SERMON PREACHED BY
THE REVEREND DR. HAROLD T. LEWIS, RECTOR
CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH, PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
EASTER DAY 2005

 

"Jesus said [to Mary Magdalene] 'Whom do you seek?'" (John 20:15)

 

Every three years, when we read John's account of the Resurrection, I think about my friend Hyacinth. Hyacinth, whose last name is spelled B-u-c-k-e-t, but who insists that it is pronounced "Bouquet," is the protagonist in a British sit-com called "Keeping Up Appearances." To describe Hyacinth as pretentious would be an understatement. She is an unabashed social climber. She has a bad dose of what the English call "airs and graces." One day when she and her henpecked husband, Richard, are visiting a country estate, she comes across a man in overalls pushing a wheelbarrow, whom she naturally assumes to be the gardener. She barks orders at him, and berates him in no uncertain terms for his apparent lack of horticultural expertise. Later, at tea, a gentleman enters the drawing room, nattily attired in Harris tweeds, and Hyacinth learns to her dismay that the gardener is in fact the lord of the manor.

 

There is a similar incident of mistaken identity in this morning's Gospel. Mary Magdalene, who had dutifully procured spices and ointments to embalm the body of Jesus, comes to the graveyard. The body is not there. She is frantic. She begins to weep. She is so preoccupied with her grief that she is totally oblivious to the fact that she is speaking to angels when she tells them "They have taken away my Lord and I do not know where they have laid him." Then a man she assumes to be the gardener asks her why she is crying and whom she is looking for. She begins to rattle off her long tale of disappointment, asking the gardener if he had removed the body, and beseeching him to help her find the corpse. Then the man stops her mid-sentence and calls her by name. It is then that she realizes that the gardener is in fact the Risen Lord.

 

And then something bizarre happens If you or I were writing this script, we would direct that Jesus and Mary Magdalene, who had enjoyed a special relationship, although not quite as special as Mr. Brown has suggested in The Da Vinci Code might suggest, should embrace and perhaps shed a few tears of reminiscence together. But, au contraire! Jesus brusquely tells Mary, "Do not cling to me." What Jesus is telling Mary Magdalene is that she cannot relive the days of the flesh-and-blood, drop-by-for-dinner Jesus. There would be a new relationship now. This was no time for sentimentality. They both had work to do. They had to spread the word that Jesus had risen, and that all was not lost.

 

"Whom do you seek?" Jesus' question to Magdalene is a question that he still asks of us. First, Magdalene discovered that she would look for Jesus in vain if she looked in a graveyard. When I was very young, about seven or eight years old, my cousin Richard and I were bundled up and shipped from Brooklyn to our cousin Roslyn's farm in Babylon, Long Island ---- the other side of the universe. Her "farm" was only two or three acres, but to city boys who lived in a brownstone row house, it was humongous! That summer was probably the last time in my life I actually picked corn! Anyhow, every other day, without fail, Cousin Roslyn would pack us all into her car and we would drive to the cemetery, where she would visit her husband Pete's grave. She had conversations with him, said a prayer, rearranged the flowers. Now there is nothing wrong with visiting the final resting place of our loved ones to pay our respects, but even at seven, I thought there was something pathological about doing it almost every day. Obviously Cousin Roslyn was trying to hold on to the old relationship with her husband, and was into denial about the new one. This is exactly what Jesus was trying to tell Magdalene. She was looking for a body to embalm, but found instead a risen Savior to extol.

Similarly, we can fall into the trap of thinking of Jesus merely as an historical figure, a prophet that lived long ago, who said some inspirational things, when instead, we should recognize him as a living force in our lives. We want to have a relationship with our Lord that enables us to sing, in the words of that old Evangelical hymn
I serve a risen Savior, he's in the world today,
I know hat He is living, whatever others say;
I see His hand of mercy, I hear His voice of cheer,
And just the time I need Him, He's always there!

 

And those whose roots are elsewhere than the Episcopal Church will know the refrain:

He lives! He lives! Christ Jesus lives today,

He walks with me, he talks with me along life's narrow way!

