Given our hindsight we presume we would have acted differently to Mary at the open grave.
“Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”
But Mary was caught up in grief and trauma. Where is he? “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”
As she returns she misses even the obvious – that, as Jesus promised, he would rise from the dead. She misses the angels, dressed in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been laid. “Woman why are you weeping?” “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” And even after that when she senses another person behind her and turns around her grief culminates. She assumes this man she is speaking to is the gardener, maybe even the guilty thief:
“Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”
These first words spoken to the resurrected Christ certainly are a long way from how we greet him today: Christ is risen. He is risen indeed.” You see, Mary was caught up in what St Paul calls “the Old Adam”. The Old Adam afflicts all of us. It is seeing the world with Jesus hidden which makes us think that Sin and Death are in charge. The Old Adam convinces us into wanting to go back to the past, to the good old days much like Israel kept wanting to go back to Egypt even though it was back-breaking slavery. Mary was wanting to go back to the Old Jesus – looking for dead body of Jesus rather than the risen glorified body. The Old Adam keeps looking to the world to make us secure – our possessions, our careers, our money. The Old Adam says the world is filled with winners and losers, firsts and lasts, and we’d better do everything we can to be winners.
Mary was caught up in the Old Adam, and she can’t get past that Jesus had died and therefore that he has risen.. She was blaming everyone: Who took his body?! She couldn’t see that the linen cloths were rolled up so nicely in the corner of the tomb meaning something special has happened. If you’ve ever had your house broken into, thieves don’t leave things nice and tidy. She couldn’t see the angels in front of her trying to reveal the truth of what happened. Mary couldn’t even recognize the resurrected Jesus Christ in front of her because she was still caught up in what Jesus’ calls “the old order of things”. But Jesus has come to make all things new.
And then he calls her by name “Mary” And now, like Peter at the transfiguration “let me build 3 shelters” she wants to keep Jesus to herself and remain in that moment. But Jesus is not just for her but for the whole world. “Do not hold on to me… but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ And then the old Adam is drowned – falling away, like the scales on St. Paul’s eyes, and she saw for the first time with resurrection vision of the New Adam.
The New Adam looks away from ourselves and all of our problems to take in the beauty of Jesus’ resurrected presence everywhere. Resurrection vision enables us to trust that all things work together for good for those who are called by God. Resurrection sees the world as God’s world – no winners or losers: Where the first are last and the last first. Resurrection vision sees the opposite.
Where God uses the least qualified, least educated, least righteous, least “good” people to be his witnesses in the world; People like Moses, a man who had a fear of public speaking. People like David, the youngest of all the brothers who used a slingshot and a pebble to defeat evil. People like Paul, who had been a violent persecutor of Jesus’ people. People like Thomas who refused to believe that Jesus rose from the dead unless he could see and touch him personally. Or Zacchaeus, despised by everyone except Jesus.
Resurrection vision sees that God sent his only Son into the world, not to condemn the world – that’s the Old Adam – the Old Order of things – but that the world might be saved through him. Let us go from here with that Resurrection Vision knowing that with God, all things are possible. That money, possession, fame and careers aren’t the centre of the universe but God. Let us go knowing that whatever is before us that God has promised to be with us always till the end of the age. And let us remember that God also sees us with Resurrection Vision as created in his image, redeemed by Jesus, despite what the world makes of us.
God will look out for you just as he did the lost sheep, the Israelite slaves in Egypt, the woman at the well, the despised Zacchaeus. Because of the resurrection God is at work, in you and through you to bring resurrection hope to the world as did Mary and the disciples. So, like Mary, let us go and tell the others that Jesus is alive.
That Christ is risen – he has risen indeed.
