Materials

Gospel of John, #9


A Desperate Woman and The Gardener
John 20:11-18
by R. Todd Bouldin


If you are our guest this Easter Sunday, we welcome you, and we are glad that you joined us for this important day in which we remember that the world is lit with the power of life and resurrection. This church has been on a spiritual journey through the Gospel of John for the past several weeks, and last week on Palm Sunday we saw the arrest of Jesus. On Friday night, we gathered to hear the story of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, and we have spent time in prayer and preparation as we wait for this day.

It’s always interesting to me, but not surprising, that so few people come out to worship on Good Friday but come in droves for Easter morning. I guess we all have a code written in our hearts by God that makes us love happy endings, and we find ourselves preferring to shield ourselves from a story of suffering and death. But the story of Easter is a story that you cannot understand if you have not lived through the darkness and desperation of Good Friday. Today is the story of a desperate woman who did, the gardener who brought her back to life again, and how she lived to tell about it.

Prayer

Earlier this week, a couple heard from their children who called to inform them they would not be coming home for Easter lunch this year. The parents tell their child that they understand, but inside they are disappointed and they don’t dare look at each other as they hang up the phone.

Earlier this week, a student came into my office totally broken and desperate for a second chance. She explained how she had made a series of mistakes in her life this year, and that the things that she thought would bring her life and love have only brought her disappointment and loneliness, and now she is failing out of school. She wanted to know if I would pray with her, and she asked me what she should tell her parents who have high hopes for her.

Earlier this week, the daughter of a friend of mine, who is four months pregnant, was called on the carpet by her boss who screamed at her and then called her at home later in the day to tell her that she was fired. So she called her mother, wondering how she will afford the health insurance to have her child and the expenses of a new baby without a job.

Earlier this week, Mary Magdalene and, according to Luke, a few other women, saw Jesus die on a cross. They had hoped that their friend was their Messiah and the one that would rescue them from their oppression and desperation. But earlier this week, their hope turned to grief.

Sooner or later, there comes a time when hope gets crucified. Maybe it wasn’t this week for you, but it was a few years ago when your expectations for life went down the tube. Maybe it is a dark day to come. But there is in all of our lives a Good Friday when we all lose whatever it is that we are counting on to save our lives. Perhaps you say that this is the reason that you don’t put your hope in anything else other than Jesus. But according to the Gospels, even Jesus will up and die on you. There is no escaping the death of your expectations.

When you are experiencing the loss of your hope, you toss and turn all night in bed in grief and desperation. It seems that there is nowhere else to turn, no one who could truly grasp your pain, and you wonder how you will cope with a life without hope. So you decide to get up and just get busy. Mary Magdalene got up early in the morning, before it was even light outside, and she headed out to the tomb where the body of Jesus was laid. The other Gospels in the New Testament tell us that Mary went to the tomb to attend to the body of Jesus, but John does not mention this. He does not tell us why Mary came to the tomb.

But as she made her way down that dark road to the cemetery, I am sure that her mind drifted back again and again to the better days with Jesus, to all the hopes she had for Him and for her life too. She remembered the night that He sat at dinner with them, and how she broke open a jar of the most expensive perfume and lavished it upon Him because she loved Him so much. But now Jesus was dead and so were her expectations of Him. It was a moment of desperation that brought her to this tomb on a dark Sunday morning.

Perhaps it was some expectation or desperation that brought you here this morning too. For others, life may seem to be going quite well with few expectations that it should be better. But most of us who come here to worship on Easter have some expectation of Jesus or else we would not find ourselves here. Some of us expect Jesus to be a good teacher of morals and a loving way to live in a violent world, so following the ideas of Jesus can help us live a better life. So we think, “If you just follow the teachings of Jesus, you’ll enjoy a good and happy life.” But what will you think of Jesus on the day when tragedy tears your life apart? Others think of Jesus as a healer of their illness or emotional pain. Certainly Jesus is a healer too, but it’s only a matter of time before one of your prayers for healing is not answered the way you wanted, and what will you think of Jesus then?

Others of us think of Jesus as a personal relationship with God. “It’s not just His teachings or His healing's, but it is His love that is saving my life.” “I am so in love with Jesus” we may claim, and “Jesus is so good to me.” But one day you realize that Jesus is more than your teddy bear or your boyfriend or your personal god. You hear His call to turn your cheek, to love your enemy, and to give your life away in sacrifice and service. When you learn that Jesus is more than your “own little personal Jesus” (in the words of a rock song), that Jesus is not just about YOU, then what will you do with Jesus then?

