Mourning into Dancing (John 20.11-18)

 

One of the distinctive characteristics of our species is that we shed tears. Animals don’t cry, not emotionally anyway. Dogs sort of whimper a bit, and crocodiles apparently lubricate their eyes when digesting their victims, but in all the created world, weeping because you’re emotional or upset is an experience unique to us.

We cry because we’re human. It’s part of our makeup and a feature of our design. One of the most telling signs that the Son of God, eternally and gloriously divine, became fully human is that Jesus wept.

According to research done by Harvard Medical School in 2020, women cry on average 3.5 times a month, while men cry about 1.9 times in the same period.

Do women cry more because they have a harder time than men or are they maybe just better at expressing emotion in a healthy way?

Weeping is therapeutic. Most of us can attest to feeling better after a good cry. What is actually happening is that stress hormones and other toxins are literally get flushed out of our system as tears fall from our eyes.

We cry when we suffer pain or trauma, when we feel lonely, when we empathise with someone else’s sorrow and most of all when we experience grief ourselves.

I have wept many times before and several times since, but I have never cried with the same intensity, with the same force, as I did when we unexpectedly lost twins through miscarriage back in the 1990s.

This has been a time of many tears here at King’s. The sadness of serious illness and sorrow of untimely death touch us all profoundly and grief can feel overwhelming.

So, many of us can relate to an emotional Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb on Easter morning, where we find warm tears trickling down her face.

Here’s what it says in John 20.

Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?” “They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him." Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”). Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.

So Mary has gone at first light to wash Jesus’ body, hastily buried the previous Friday, and embalm it with spices.

It will be her last act of devotion, to give Jesus a decent burial.

When she gets to the tomb, a small cave hollowed out of the rock with a large circular stone to block the entrance, she finds the stone rolled away, and the burial chamber wide open.

Apparently, some jobsworth seems to have disturbed the grave and relocated the body, probably because the paperwork wasn’t quite right, and she cannot do what she came to do.

And all the emotion of the weekend gets the better of her; she just wells up and starts to sob.

She feels wretched. Her head is spinning with unanswered questions. Who’s relocated the body? Where is it now? Why was it moved? Who can I speak to about this?

She peers into the tomb and two figures, dressed in white, are there. “Why are you crying?” they ask.

It’s pretty obvious why she’s crying.

She’s been sniffling and sobbing for three days, ever since the most precious person in her life was unjustly condemned to death.

The utter devastation of losing the closest person in your life does not compare with any other human experience. If that has happened to you, you know. It’s what happened to Mary Magdalene on the first Good Friday.

Her eyes are red and weary from constant crying. And this makes it worse. “They have taken him away,” she says “and I don’t know where they have put him.”

Why did Mary Magdalene love Jesus so much? Ancient tradition says she had been a prostitute, although the Bible never actually says that.

She is sometimes identified with an unnamed woman who had lived a sinful life in Mark’s Gospel and who poured perfume on Jesus’ feet. But no one can say for sure if that is Mary Magdalene or someone else.

Luke’s gospel does tell us though that Jesus had cast out seven demons from her. To have one was a living hell – she had seven of them.Just think of the attrition, the heaviness, the shadows, the torment, the constant darkness that she lived with…

We don’t need let our fertile imaginations run wild about how she came to be so badly possessed.

All we need to know is what the Gospels tell us; when Mary Magdalene met Jesus, one word of command from his mouth set her free. Her hell and affliction were over.

She was made new. She was forgiven everything. Her record was wiped clean. She was alive again.

No wonder she stayed to the very end at the cross while others fled, and no wonder she was first to arrive at the tomb.

She hears a noise, turns around, and who is standing there but Jesus? She doesn’t recognise him. Of course not. Why would she?

The last time she saw him, three days earlier, his head was covered in thorns. His body was like butchered meat, lacerated and bruised. And it was covered in dirt from falling into the dust under the weight of the cross and blood.

She watched his breathing stop, and his head drop and she saw how his body suddenly hung limp and lifeless. She was an eyewitness to a Roman soldier pushing a spear up into his side. He didn’t flinch. He… was… dead.

She looked on as they took his cold body down from the cross. She watched as they placed it in the tomb and hastily covered it with a linen burial cloth.  

Jesus asks the same question as the angels had asked shortly beforehand. “Why are you crying? Who is it you’re looking for?”

She thinks he’s just some bloke who keeps the cemetery looking nice. Maybe he knows. Maybe he can help.

“Sir,” she says, “if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him.” I need to see him. I can’t leave him like that. I have to wash the body. Clean up all that dried blood. The corpse needs to be embalmed. I need to say goodbye.”

And then, with one word, her whole world is undone and remade. “Mary!”

Why are you crying? There are many reasons you might be holding back tears this morning.

Are you one of the 66% of men or 93% of women who have cried in this past year?

Because life is so hard and unfair? Because everything is broken? Because the future looks bleak and you’re hanging on by a thread? Because all your hopes and dreams are fading?

Listen, however bad things are, the resurrection of Jesus changes everything. Jesus, the indestructible conqueror, looks at each one of us individually today and speaks our name.

Jesus looks at you and says, “Why are you crying?” Just like it says in the Book of Revelation, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed.”

Jesus’ next words to Mary Magdalene in v17 are significant: “Don’t hold on to me here – but go and tell!” So off she runs telling the men, “I’ve seen the Lord!”

The first evangelist with good news of the resurrection.

We’ve heard others this morning who have told their stories. This was my life before. Then I met Jesus. This is my life now. Everything has changed. He turned my morning into dancing.

On the last page of the Bible, looking forward to when the Lord returns to judge the living and the dead, it says, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

If you have never yet had a life-changing encounter with the Lord you’re missing out! Turn to him in faith today.

Jesus was the only truly innocent person who ever lived. And when He died, something amazing happened: all our sins and failures were transferred to him. He took upon himself the judgment we deserve and the hell we were headed for.

Because of Jesus, we can be totally cleansed of all we are ashamed of in our lives and receive the gift of eternal life.

The Lord is here! Turn around, there he is.

He speaks your name. And now, for you, like for Mary Magdalene, the future can look completely different.

Let’s pray.

 

Sermon preached at King's Church Darlington, 9 April 2023.