free us from the trap of sin and death.
What do we see in the story? Mary almost misses it, but Jesus says her name and suddenly she is known and she also knows.
See our new life in Christ’s resurrection is not defined by our lack of understanding, it starts with first knowing that God knows us, is with us and he has overcome death.
This new knowing brings us so much. Just think about the loss of hope and joy Jesus’ death would have meant, but then think about the increase of hope and joy that Jesus’ resurrection would have been for His followers.
This being known also means an incredible intimacy and love that we have never known before.
Yet Jesus wants to take our new life even further. Have you wondered about that strange bit about Jesus saying don’t hold onto me?
God wants us to hold onto him while he is ascending and ascended
Drawn into heaven - or heaven drawn into us
The Holy Spirit crossing the divide
Paradise and God in us and around us.
New life is just the beginning as it defeats all that otherwise haunts us
But God wants for us a far grander and more beautiful life, world, and connection.
What does it mean to really live? I don’t just mean to be a body with neural synapses firing, and a heart pumping. I mean how do we actually live out this life in a free, fulfilling, and peace-filled way?
As we read through the short reading today, did you notice how many times it said people didn’t know or they didn’t understand? Yet, every time these people act or speak out of their lack of knowledge or understanding. I am guessing when I asked you the question about what it means to really live, most of you weren’t sure. Yet, I am sure that each of us makes a ton of assumptions about this question and lives as if those assumptions about life are true.
We can look around us in the world and see a lot of people that think they know. There are those that seem to work frantically trying to get something accomplished in the short time they have, like death and emptiness are always around the corner. For these people, life is defined by a legacy, by its continuation even after we are gone. The world is full of these, whether our legacy is our family, our achievements, our church, or something else.
There are those that seem to be chasing after life, always seeking the next high, the next experience, the next destination. It is as if life is something they still haven’t grasped like there is so much more to discover. For them, life is defined by the pursuit. Again, this pursuit can take many forms, we can seek experiences, we can want adventures, we can seek knowledge, connection, or many other things.
Then there are those that find life where they are. They want to appreciate the moment and the things around them. It is as if everything they need is right there in their midst. For them, life is defined by the moment. Again this can take many forms, different and similar forms to the others, homebodies, friendliness, meditation, and more.
All these ideas about life come from good and true places and most of us switch between or act out any number of them depending on the moment or day, but they aren’t quite getting at what it means to actually live and they aren’t giving us the full and beautiful life God wants for us.
The resurrection story in John starts out with Mary Magdelene, alone, going to the tomb. She sees the stone rolled away and that Jesus’ body is no longer there. So she runs back to the disciples and says to them, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him." Notice what she says. Mary freely admits, “I don’t know”, but even within her self-proclaimed ignorance, she has made a few assumptions. First, Jesus is only a body now. Second, the only way he could have moved is if someone moved him. Ultimately, third, she assumes that life’s physical reality ends with death.
This feels quite natural to us. Why wouldn’t she believe this? This is what we see and experience, right? That is true, for the most part. That doesn’t lead you to life though. That assumption, quite literally only leads you to death. God tells us on pg 2 of the bible that choosing something other than Him leads to death. Paul helps us redefine that and says that the consequence of sin is death. It is not our life that is defined by death, it is our sin that is. Here death is hanging over us like a ticking timebomb. This assumption might lead to some positive things, like us using every moment of our lives to the best, but it just as likely will lead us to overwork, fear-based decisions, the ends justify the means mentality, and caring more for our legacy than what is actually around us in any moment.
Next, we see two of the disciples run to the tomb. They seem to be racing to get there, to discover what has happened, to experience it with their own eyes. John doesn’t go all the way, probably out of the religious idea that he doesn’t want to be made unclean by death. Peter runs right in, barreling in without much thought. They see all the proof that Jesus is no longer there: the rolled away stone, the empty tomb, the separated and rolled up grave cloths. We hear the narrator tell us, who we later learn is John himself, “He saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.”
