Sermon for Easter Sunday, 2022                                                                                       Gospel text: John 20:1-18

During the past two long, strange, pandemic-eclipsed years, far too many of us have experienced unwanted separation from people we love. We could not be together for birthdays, for holidays, or even for funerals. Weddings and graduations were canceled, curtailed, or held virtually. Although we knew we were lucky to be able to see and hear one another via Zoom or Facetime, it was certainly not the same as being together in person.

And while it’s not entirely accurate to say that things are back to normal or that the pandemic is behind us, we do seem to be in a time of more and more gatherings and reunions. It is so sweet to go onto social media and find all these uplifting stories about people reuniting after nearly two years apart. And what I see over and over in my newsfeed is people hugging, holding onto each other, clasping hands, so glad and grateful to be able to touch this beloved friend or that cherished family member.

Touch is arguably the most fundamental human need after air, food, and water. It is foundational to our closest relationships; it is reassuring in a different way than even the most heartfelt words can ever be. It is also foundation to our life as a church: you cannot consecrate the bread and wine of Communion, or bless the water of Baptism, without touching the elements. Touch is sacramental.

Another thing I’m hearing talked about online and in person is that many of us look different than we did two years ago; people have lost or gained weight, have let their hair grow out or cut it very short, have gone gray and so on. Nonetheless, no matter how different we look, when that moment of reunion occurs, we are able to look past any external changes and immediately, instinctively, reach out to touch, to grab hold of, those people from whom we have been apart for so long.

Like so many of us, Mary Magdalene knew the pain of separation and loss all too well. Her beloved friend and teacher, Jesus, had been gone for three days—three days that might have felt more like three years, with all their terror and confusion and heartbreak. Mary did not go to the tomb expecting to have a conversation with Jesus; he was dead, after all. She went to the tomb to mourn what was lost and to touch that lifeless body one final time.

Perhaps that is why she doesn’t recognize Jesus, in this strange awkward reunion. She was at the tomb for the second time that morning, convinced that all was lost, that even the body of her friend had been taken from her. And so at first, although he is standing right in front of her, in this flesh, she simply does know who he is.

The reason for her mistake goes deeper than the shock of seeing Jesus alive three days after his execution, deeper even than her grief. Jesus, in ways we still can’t fully grasp, was different after the Resurrection. Some transformation has occurred, a profound change that is both physical and more than physical. This is one of the things that sets the resurrection of Jesus apart from the accounts of people he himself raised from the dead, like his friend Lazarus or the little girl whose father was an official in the local synagogue. In those stories, there is no indication that the people who were brought back to life were different in any fundamental way after the experience. They came back just as they had been before, lived normal lives, and presumably, died normal deaths.

With Jesus, we learn that the pattern of resurrection is about more than changing from death to life, as mysterious and enormous as that is—it is about a kind of transformation that is even deeper and more fundamental than that. Something has happened that changes everything that will come after it, right through to our own age and indeed to all the ages still to come.

So, because of this transformation that has occurred, although Mary clearly sees Jesus, and even hears his voice, she still mistakes him for the gardener. Of course, this misunderstanding is quickly cleared up when Jesus speaks her name. And if this reunion story were like the reunion stories we’ve all been experiencing or reading about recently, then the very next thing to happen would be a long and heartfelt embrace, an emotional and probably even tearful hug. Again, though, our expectations are confounded.

In one of the more perplexing moments in the accounts of the Resurrection,  Jesus says to Mary, “Do not hold onto me.” By the way, this is a much better translation than the King James version, which has Jesus saying, “Touch me not!” The Greek verb in this sentence is usually translated as touch, but it means, in a sense, “to touch with intent”—this is not a casual touch that Jesus is prohibiting, but a significant, intentional laying hold of or even grasping at him.

Now the Gospel accounts of Jesus make it perfectly clear that he loved touching and being touched. He touched people to heal them, to feed them, to show friendship, comfort, and affection. Even after the Resurrection he invites Thomas to touch him, and probably others as well. Jesus showed us, in the fullness of his humanity, just how important touch is and how holy it can be. What Jesus is warning Mary against isn’t touch per se—it is attachment, holding on, touching for keeps, if you will. This is entirely consistent with the message he lived  and taught throughout his life; remember how he taught that a seed could only become wheat, become nourishment for our bodies, if we let it drop to the ground and die. What we grasp too tightly can never be transformed.

Transformation is the key. Jesus did not want Mary to cling to him, to attach herself to him, because his transformation was not complete. More than that, though, he was helping Mary to realize that her transformation was not complete, either. She was in the process of becoming something more than his dear friend and beloved companion. Mary was the first human witness to the resurrection, and was about to become the Apostle to the Apostles, the one who was sent by Jesus to send other, so that in time the good news would reach to the ends of the earth.

I used to call this reunion between Jesus and Mary that forms the heart of our Easter story an encounter, but I think from now on I will refer to it as a “conversation”—and here’s why. In her beautiful book, Church of the Wild¹, Victoria Loorz writes,

You can tell when you’ve just engaged in a true conversation.

You feel seen and heard. You feel removed from routine events, renewed, refreshed, full of life, and open to possibilities. Con means “with” and vertere means “turn about.” So the word conversation mean “to change together”: to turn and face each other with a sense of mutual growth, which is essentially the meaning of transformation.

Loorz concludes: “A real dialogue is not possible when you treat the other as an object.”

That first Easter morning, in the garden, in the midst of grief and confusion, Mary and Jesus had a real conversation. There was risk involved, certainly, and the possibility of misunderstanding, but most of all there was mutual love and intimacy, a willingness to change together, and to support one another’s growth.

And Jesus said something that day that the church has largely ignored or forgotten in the centuries since. He said, “Don’t treat me as an object.” Don’t cling to me as the answer, don’t turn me into a rulebook or a lawgiver or even a savior just so that you can get out of doing your own work. We must constantly surrender, let go, give up on our old answers and our old ways of doing things and find the new life that is always being offered. This is one of the great lessons of Easter, the one Jesus teaches Mary: open your hands, open your heart, open your minds, so that the great conversation can continue.

In a way, Mary got it exactly right when she thought Jesus was the gardener. After all, gardeners are practitioners of resurrection. They know instinctively that it takes a courage to enter into the cycle of life, death, and rebirth that puts us in conversation with creation and reminds us that we are a part of it. Jesus had that courage and he wants us to have it, too. Mary went to a tomb to mourn and ended up in a garden, rejoicing. The conversation Mary had with Jesus, the transformed and transforming Christ, is available to all of us. It is available through scripture and sacraments, through worship and prayer, through holy touch and sacred hunger, and in conversation with one another and with all creation. So today, and tomorrow, and the day after that, let’s continue the conversation that began that Easter morning. Who knows what transformation awaits?

¹Church of the Wild: How Nature Invites Us into the Sacred (Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2021).