Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
24 April 2016 11.00am
Listen to this sermon here:
https://soundcloud.com/bloomsbury-1/2016-04-24-am-simon-woodman#t=21:51
Listen to this sermon here:
https://soundcloud.com/bloomsbury-1/2016-04-24-am-simon-woodman#t=21:51
John 20:17 Jesus said to her, "Do not hold on to me,
because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to
them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your
God.'"
I
finished reading another novel this week.
Now I should admit that this isn’t
particularly unusual for me,
because I do read a lot of
books.
But even so, I always find the ending
of a book
something
of a bereavement.
For
me, when I’m reading, I enter into the story:
the characters become real to me
and
losing them at the end of the last page
can
feel like a bereavement.
I
don’t want to let them go.
I want to hang onto them, to cling to
them,
to find out what they will say and do
next.
It
can be very hard to let go of the friends I make in the stories I read.
And I know I’m not alone in this,
because the whole industry of
fan-fiction is designed to cater for those
who
want to know more about the characters they have come to love.
Sometimes,
if the book I’m reading is part of a series,
I need to plough straight on into the
next one,
not
losing the characters that I’ve come to know so well,
wanting
to see what happens to them next.
But
sometimes, what I really want to do
is go back to the beginning and start
reading it again
now that I know how it ends
And
here’s my question:
In what way does knowing the ending
affect the way we engage the story?
Of
course, there is one golden rule with novels,
that I try desperately hard not to
break.
And
that is the rule that one should never, ever,
turn to the end and read the last
page.
To
do that is to break covenant with the author,
it has something of the air of cheating about it.
But
of course, once the ending is properly known,
any future re-reading of the story
has to take place in the light of what
is now known
about the outcome of the story.
And
this is exactly what we have going on
in our reading today from near the end
of John’s gospel.
It’s
not quite the last page, because there’s a little bit after it,
but it’s certainly part of the
concluding narrative of the story.
So
– are we cheating, by hearing the story of the resurrection
without reading all the way through to
get there?
Well,
I want to suggest that we’re not,
for one very good reason.
John’s
gospel, as with all the other gospels,
was written for people who already knew
the ending.
Not
a single person sitting there in the first century,
hearing John’s gospel read to them for
the first time,
would have been wondering, at the
crucifixion scene,
whether this was the end of the line
for Jesus.
This
is a story that’s been written for those
who are already part of the next instalment.
And
so we need to hear the account of
Jesus’ appearance to Mary
from the perspective of those
who already know the end of the story.
The
significance of this narrative isn’t
that Jesus is, in some way,
still very much alive and with his
disciples.
Rather
it is that the encounter with the risen Christ
needs to go somewhere.
It
is a story about the significance of the events,
rather than the events themselves.
And
so we come to the characters in the story.
And
don’t hear me wrong here,
I’m not suggesting that there was no
such historical person
as Mary Magdalene, or Simon
Peter,
or the otherwise anonymous
disciple whom Jesus loves,
or even Jesus of
Nazareth himself.
But
what is certainly true for us,
is that we don’t directly encounter
the historical figures
that lie behind the gospel
stories.
We
meet them instead through the words of the gospels.
So, here in John’s gospel, we meet
John’s ‘Mary’, John’s ‘Simon Peter’,
John’s ‘beloved disciple’,
and yes, John’s ‘Jesus’.
They
become real to us as we read them into being in our minds;
and people long-dead come to life in
our lives
as
their stories take breath
and are breathed into being
once again.
And
so it is that Mary Magdalene reaches out
to try and cling onto the man she
encounters
in the garden outside the empty tomb.
The
usual translation of this verse doesn’t really do justice
to the force what of John is trying to
put across here.
Jesus’
response to Mary is often translated as ‘don’t touch me’,
which can seem very odd given that
only a few verses later
Jesus
is happily inviting Thomas to not only touch him
but
to put his fingers into the wounds of crucifixion.
And
there has been much, in my view unnecessary, metaphysical speculation
about the nature of Jesus’ resurrected
body,
and why Mary isn’t allowed to touch
it.
But
I think this is to miss the point.
We’re
not talking here about Jesus’ physical historical resurrected body.