They believed; that is great, but they still didn’t understand that Jesus had to rise from the dead. So what did they believe? They believed Mary’s words, they believed that Jesus wasn’t there. Did they believe that Jesus was alive? I assume not, but other than their lack of words or assurance and the angel’s words in other gospels, I can’t know for sure. In our modern Western society, we are so full of experiences. We can try practically any food, any sport or hobby, extreme or otherwise, we can travel anywhere, we have a surplus of stories, myths, and legends on every medium and so much more. What are they really doing for us? In our modern society, I think we are too often defined by those words, “seeing we believe, but we still don’t understand”. We believe a whole lot of things, but we move about without understanding, where even good and true beliefs lose their purpose. In that we can run, chase, seek, but what we do not know. So we all end up running in different directions: like a chicken with its head cut off. Please excuse the crude old prairie expression.
At this point, the disciples go home and Mary stays at the tomb weeping. What is left for them in their assumptions at this moment, but to live with Jesus’ death and now the loss of even His body? Two angels appear to Mary at this moment, one at the head and one at the foot. Notice how Mary responds, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." She says the same thing to these angels she said to the disciples. This might not seem strange, but who is she talking to? Angels that suddenly appeared in the tomb. If she could recognize in that moment that there were angels with her, I am sure she would have responded a hundred different ways. Where did they take Jesus? Where was God in Jesus’ death? Why are you here? What does this mean? Or so much more. Even if she just realized their strange appearance, she would have asked, “How did you get in there?”, “Did one of you take him away?”. No, she is so trapped in her moment that she can’t even see right in front of her. Sadly, that continues even when her greatest unknown and unspoken hope is right in front of her.
She was present and mourning as her moment called for, but she couldn’t see what is right in front of her. I could easily talk about how the past and her experience with Jesus and his words could have helped her see the truth of this moment or how God’s promise and hope for the future would have done the same thing, but it is more than that. How often can we miss what is really important, really good, and actually true, because we are concentrated on something else? We define our own moments and so we lose them.
Our culture today can idealize living in the moment, but the irony is that living in our moment might actually stand in the way of us seeing what is actually there at any moment. In fact, each of the ways we talked about living stands in the way of the good they are trying to pursue. Chasing the afterlife means never truly finding the greater life, it is just an endless pursuit of fickle things, and creating a legacy leaves a wake of hurt as others or things are pushed aside.
The new life and true life come down to a simple moment. This interaction between Mary and Jesus. Mary doesn’t recognize Jesus, she assumes he is the gardener. Then he says her name. Something so simple and yet so profound. I don’t know about you but every time I read this, “Mary”. I feel as if time stops for a moment, like suddenly air fills her lungs, like her eyes are opened, like the world lead her to right here. She recognizes Jesus at this moment, just in how he says her name. For the first time in this resurrection story, she knows. She understands. She is no longer, running or chasing, or blind, she knows Jesus. The beautiful thing is that Jesus also knows her. He calls her by name, but it is more than just the name, it is how he says it. He knows her so well and intimately that as she is seen and known, she can see and know him.
The primary way we find, know, and live a real life, is through relationships, especially with God. He is our life. He is the one that overcomes the death and lack that chases after us. He is the greater resurrected life we are looking for in everything else. He is past, present, and future moments that give each substance and meaning. He is the only one that can and does fully see and know us, so as we come to Him and truly know him, we actually find more of ourselves, more of life, more of the moment. Life is an intimate, endless, and loving relationship with God that pours out into everything else too.
The story ends with a strange word from Jesus, “Don’t hold onto me for I have not yet ascended to my Father”. Wait, shouldn’t we hold onto Jesus, especially this resurrected Jesus? Jesus once again is trying to point Mary and us to an even greater life. It can be so easy to hold onto something good. As Christians, most of us have been baptized, we have begun to experience a new life, a new peace, and a new joy that is in relationship with Jesus. This resurrected, restored and new life in us is already amazing, but God still wants more for us. He wants us to hold onto him while he is ascending and after he has ascended. This is for two reasons, first, because Jesus wants us to ascend with him and not to be stuck in even our new and beautiful assumptions. I don’t mean ascending so that we can live in heaven, but so that heaven might live in and through us. Second, if we hold onto the already ascended Jesus, he sends down His Holy Spirit upon us and forever transcends and closes the gap. His resurrection is a new life, but a bound relationship with the ascended Jesus is eternity, joy, glory, strength, and peace in absolute. It is the unspoken, unknown hopes for our lives that we can barely ask or imagine.
