maria-magdalenaBible verses for reflection: John 20:1-18

In the gospel of John, there are at least three witnesses to the empty tomb that first Easter morning. These three, Peter, John, and Mary, each experienced a very different journey to faith,  which, perhaps, may allow us to reflect on our own journey and how it may be different from others.

When the beloved disciple entered the empty tomb, he saw and believed.  This disciple, typically identified as John, sees partial evidence and believes.  John was given the gift of a child-like trust and faith. John is like the one who, standing on the beach, with waves lapping at their ankles, sand between their toes, witnesses an amazing sunrise, and exclaims, “Surely, there is a God!”

Ask someone like John about their faith, and they just know. They always have.  Their trust comes easily, without great angst or effort on their part. They show up on Sunday mornings; they sing Alleluia’s; they make sandwiches for the homeless; they are the first to bring the flowers for the Easter Cross.

Others, like Peter, witness the same event and have a very different response. Peter gets outrun by John to the tomb, but when Peter arrives, as is his personality, he barges in. Peter sees the same thing that John sees, but we do not hear anything about Peter’s belief at this point. We are told that Peter returns home, wondering. Peter sees the empty tomb and goes back home, wondering.

Is this not the experience of many on Easter morning? To attend the Easter services, hear the Alleluias, then return home, wondering?

In the first congregation I served after seminary, I knew a man like Peter – we’ll call him Ben. Ben suffered from severe clinical depression ever since his youth. Back in the early 1990’s, his doctors were treating him with a strong and constant dose of lithium, just to maintain his sanity. Ben’s depression, as you can imagine, had a tremendous impact upon all of his life, including his faith. Ben claimed that he could not come to grips with faith as did his wife or his friends. Ben had even denied the Lord and cursed God during a particularly low point in his life.

But after hearing a particular sermon offered by a friend of his, Ben had decided that he would act as if he believed, he would live as if he trusted in God, as if Christ had been raised, and see where that took him, discover if he could live his way into faith. I do not know what faith claims Ben ultimately could make. My impression from discussions with Ben is that, after attending worship, he would often, like Peter, go home wondering. What I do know is that, when I knew him, even while struggling with a serious mental illness, Ben was a respected man of God, a humble, caring servant of others, a loving husband, and an appreciated father. Ben never wore his faith on his sleeve; Ben daily worked at living a life pleasing to God and others.

In John’s gospel, when Jesus confronts Peter on the beach after breakfast, he does not ask Peter “what do you believe?” He does not address what happened at the tomb. Jesus asks Peter three times, after Peter’s thrice denial, “do you love me?”

Peter answers all three times, “Yes, Lord, you know I love you.”

Then Jesus gives Peter the gift of call – the call to tend his sheep and feed his lambs. I find grace in that interaction. Peter was not required to have it all figured out, not required to reconcile his wonder with his doubt. Peter was simply called to love his Lord, to tend the Lord’s sheep and care for the Lord’s lambs. We can imagine that even the great Apostle Peter, years later, as he worshiped with other Christians, as tended the sheep, as he led the formation of the early Church, continued to have some measure of wonder even as he offered his life in trust to what he could not understand.

Mary’s journey was different from either Peter’s or John’s. For Mary Magdalene, the gift of faith was received in a different way. For Mary, the empty tomb “did not even hint of resurrection for her”; it only left her with the assumption that Jesus’s body had been stolen. Even the appearance of two angels, two messengers of God, did not break her sorrow or inspire her faith. In the midst of deep pain and grief, “even the voice of Jesus does not at first stir faith in her.”

“Whom are you looking for?” the voice asked, and she assumed it was the gardener.

But then Jesus spoke her name “Mary”. Mary was given the gift of a personal interaction, a gift not to be taken for granted, a gift not all receive. Mary came to faith not through the word of another, not through seeing what others saw, not even through hearing the voice of Jesus, at least not initially. Only after the gift of a face-to-face, very personal connection was Mary’s entire life transformed. (Fred Craddock, Interpretation Commentary)

Just because believing may have come easily for John did not mean that it would come easily for her. Nothing in Mary Magdalene’s life had been easy. Just because Peter would be able to love and serve with questions still hanging in the air, with ambiguities and uncertainties, did not mean that Mary would be comfortable doing so. Nothing in Mary Magdalene’s life had been “comfortable”. Scripture tells us that Mary was tormented by seven spirits. A 21st-century diagnosis might offer several explanations, including bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia. Some commentators have intimated that she may have had a questionable reputation.

