It is still dark when Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb. While the darkness of Jesus’ agony still lingers in her mind, replaying horrific images she can’t shake, she comes. She probably hasn’t slept. She’s in shock. She arrives at the tomb enveloped in her own inner darkness and finds the stone moved away from the entrance. She doesn’t look inside but immediately runs to tell Peter and the other Disciple that “they took our Teacher from the tomb and we don’t know where they’ve put him.” Peter and the other disciple take off running. When they arrive Peter goes in first. He looks around, sees the burial cloths with the cloth that covered Jesus’ face folded up in a separate place. But it’s the other disciple, not Peter, who recognizes in that separate and folded face cloth, a sign. The word John uses for ‘face cloth’ is the same word used for the ‘face cloth’ Moses laid aside when he ascended Mt. Sinai to speak with God.
In that earlier story, Moses’ face was so bright when he came down the mountain that people couldn’t look at him, so he covered his face to talk to the people. His face was uncovered when he was with God. When John saw the face cloth folded and separated from the other linens, he got it. Jesus was with God. It wasn’t just the body that was missing; Jesus was gone. There was nothing to do but to go back home. Interestingly the two say nothing to Mary who continues to stand outside the tomb, crying. Later in the text we learn the disciples retreated behind locked doors because they feared the Jewish authorities.
Mary, however, doesn’t leave, cannot leave. Her love for Jesus roots her to the ground and she kneels to look inside the tomb. She sees the two angels, but she is in such a state of abject sorrow she isn’t even aware that angels are speaking to her. Her focus is on retrieving Jesus’ body. Her grief is blinding and the darkness is all-pervasive. She is facing toward the past, toward what lies behind. She is focused on his physical body, probably assuming his mission has come to an end.
Why do you weep? the angels ask. After answering, she turns and sees someone she thinks is the gardener who asks the same question—why do you weep? then adds “who are you looking for?” He has asked her a ‘who’ question; she gives him a ‘what’ answer. She is looking for a BODY. In her grief she has forgotten Jesus’ words, his promise that in a little while the world will no longer see him but they will see him. The One she is seeking, her beloved Teacher, is standing right there in front of her but she is so blinded by grief that she can’t see him—until, that is, HE SAYS HER NAME. “My sheep hear my voice. I call my own by name. I walk ahead of them, lead them out of the darkness, out of captivity, and they follow.”
In that instant of hearing her name, Mary makes a 180° turn. She is no longer captive to events and beliefs of the past. She turns toward the present and the path that lies ahead. The dead body she has been seeking holds no interest. It is gone. “Teacher!” she says, and reaches out to touch him. “Don’t touch me,” he says. Don’t cling to this appearance you see standing here. I am no longer in a physical body. Go to my sisters and brothers and tell them “I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” In other words, remind them of what I said to all of you a few days ago—you are my siblings. I have returned to let you know you aren’t abandoned. Follow my voice and I’ll lead you out of this darkness into the light of my Life, our Life, in God. And Mary goes immediately announcing to the disciples—“I have seen the Teacher”—and tells them what he told her.
Love doesn’t abandon. Love shares its treasure with those it loves. Jesus wishes to share the treasure of his experience—of transformation, of oneness with them and with God, of his universal awareness and non-dual consciousness. He wants to share all this with them to the extent they can receive it. In all these post-resurrection appearances he fulfills his promise to them: “I go away and I come to you” ( Jn 14:28). “I will not leave you orphaned. In a little while the world will not see me, but you will see me. On that day you will know I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you (Jn 14:18-20).
The mystery of the Resurrection defies explanation because, rationally, it makes no sense at all. What Mary and the others eventually realize is that Jesus, having died, is now in a very different dimension of being. John calls this his ‘glorified’ state. He is with God and in God. By virtue of his resurrection he is also with them, “his own” as he has called them. Mary surrenders to this mystery. She doesn’t need to know why or how. Her love makes the leap and she is radically open, and ready to receive, whatever her Life Teacher is about to reveal in any given moment.
In this particular moment he is both dead (his physical body is gone) and alive standing right in front of her. In this particular moment his body appears solid. But tonight, with other disciples in a locked room, he will appear without opening the door, and then vanish from sight. Unlike the disciples waiting in fear behind those doors, Mary moves fearlessly toward the unknown, stands wailing and exposed in the darkness. Without knowing it she is poised to receive the revelation of Light that has erupted from the empty tomb. That revelation continues through the centuries and reverberates in our own day. For those waiting fearlessly outside the tomb of dead beliefs, dead ways of seeing and believing, new Light will burst forth. It is God’s way.
We are not orphans in a vast and alien universe. We are sisters and brothers, part of a family more extensive and more complex than we can ever imagine. The Easter story is our story. It reveals the mystery of a Quantum Universe in which we are lovingly held and personally shepherded toward the great Mystery of empty tombs that radically transform into birth canals bursting with new life.
Leave a Reply