This Sunday our pastor preached a sermon on John 20 - Jesus' resurrection. Mary comes to the tomb to visit her Lord and finds him gone. Angels announce this to her, but she is so distraught that she doesn't even seem to notice that they are angels. Jesus is gone. Someone must have stolen his body! They must have taken him away! Hadn't they done enough when they hung him on a cross, mocked him, and let him die?
Then Jesus shows up. Not a dead-and-decaying Jesus. The risen Jesus Christ shows up and speaks to her. In the flesh. And she is, understandably, a bit confused.
Aside from the fact that Mary things Jesus is the gardener (a great illustration to how blinded we can all be to the truth by our own expectations, assumptions, or even our tears), the most interesting part of this passage to me is Jesus' response to her. Mary is scared, relieved, excited, and confused all at once. She cries out to him, "Rabboni!" (Rabbi, Teacher).
Then, instead of responding with the usual Jesus-love that we have come to expect (he did, after all, heal the blind and lame and take time out of his busy days to hang out with the poor, the leprous, and the unlovable), he responds simply: "Do not hold onto me, for I have not yet returned to the Father."
Huh? Jesus, Mary is scared and upset. She needs a hug or an explanation, not an order. And yet, this seems to be an order. What's going on?
Our pastor, Rev. Jonathan Miller, had a great insight. Christ isn't being rude or callous. He is responding to Mary's name for him: Rabboni. This is what Jesus was--he was their teacher and guide, leading his band of disciples and the crowds that followed him to the truth of God. But now things are a little different. He is pressing forward. He tells her, "Go instead to my brothers and tell them, 'I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." After completing his earthly mission, Christ has a new mission. He is to return to the Father, to prepare a place for us, to send the Holy Spirit to us as counselor and comforter. Things, they are a-changin'.
Christ's response to Mary is one of newness. She cannot hold onto him because he has a new mission, and so does she. In a first-century world where women were looked down upon (to say the least), Christ gives her the mission of proclaiming the good news of Christ's resurrection to his brothers. Mary must press on.
Mary rises to this challenge, this mission. She tells the disciples, "I have seen the Lord!" Because her Lord, you see, is risen. And because he lives, she may also live. And because he is pressing on, so can she.
This passage gives me great courage as I head into the unknown. In just over a month I'll be a seminary graduate. Earlier today I sat in on a student loan repayment seminar. On the forms we all had to fill out there were spaces for "permanent address" and "employer." Um, rub it in, why don't you? The majority of us in the room knew neither of those things. It's difficult to work so hard for years and then come to a big blank slate. Will I find a calling that fits my gifts and my heart for the church? Will I have to wait a long, long time? How will the bills get paid in the meantime? Where will we live? What now?
I like to be comfortable. School was hard at times; working two or three jobs to help pay the bills was exhausting at times. Yet, it became comfortable. I know Princeton now. I know my fellow students, my professors, my church. I can find my way to Philadelphia and NYC without much trouble. I certainly know the way to the airport... My apartment, for all its troubles (and they are legion), has become a home. Yet I'm only weeks away from moving on and I'm not to what I am moving.
Yet Christ has called me. Christ has called Daryl. He has called us each and called us both, and he will not abandon us. In this season, I am learning to learn from Mary as she followed after Jesus. Like her, I press on.
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