We can imagine that Mary had often found that she could not trust the word of others, or that she could not trust her own intuitions or her own responses to others. Whatever the case, Mary Magdalene had suffered greatly in body, mind and spirit, but when she met the rabbi Jesus of Nazareth, she found hope and healing in his presence. It is no wonder that she went to the tomb so early on the first day. As a widow or widower will go to the grave of their loved one just for some proximity, so Mary had to go. She had to be in his presence. And when she went to be in his presence, she received the gift of a personal interaction.

Later in the gospel of John, Jesus says to Thomas, “because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen me and yet have believed.” (20:29)

I find grace in the story of the man in the ninth chapter of Mark’s gospel. The man’s son was tormented by an evil spirit, or what we might diagnose as epilepsy. The seizures had dangerously thrown the boy into the fire and into the water, so that he could have easily died, and the father was distraught, at the end of his hope. The man came before Jesus seeking healing for his son. Jesus said to him, “All things can be done for the one who believes.”
The man cried out, “I believe; help thou my unbelief!”

Many persons have some measure of belief or trust in God, and, if we’re honest with ourselves, many of us also hold a healthy dose of unbelief or doubt. Jesus once said that if you only have a small kernel of faith, the size of a tiny mustard seed, then you have the faith to move mountains. The measure of our belief or lack thereof, has little to do with whether the power of God will be at work in our lives.

Faith in the risen Jesus Christ is not about coming to some reconciliation of our intellectual questions. Now, if you want an engaging debate on various schools of thought on the resurrection and its meaning, I commend to you the debate in Appendix B of Dan Migliore’s theology text book, Faith Seeking Understanding.

Migliori engages esteemed theologians Barth, Bultmann, Pannenberg and Moltmann in a supposed conversation, which ultimately makes the point that different persons come to faith in the risen Jesus in different ways, and with different conclusions. But ultimately, faith is not dependent upon our skepticism or curiosity being satisfied. Nor is faith is about our acceptability or worthiness before God. Faith is not about how good we have been or how much service we have rendered. Neither is faith is about the quality or quantity of the significant religious experiences we have had. Faith is a gift!

For Peter, John, and Mary, belief in the risen Lord Jesus was not simply an “either-or” question; it was more a question of relationship. It was not simply a question of “does this fit with my logical understanding of the world?”, it was more a question of what they had received. Belief in the risen Lord Jesus is the result of a gift from God, a gift that comes from outside of our selves, outside of our limited understanding, a gift that comes despite our careful logic, and, to be sure, a gift differently received by different persons.

Mary, Peter, and John could have stayed away from the empty tomb. They could have lived out their lives on the shores of Galilee, doing the best they could, enjoying what fruits there were to their labors and their particular circumstances. But God had so much more in mind for Peter and Mary and John. All three became the core of “the Way”, that community of believers that eventually was called the “ecclesia”, the “called out ones”, the church. After the resurrection, their lives would never be the same. They would risk life and limb for the sake of sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. They would give their lives so that God’s unconditional love and the power of that love to defeat even death would become known across the globe.

This does not mean that Peter, John, and Mary would never have questions or doubts again. This does not mean that they did not struggle in life or grieve the death of their loved ones or wonder painfully why someone they knew had to suffer.

This does mean that they would tell others about what they had received, about the undeserved grace of forgiveness, about release from a life of sin and separation. And they would form a community in which love would always overcome hate, in which hope would eventually outpace fear, in which striving for justice and righteousness would finally tear down every system that sought to work against them.

Peter, John, and Mary, each experienced a very different journey to faith, and we can imagine that their journeys of faith were very different as well. We have all had different journeys in life, different experiences that brought us to where we are today. Because Christ is risen, and risen indeed, we can be assured that he will be with us on our journey, both today and even forevermore.

Amen.

Rev. Dr. Todd Speed
Decatur Presbyterian Church
Decatur, Georgia
March 27, 2016 (Easter Sunday)