While it was still dark she came to the tomb. It was open. She didn’t dare look inside, but she knew he was gone. Her first thought—someone stole the body. She ran to tell the others. On her word, the men got up and ran back to the tomb. They went inside, one after the other. What she had said was true; the body wasn’t there. Both saw the remaining linens—the cloth that had covered his head in one place, the burial cloths in another. Seeing these, the second man believed…something. What was it he’d said to them before? Something about his work? his death? three days?? What was it…? Aaah…! The men returned home and the question lingered…what had happened? Where was the body? Grief-stricken, they sat, traumatized, teary-eyed. Silent.
Mary went back to the tomb. She bent down to look in. She saw the angels, but in her grief and confusion there was only one thought: they were the ones who had taken him away. She wanted to know—where did they take him? Where did they put him? Her blind resolve focused her intent—she was driven to care for him. Even now, especially now, after what she’d witnessed. In her mind he wasn’t yet quite dead. He needed her. She needed to see him. In that liminal space between reality and unreality, it was too soon to think of him as gone. His physical being was still the touchstone of what was real, and his absence unimaginable.
She turned from the void of the tomb, of emptiness itself, and saw someone standing there. She was still in that altered state, unable to see through the cloud of grief and disbelief. The events of the last few hours were so bewildering. Very little made sense, or seemed real anymore. She assumed the person standing there must be the gardener. Then he said her name. It was the one real thing—her name. Without thought she turned to face him, not only physically but symbolically and spiritually. She turned from the void of grief, from the incomprehensible tomb, and when she did she saw Life and Love standing there. “Teacher!” she said.
Here is the ‘Teacher.’ The whole of this entire, traumatic experience has been a teaching, and it is a teaching that is not only unfolding for her in that moment, but a teaching that will unfold forever because it is mysterious and unresolvable in the human mind. How can death turn into life, cruelty/brutality, into love? Something has to shift. The mystery of how that happens in each of us is the mystery of God’s presence in our lives. Mary turns to face that mystery when she hears Jesus say her name. She turns to face him, to absorb what he is showing her. She is just beginning to see.
The ‘Teacher’ needs no words. His presence says it all. He has passed through death. He is alive. None of this makes sense, but her world is whole again, no longer torn and broken. She doesn’t know that this is the turning point. He helps her make the transition by telling her not to cling to the way things were before. Everything is different now. The road ahead depends on her. She is the messenger of change and must be willing to shift from dependence on him to finding and trusting her own voice. He gives her a task. It’s simple but will require her to risk becoming more fully herself as time goes on. He sends her to the disciples who are gathered together in grief and fear. She is to deliver a message that will confuse and startle them. He trusts her to handle their reactions with understanding and grace, perhaps even to prepare them, to begin to teach. He has chosen her, not Peter or the other disciple who came running to check the tomb she said was empty, then ran home. No. He chose her, the one who came in the morning before dawn to care for his body and was frantic when he was not there. He chose his most faithful disciple, this woman, to take the message of his resurrection to the others.
Beyond the fact that he is alive, his words to her underscore the turning point he wants her to convey when she reaches their home. “Tell them,” he says, “I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” His unspoken message is that he’s leaving his work in their hands. But it’s clear whose hands and heart he entrusts with this message. Mary is the conduit. Mary is the steadfast one, the anchor of this small itinerant community. She will not only speak his words to them, she will eventually find her own voice, become a leader and teacher of his deeper spiritual truths. His mission on earth will continue through all of them. He calls them “brothers and sisters” because he recognizes that they, along with him, are part of Abba’s plan to expand and deepen the experience of ‘family’ among all the peoples and creatures of earth, what he calls building the kingdom of God. There is no “outside” in God’s Creation. Everyone and everything is part of the family but few seem to know or live this truth. His life has been the message and the example. Theirs must be as well. “Tell them,” he says to Mary, “I go to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” Mary takes the message.
When the Spirit arrives and fills their minds and hearts at Pentecost they will begin to understand and live those words. They will even suffer for those words as they struggle for inclusion and justice. The “turning” will have been accomplished, though the work not complete. Peter will finally learn this lesson through Cornelius and his household, Gentiles all. He will learn to include rather than exclude. God shows no partiality, he finally realizes. Everything and everyone is part of the family. This is also what Paul taught the Colossians–everything is included in Christ.
We come to this table on Easter and again hear Jesus’ words to Mary. He told her to tell us, his brothers and sisters, something we must never forget. We are family. All people, all creatures, all life forms are family. We must learn to speak and live this truth. From that one profound realization all true justice, and genuine peace, shall arise.
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