Like Mary and the women who came to the tomb that morning, we all have a “take” on Jesus, and we all expect something from Him. Listen closely to that expectation of Him, because it will tell you something about how you understand your life. It will reveal the gospel truth about your life and how you plan to find salvation. Your gospel is the story around which you are building your life. How does that story go? Who are the characters? How does it start? How does it? What is its crescendo moment? The gospel for you may be all about having a more fulfilling life, so Jesus is your teacher. It may be about finding love, so Jesus is your personal lover. The gospel truth for some may be that Jesus isn’t involved in your life at all, and that you are on your own to create your own story. We all have some gospel story when we come to Jesus – some narrative of how we plan to save our lives – and that is the hope that we bring to the tomb on Easter morning.

But what will you do when the story you’ve created for yourself starts to unravel? What will you do when the Jesus you thought that you knew is nailed to a cross and is laid in a tomb? My guess is that you will do what Mary did. You’ll keep coming back to the tomb. It’s there that you can stay close to the story you’ve told yourself, no matter how dead it is.

I’m amazed by the power of the story we tell ourselves about what Jesus will do for us. If you think Jesus helps those who help themselves, you will knock yourself out in life waiting for God’s sacred boost. If you think Jesus has come to save your life from the things that keep you from being fulfilled, you will just keep waiting around for Superman to show up and save your life. If you think Jesus isn’t going to do a thing for you, you will convince yourself that it’s true and you will remain ungrateful. If you think that Jesus is here to further your goals for your life, then you will keep waiting for Him to make your dreams come true, while all the time He wants to give you new dreams.

Even when the Jesus we thought we knew is dead and in the tomb, we remain devoted like Mary because our desperation won’t let us dispose of our hopes. We just keep living out a story that isn’t working for us. But what if one day Jesus showed up and broke through to you so that you discovered that Jesus is much more than you were expecting? What if there is more to Him than you knew or expected? What if there is a story that shatters the one you tell yourself about Him?

When Mary arrived at the tomb she found that it was empty. Her dead Jesus was missing. The story she had told herself just came to crushing halt and now she would have to find a new chapter in this story she had told herself. Or perhaps she would have to be given a new story altogether for her life. This wasn’t what she was expecting.

And so Mary ran to tell Peter and John. They ran to the tomb to see for themselves. It’s not clear why, maybe fear, but the men run home. But it’s the woman who stays, alone at the tomb, and she begins to weep. The Gospels never tell us that Mary cried when Jesus died, but only when her dead Jesus showed up missing. We can handle the certain death easier than chaos and uncertainty of a new reality.

So a man comes up to her and asks her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” The desperate woman assumes that it is the gardener, and she says, “They have taken Him away. Do you know where He is? Tell me and I will take Him back.” She wants so much to capture again the Jesus she thought she knew. And then the gardener calls her by name, “Mary.” And in that moment, when she realized that the one who stood before her knew her name, she cried out, “Rabbi!” And then she reaches out to grab hold of Jesus. Take. Grab. Interesting. I was expecting a big teary embrace at this point, and then the story ends with Jesus telling her, “Go get the boys and let’s go back to a cabin on the Sea of Galilee.” Instead, she grabbed Jesus, and Jesus prevented her, and told her, “Don’t cling to me.”

Why does Jesus say that? I have a feeling because Jesus knew that she was still clinging to whatever it is that she wanted from Him, and that is never enough for Jesus. When your expectations of Jesus are crucified, quit trying to make the resurrected Jesus fit into your old narrative and hopes. He is not just your old Rabbi, your friend, your political ideology, your work ethic, your ticket to heaven, or your better tomorrow. Those are all expectations that are tied up with a life built on death – a life that is heading to the tomb. But Jesus did not stay in the tomb, and He rose again to give you a whole new story for your life.

Jesus cannot be managed or held onto. You can only watch the way He calls your name and grabs hold of you.

Jesus Christ has risen. There is no telling where or how He will appear again as He gives you a new life. Who would have ever thought that He was the gardener? And when your hopes are crucified, the good news is that the tomb is empty. There is a new story of one who will raise up your life. He is the Resurrection and the Life, the One who always shatters our expectations, the One who is always more than we know and better than we could have ever dreamed.


April 16, 2006

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