We’re talking about the resurrection
of Jesus as it is encountered
within the narrative of the
gospel of John.
And
so we need to meet the story on its own terms,
and to hear it as readers who have
already encountered
the resurrected Christ in our
own lives,
present with us by ongoing encounter
with the Spirit of Christ.
The simple translation ‘don’t touch me’ is
inadequate,
and
we need to delve a little deeper
to the more accurate rendering of ‘don’t cling
to me’,
or
‘don’t try to keep me’, or ‘don’t try to possess me’.
This isn’t about whether Mary can touch Jesus.
This
isn’t about the nature of Jesus’ resurrected body.
It is about the fact that Mary has to let Jesus
go.
She
cannot keep him, she cannot possess him,
she
cannot cling onto him.
We know Mary Magdalene from earlier in John’s
gospel,
when
she is standing near the cross with the other women,
watching
Jesus die.
And the other gospels similarly have her
playing a part in both
their
crucifixion and resurrection stories.
Luke’s gospel even gives us a bit more
information,
telling
us that she received healing from Jesus
for
the seven evil spirits that had possessed her.
This
is clearly a woman whose name is known
throughout the early Christian
community
as a person who was close to Jesus
during his life.
And
here we are shown her crisis in the garden,
as she meets the resurrected Christ
for the first time.
What
is immediately clear is that things are very different now,
but that she still wants them to be
the same.
She
wants to cling onto the Jesus she has known.
She wants to hold fast to the Jesus of
history.
And
she has to be told that this isn’t the way it will be.
Her encounter with Jesus has to move
from the physical to the spiritual.
She has to learn to let go of the
earthly Jesus
and to embrace the new
experience of the resurrected Christ
that is to be found in
through lived encounter with the Spirit of Christ.
For
Mary, there is no going back to before the cross,
the resurrection doesn’t negate or
undo
the decisive moment of the
crucifixion.
The
physical body of Jesus dies on the cross,
and the resurrection does not render
that moment void.
Rather,
those who, with Mary, encounter the resurrected Christ
do so from the perspective of those
who already know the ending.
At
the time of John’s gospel,
written some sixty years after the
crucifixion,
the
disciples of Jesus in the late first century
knew that they didn’t encounter Jesus
walking and talking with
them,
eating with them,
and touching them.
They
knew that they didn’t meet Jesus in the same way
that the disciples in the gospel
stories had met him prior to the crucifixion.
Rather,
they encountered him speaking to them
through the words of the stories about
him,
they
met him by his Spirit present with them
when they gathered together in his
name,
they
met him as they broke bread and shared wine
in memory of his death on the cross,
they
felt him touch them in the waters of baptism,
as their lives were transformed by
divine encounter
and their sins were forgiven.
And
this is the journey that Mary must make
in these closing pages of John’s
gospel.
She
becomes the archetypal disciple,
making the journey we must all make
in our encounter and ongoing
relationship
with the resurrected Christ.
Because
this is where the Jesus of history becomes the Christ of faith.
This is where crucifixion gives way to
resurrection.
This
is where death gives way to life,
and despair is transformed into joy.
This
is the new world from beyond breaking in upon Mary
as it breaks in upon all those who
embrace the resurrected Christ.
This
is the kingdom coming on earth, as it is in heaven.
I
often think that contemporary Christianity
has something of a problem with the
resurrection.
Most
Christians seem quite happy with the cross of Jesus,
and we have our finely drawn arguments
about the nature of atonement.
But
we don’t seem to know quite where the resurrection fits into things,
and my concern is that the
resurrection
gets relegated to being a
kind of cosmic publicity stunt,
the sole purpose of which is to prove
that Jesus is the son of God
and allow us to know about
what happened at the cross.
Mary’s
encounter with the resurrected Jesus
takes us beyond such problems,
and
points us to a more profound way of engaging the resurrected Christ.
The
resurrection needs to be more
than a cosmic publicity stunt which
validates the cross.
It
needs to become an invitation to a new way of living,
a gateway to a new way of being.
And
a key to this is to be found in the way Mary relates to Jesus.
Did you notice what Mary called Jesus
as she tried to cling onto him?
