Our
eyes deceive us. They blind us to what is real and make us believe
what isn’t there – just ask anyone who’s seen a magic show.
And when we see the familiar in unfamiliar places, it blocks our
minds from recognizing both what and who we know.
Have
you ever been part of a group that meets on a semi-regular basis? It
might be church, but I was thinking of something a little different.
Maybe it’s the Lions or Rotary or a bridge group or something of
that nature that meets either once a month, or maybe weekly for a
certain time of year. You get to know them fairly well within that
group.
But
here’s what happens, or at least what happens to me: while knowing
the people in the group, it’s hard to know them outside the group.
We compartmentalize them into a certain place in our lives. So when
we head off to the Rotary meeting we know we’ll see Tom, Dick,
Harry and Jane. We know this because that’s the setting we expect
them. But what happens if we run into those people in the dairy
aisle at Martins or Weis? The chances are pretty good that we’ll
recognize their face but not quite grasp their name or why we should
know them. I hate that.
A
good example of this is when I happened to be channel surfing one day
and came across an old episode of Andy Griffith. A young actor,
probably all of 25, was playing the part of the new town doctor and
he looked very familiar. I knew I had seen him in another place, but
I couldn’t identify him in this unfamiliar place. I spent over
half the show trying to figure out why I recognized him.
We’ve
all done this from time to time. We see someone out of context and
we rack our brains trying to figure out why and from where we know
them. The problem is that we are blinded by sight. Our eyes deceive
us, like at a magic show. They block our minds from recognizing the
person standing in front of us.
Mary
Magdalene was in the same position on that first Easter morning.
According to Luke, she had been one of Jesus’ disciples for quite
some time. Luke implies that Jesus had healed Mary of seven demons.
He also writes that she helped provide resources for Jesus and the
disciples. If she was indeed a long-time disciple of Jesus, she
would have followed him into the towns and villages where he healed
the sick, cured the lame and raised the dead. In other words, Mary
was used to seeing Jesus as the center of attention in the midst of
large crowds. This motif continued up through the Passion. You
can’t get a much bigger crowd than the one that sang “Hosanna”
on Palm Sunday, or the one that screamed for Jesus’ crucifixion a
few days later.
We
were right there with her. We were part of the crowd that marched
with our palm branches. We were part of the crowd that waved those
palms and shouted, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the
Lord!” We were part of the crowd that clamored for the release of
Barabbas. And we were part of the crowed that shouted, “Crucify
him!”
But
now, in today’s gospel, there are no more crowds. Jesus is dead.
Deserted by his disciples, nailed to a cross, crucified until dead,
and buried in a borrowed tomb, John writes that only Mary returned to
that lonely tomb in the garden to mourn the loss of the man who
changed her life forever. She returned to pay tribute to the man who
healed her of her demons and saved her life. So she goes to the
tomb, alone, to be with her thoughts, memories and prayers.
In
her experience, in all of our experiences, dead people stay dead.
Although we believe in the resurrection, we can’t say exactly what
it looks like. We live with the duality of the faith of resurrection
belief held in tension with the fact that we’ve never seen it.
Dead people stay dead. So it’s not surprising that when Mary
arrives at the empty tomb she assumes the body has been stolen. And
it is under that assumption that she returns to town to tell the
other disciples, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb.”
Peter
and John run to the tomb and Mary follows. After examining the tomb
for themselves, they return to their homes, deserting Mary just as
they had deserted Jesus days earlier and leaving her alone. She’s
as alone in her grief now as surely as Jesus was alone after his
arrest that awful night seemingly so long ago.
Through
her tears she looks into the tomb to reaffirm what she had seen
earlier, or, rather, what she had NOT seen, and she
sees two angels where the body should have been. “Woman,” they
ask, “why are you crying?”
She
turns away and answers, “Because they have taken away my Lord.”
Maybe
she turns away from the angels because she doesn’t want to
embarrass herself by crying in front of them. Maybe she turns away
because that’s how she can keep her composure. Maybe she turns
away because if they can’t see her cry, they’ll leave her alone.
Maybe she turns away because if she can’t see them, then she can
maintain her feeling of being alone.
But
when she turns away, she is confronted with another man. She came to
the tomb to be in a quiet place and mourn the death of her Lord.
This place is anything but quiet as it’s turned into a major hub of
post-funeral activity. There’s not much worse than trying to
escape to a peaceful, quiet place for some quality alone time only to
be continually interrupted.
Turning
away from the angels she is now is confronted with another man who is
also asking her whom she is looking for. She sees the man, but her
eyes deceive her. She is blinded by her own sight. And those eyes
blind her to the reality of the resurrection. They see a familiar
face in an unfamiliar place. The face is familiar, but there are no
crowds. The face is familiar, but Jesus is dead. Like the actor in
Andy Griffith, the face is familiar, but the setting was wrong. Her
eyes deceive her and convince her she’s talking with the gardener.
And because she wants to be alone, because she’s fed up with all
these intruders, rather than continue to face this latest intruder,
she turns again.
Our
eyes deceive us. We are often blinded by our sight. When I meet a
familiar face in an unfamiliar place, I try to keep them talking in
the hopes that their voice will trigger my memory of why I know the
person. I did the same thing with Andy Griffith – I closed my eyes
and let his voice tell me who he was.
Mary
has turned away a second time. She’s moved from sorrow to anger as
all these people keep interrupting her and she demands to know where
this lowly gardener has taken her Lord, the one person she has come
to love more than any other.
Puzzling
over this young actor on Andy Griffith and closing my eyes, no longer
blinded by sight, I heard the calm and soothing voice of Fr. Mulcahey
from M*A*S*H. And Mary, blinded by sight and having turned away, is
now able to hear a familiar and gentle voice. It is the same voice
that healed the sick and raised the dead. It is the same voice that
said to her, “Your demons have left, you are healed.” That same
voice now says, “Mary.”
NOW
she knows! It’s not the gardener, it’s Jesus! And she turns and
throws herself at his feet in a wave of emotional relief and in the
complete knowledge and understanding of the risen Christ. This is
the same Jesus that her eyes and mind deceived her from recognizing.
What her eyes could not accept, her heart and soul now did.
This,
I think, is one of the things Jesus is calling us to do – to stop
being deceived by what we see, to stop being blinded by sight, and to
find the familiar face of Jesus in unfamiliar places. This is more
than seeing Rotary members at Martins, or identifying an actor from
an old TV show. This is recognizing that the familiar Jesus we’ve
come to know in this place is now residing in very unfamiliar places
and faces.
Jesus
is resurrected and he’s asking us to turn from what our eyes are
telling us to look at what our heart and soul now. If the homeless,
sick, destitute and those we define as Others remain homeless, sick,
destitute and Other, then the resurrection is pointless. If we
ourselves can’t find a way to see the resurrected Jesus in
unfamiliar places, then the resurrection is pointless. The
resurrection moves us from death to life. The resurrection allows us
to see things like we’ve never seen them before. The resurrection
changes us if we are not blinded by seeing things how we’ve always
seen them.
Alleluia,
Christ is risen.
The
Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.
As
we go forth from here into the world, how will that proclamation and
the knowledge that Christ is alive change what you see?
Amen.
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