Isaiah 65:17-25 and John 20:1-18 “Don’t hold on to me…”

Sermon by Martin and Anne Stewart:

A few weeks ago now Martin and I were treated to a great afternoon at the Ellerslie Flower Show. As we had the year before, we took the opportunity to re-sign up for our subscription for the NZ Gardener, a magazine we eagerly wait for and fight over each month. Part of the reason for signing up there is that they offer some pretty good incentives. This year one of these was the free gift of a boysenberry plant. We hadn’t planned on having a boysenberry plant so we have yet to find where its place in our garden will be. It’s still sitting waiting in its bag. And we have had some wonderfully warm weather lately and a couple of days ago Mart discovered the poor boysenberry in an almost lifeless state of dehydration. We rushed it to the sink for some intensive care and I believe if we don’t repeat the same callous lack of care, it should live. The plant has been resurrected. We say it was resurrected but really we mean revived. It is now almost back to its original form. The resurrection that we celebrate on Easter Sunday is not about revival or anything coming back to its original form. We struggle to name what really went on and we usually miss the point when we try to find suitable metaphors for it. It is a one-off event; we have no others with which to compare it to or to relate it with.

Probably the most common images we find are those of Spring. These are used to express the ‘new creation’ aspect of resurrection. Josh asked me the other day why we eat chocolate eggs at Easter and then worked out for himself that it might be to symbolise new life. I agreed but added something sad about it really being an excuse to eat chocolate, supposing of course that you need an excuse! So we use eggs and other Spring-like symbols to say this is what resurrection means to us. And of course the Spring metaphors provide an extra challenge for us in this hemisphere, where our season at this time of the year tends to point more to Good Friday than Easter Sunday.

But using Spring to paint a picture of resurrection is misleading. Spring is a natural event; it is part of the ebb and flow of life. Resurrection, on the other hand, is unnatural; we don’t expect it because it is not meant to happen. In nature death is the end and therefore resurrection does not square with anything else we know about physical human life on earth. It is no wonder Mary, Simon Peter and the other disciple were distraught at the sight of the empty tomb. The only explanation for an empty tomb that they knew of was that grave-robbers had been by, or that the body had been moved for some reason. The disciples ran off leaving Mary to mourn the loss. Therefore it was Mary who first encountered the risen Jesus despite at first believing him to be the gardener. That the resurrected Jesus chose Mary to be his first encounter is almost as shocking as God coming to live among us as a baby in a stable. Mary, a woman, in those times would have been considered inferior, and definitely outside the sphere of God’s self-revelation. Yet according to John’s account she was the one initially charged with the commission to go and tell the others that Jesus had been resurrected. He gave a woman the good news first. He chose to make himself known to one of the little and the least. Mary’s retelling of this encounter has helped to form the basis on which our faith still rests today.

And Jesus says to Mary, “Do not hold on to me…” Let me go for it is not finished and I cannot be held in one place. This encounter was about more than this just meeting; more than a one-off sighting of the risen Lord. It was an invitation to go with him. He was saying don’t hold me here with you, instead come with me; come be changed, transformed, begin the journey. Come with me to the Father, our Father. Faith in Christ is not a static one-off experience or simply a decision; it is a participation in the life-long transformation into who God always meant us to be. The encounter of Mary’s with Jesus allows us all hope for our own encounters with the same living Lord. When we touch another’s wounds; when we experience the affirmation of another’s yes; when we eat together; when we are part of welcoming others; when we recognise the voice in our head; when we are fed at the table; when peace is announced; when relationships are restored – it is in these things and others that we encounter something of what Mary knew that morning. These are the things that transform us; that shape us more and more into the image of God.

When I met Martin some years ago I was getting close to finishing a project of restoration on my home, a 100 year old villa in Ashburton. It had been a really big job but one that was very satisfying and rewarding. It occupied all my spare time and I never thought I would be able to leave it after all the love, sweat and hard work had been put into it. Yet when the time came it was actually really easy. I wondered why it was like this. Martin found a way to express what I was feeling by buying me a print. The print was of a house in which there was a girl spilling out of it; she no longer fitted in the house. Her arms, legs and head were coming out of the windows; she had outgrown it. It was then, and remains today, a very fitting image. You could say that in a similar way the tomb in which the body of Jesus had been laid had become too small for him; too small to be the focus for the resurrection. The one who had been raised had people to see and things to do. The ‘living one’s’ business was among the living, to whom he appeared not once, but four more times, in the Gospel of John. Every time he came to his friends they became stronger, wiser, kinder, more daring. Every time he came to them, they became more like him.

Those appearances are what makes the resurrection real for me, not what happened in the tomb. What happened in the tomb was entirely between Jesus and God, a mystery to us; something we can never hope to explain. For the rest of us, Easter began the moment the Gardener said, "Mary!" and she knew who he was. That is where the miracle happened and goes on happening -- not in the tomb but in the encounter with the living Lord.

In the end, the only evidence we have to offer those who ask us how we can possibly believe is that the Gardener has made himself known to us, through the witness of Scripture, of tradition, and of our experience of his encounters with us, that is why. Because we have found, to our surprise, that we are not alone. And because we never know where he will turn up next.

Is it possible we might let the empty tomb be a distraction? If our focus stays locked on the empty tomb will we risk what really matters; will we forget to speak to the Gardener; will we fail to hear the Gardener when he speaks to us? Our encounters with the Living Lord can happen anywhere, that’s what the empty tomb is telling us; it couldn’t hold him; the Living Lord’s business is with the living.

Amen