He lives! He lives! Salvation to impart,

You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart! (Hymn 42, Lift Every Voice and Sing II)

 

And even those who recognize a living Savior sometimes like to venerate the dead past. There are those who conveniently believe that God stopped revealing his plan for the world on Mount Sinai, or the Mount of Olives, or during the Sermon on the Mount. Others, somewhat more progressive, would allow that the Lord spoke through the Church as late as the Council of Ephesus in 431. The fact is that revelation is an ongoing process to which we must be open in every age.

 

"Whom do you seek?" Second, Mary learned that for all her seeking, it was Jesus who found her. If the Gospels teach us anything at all, it is that Jesus constantly reaches out to us. The shepherd goes after the hundredth sheep when the ninety and nine are safe in the fold; the father, when the prodigal was "still afar off," ran and kissed us son on the neck. Jesus chooses the paralytic, the most pitiful man at the pool in Bethesda, and heals him. He welcoming into his fellowship Bartimeus the blind beggar, and Zacchaeus, who like many of us, found himself out on a limb. The message is simple. If we are open to him, open to his message, Jesus will meet us halfway.

 

"Whom do you seek?" Third, Mary learned to seek her Resurrected Lord in the face of her fellow human beings. You will remember that although she had been seeking Jesus with all her heart, Mary Magdalene did not recognize Jesus when she saw him. She thought he was the gardener! Some of us are just as clueless, refusing to see divine or even decent characteristics in our fellow human beings. Soldiers learn early that it is easier to kill if we call it "engaging the enemy." It is easier to sacrifice civilian lives if we refer to them as "collateral damage." Perhaps this is no different from what all of us do. Categorizing and pigeonholing, removing the human, much less the divine element from the faces of our fellow human beings, makes it easier for us to subjugate them. If slaves are deemed to be subhuman, it is easy to dismiss them. Gays are easy to malign if we call them perverts. Those on the opposite end of the political spectrum from us can be dismissed by calling them fanatics. Last night, at the Vigil, we baptized six new Christians, and asked them this question: "Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?" How much further along life's highway would we be if we saw Christ even in the faces of those who are not "our kind of people," even in the faces of those for whom we hold contempt, and even in the faces of our enemies?

 

I am indebted to my friend and colleague, Craig Barnes, for an Easter sermon he preached long before coming to be our neighbor and pastor at Shadyside Presbyterian. In it, he points out that St. John tells us that Mary came to the Tomb "when it was still dark." He goes on to explain that our discovery of the spirit of the Resurrection begins in darkness. "No one is ever ready to encounter Easter," opines Dr. Barnes, "until he or she has spent time in the dark place where hope cannot be seen." It is a wonderful sight for the preacher to look out this morning and see hundreds of joyful faces --- faces belonging to people at different stages of their spiritual journey ---- dyed-in-the-wool Episcopalians as well as those who just joined the church and wonder what they have gotten into; those steeped in the faith and others grappling; regular worshippers and those who recognize the paramount importance of Easter as a holy day of obligation. And of course there are our ecumenical friends ---- footwashing Baptists, catechetical Catholics, methodical Methodists, lucky Lutherans and predestined Presbyterians. But what all of us have in common is that we all, like Mary Magdalene have come out of one darkness or another. We are still grieving the loss of a loved one; we have had to deal with a devastating diagnosis; we are experiencing an unforeseen estrangement from a family member; we are trying to reorganize our lives after receiving a pink slip. You can fill in your own blanks.

 

My sisters and brothers in Christ, the question we ask you this morning is not "Do you believe in the doctrine of the Resurrection?" Doctrines have proved to be somewhat malleable; we all too often hammer them into shape to suit our predilections and sensibilities anyhow. No, the question is "Have you encountered a risen Christ?" Have you encountered a Christ who refuses to allow us to cling to him in an effort to establish co-dependency? Have you encountered a Christ who gives us new life, new hope when we emerge from our respective darknesses? Have you encountered a risen Christ, a personal Savior who calls us each by name?

 

Jesus said to Mary Magdalene, "Whom do you seek."

 

Let us pray:
Christ is alive! No longer bound to distant years in Palestine
He comes to claim the here and now and conquer every place and time.
Not throned above, remotely high, untouched, unmoved by human pains,
But daily, in the midst of life, our Savior with the Father reigns. (Hymn 182, The Hymnal 1982)
AMEN.