She called him ‘Rabbouni’,
which John tells us is Hebrew for ‘Teacher’.
Mary was still stuck in the role of student,
to Jesus’ role of teacher.
She was a disciple, and he her
master.
Jesus
counters this by re-writing the script, by changing the language.
In the post-resurrection encounter
with Christ,
those who would be his
disciples
find that he is no longer
their master, but their brother.
Three
are 120 instances in John’s gospel
where God is identified as ‘father’,
and
yet this verse is the first time that God is mentioned
as the father of anyone other than
Jesus.
John 20:17 Jesus said to her, "Do not hold on to me,
because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to
them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your
God.'"
In
the new world that comes into being at the resurrection,
God moves from distant-other to
present-father,
from elemental force to
parental love,
from wrathful dictator to
enfolding grace
And Jesus moves from master to
brother,
from Lord to friend.
The new Moses becomes the new Adam
as
humanity is reborn in the resurrection of Christ.
God comes near and greets us as lost children
welcomed home,
and
Christ is no longer merely an intermediary between us and the divine,
dispensing
words of judgment and guidance.
Rather, he is most fully God with us,
present
with us by his Spirit in each moment of each day.
And yet it seems to me that so many of us, so
much of the time,
keep
trying to cling onto the Jesus of history.
We want the master who will teach us, and tell
us what to do,
we
want the Lord who will sit in judgment on our enemies,
and
uphold our righteousness before the unfaithful.
We treat the stories about Jesus
as
if they were synonymous with the historical Jesus himself,
rather than invitations to encounter the
resurrected Christ
in
our lives by his Spirit.
We cling onto our preferred version of Jesus,
and
persuade one another that he is ours to keep and control.
And so we need to learn the lesson of Mary
Magdalene,
that
in order to have Christ with us, we need to let go of him.
If you look at Mary’s journey through our
passage this morning,
we
see her making three distinct moves.
She begins the chapter in the darkness of
un-faith,
in
despair at the cross and the confusion of the empty tomb (vv. 1-2, 11-15).
Then she recognizes Jesus in the garden, and
moves to a conditional faith,
she
can see him, but still can only see him as Rabbi,
as
teacher, as master and Lord (vv. 16-17a).
And
so she tries to cling to him, to keep him familiar and close.
But the third stage of her journey of faith is
the move
to
one who has truly encountered the risen Lord,
and
who is then able to bear witness to the truth of this new world
that
has come into being by the power of the resurrection (v. 18)
And John’s gospel encourages all its readers to
undertake this journey of Mary,
from
the darkness of unfaith,
to
the confused joy of partial faith,
to
the gracious outpouring of resurrection faith.
We must take care not to get stuck at partial
faith,
where
Jesus is Lord and Master, but not yet brother and friend,
because
that way lies legalism and grace-less religion.
We need to discover God as our loving father,
drawing
us to him in love and embracing us as long lost children.
Because if God remains distant and other,
then
our faith remains theoretical and abstract.
To end where we began,
we
are those who know the ending.
We are living the end in the present,
and
we read into being the stories of our own lives
in
the light of the presence of the resurrected Christ in our midst.
A church like Bloomsbury, with our emphasis on
social justice
and
our seeking to participate in the transformation of the world,
can find it very easy to relate to Jesus as our
inspirational teacher,
and
to God as our guiding principle.
But I wonder if sometimes we are so good at
following Jesus
that
we miss the fact that he is our friend and our brother.
I wonder if sometimes we are so good at
worshipping God
that
we miss the loving embrace of a parent who longs to hold us close
and
speak words of deep comfort to our troubled struggling souls.
And I wonder what it means for us to let go
of
our well-known and dearly-loved Jesus of history,
in order to encounter the mystery of the
resurrected Christ in our midst
in
a new and transformatory way.
What might it mean for us to discover through
mystical experience
the
presence of Christ in our community.
What would it mean for us to meet the Spirit of
Christ
in
ways yet to be made known,
as our lives find their fulfilment and peaceful
resolution
in
the love that draws all things to their perfect conclusion.
We already know the ending,
so
let’s live in the light of it,
and
see what a difference that makes to the story we live by.
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