Tuesday of Easter Week

Mary!
Teacher!

Surely someone has written an aria describing the moment when Mary, turning to face the gardener, recognized her Lord. It is a moment of transcendent joy when a grief that has tenderly embraced a soul-shattering trauma, vanishes in an ecstasy of surprise and relief. It is a moment when divine gentleness embraces a disciple overcome with sadness and restores her life. God has come back to life. We feared he was dead.
On the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala, who may have been the unofficial leader and speaker of Jesus’ female disciples, came to the tomb early in the morning. She was drawn not by the hope of finding him alive or by the expectation of an empty tomb, but to find some comfort in the nearness of his lacerated body. It was a quiet place, a garden not unlike the cemeteries we keep.
But she was horrified to discover the tomb was empty. Are his enemies not yet satisfied that they must take his body to some “undisclosed location?” Have they thrown him into a garbage dump, or over the edge of a cliff? Is he buried in an unmarked grave in the dark, forsaken dungeons of the citadel?
Mary ran back to tell the disciples, “They have taken his body and we don’t know where they have put him.”
The Evangelist John tells us Peter and the unnamed “beloved disciple” hurried to the tomb and found it empty. What could it mean? To Peter, it didn’t seem to mean anything! Until we know more we can only suffer this further distress.
Mary had apparently trailed behind them. The men left immediately. Even to the Beloved Disciple the empty tomb meant nothing; they could not linger. But Mary stayed. Looking into the chamber she saw two men dressed in dazzling clothes.
But they were not the Lord. What use had she for men or angels if they were not Jesus?
If I were directing a children’s skit I might use her turning away from the angels for comic relief. They could beam and glow and shine brilliantly as only boys can; but this girl is not interested!
Mary of Magdala represents the mystic soul who seeks for God alone. Human companionship is a fine thing, and angels are fascinating – you might tell your grandchildren about seeing one! – but earthlings search for their source and deepest truth in the mystery we call God. Nothing created can satisfy our craving for the Uncreated.
The angels asked, “Woman, why are you weeping?” and she politely responded with almost the same words she spoke to the disciples, “They have taken my Lord and I don’t know where they laid him.” This bleak sentence seems to be a mantra for her, uttered repeatedly in her grief. It’s as if the madness has come down upon her and she must repeat the only thought that occupies her mind.
She turns away from the angels and sees someone she supposes to be a gardener. He asks her the angels’ question, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She has not yet turned fully to see this man and she replies with pathetic appeal. Perhaps she hopes to rekindle in the cruel stranger some sense of human compassion: “Sir, if you carried him away, tell me where you laid him and I will take him.”
Hearing his voice and her name she will turn again, this time to Jesus. Much is made of her turning and turning. She demonstrates that persistent refusal to find satisfaction in creatures. Perhaps that is why the Muslim sufis spin round and round for hours at a time, finding a kind of contemplative satisfaction in the dizzy equilibrium and the addled vision.
Jesus spoke her name. As he called the name of Lazarus from outside a tomb, he calls Mary who is standing at the entrance of a tomb. Before she falls into utter despair, surrendering to the banal mindlessness of death, Jesus calls her back to life by her name.
When you're lost and confused there are few sounds more comforting than your own name spoken by one who cares. It is an invitation to “Come out of yourself now and be here with me. Let go of what you think and what you feel and what you know and speak to me! You have been alone, trapped in yourself, but I am here now and you must recognize me; you must allow me to be with you, to enter your consciousness and preoccupy your thinking. You are not alone anymore.”
When Jesus calls Mary she leaps into him, “Rabbouni!”
It is good to notice she does not call him “Jesus” as if he were her husband or lover. Certainly their love and intense affection are obvious but she calls him by his title, as a parishioner might say, “Father!” when she sees her beloved pastor. That is how she knows him and she wants only to be his disciple. That word alone should have lain to rest the long, spurious tradition of the Magdalene being Jesus’ wife or lover.
Is there a pause in the story here? His next words are, “Stop holding onto me…” but how long did they hold one another in that moment of ecstasy?
We might wonder the same about John 5 when the disciples found Jesus speaking with the Samaritan woman. They were not holding one another but they had shared an epiphanic conversation in which he revealed himself as the Messiah. Did they sit in stunned silence for a while?
Traditional paintings show Jesus turning away from Mary. No doubt these paintings, usually titled Nolo me tangere, meaning “Do not touch,” accentuate the purity of their relationship. In this 21st century our paintings might allow them the reassuring embrace of a compassionate father for his traumatized daughter, or a brother for his sister. But finally the moment does pass. No one knows better than John the Evangelist that life goes on. In chapter eleven, the spectacular resuscitation of Lazarus was not the last word. The story continued and its consequence was Jesus’ crucifixion.
Jesus told Mary, “I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”
It is fascinating that Jesus never uses the phrase “our father” in any gospel, except when he teaches his disciples how to pray. His relationship with his father is so absolutely unique that he cannot speak of your father or my father as "Our Father." There is simply no comparison between the Son of God and the sons and daughters of God.
Though Saint Luke tells us Jesus ascended forty days later and the Church celebrates that event six weeks later, John's Gospel places his Ascension to the Father on Easter. In fact Jesus' being "raised up" on the cross, from the grave and into eternity are all one mystery. When I am lifted up, I will draw all things to myself.
“So Mary of Magdala went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord!” and what he told her.” Like the Samaritan woman, Mary is a missionary to the disciples and the world. She comes from a deeply personal, even mystical experience of God, healed of her grief, ecstatic with joy and filled with Good News.

On this Easter Tuesday
• We pray that Jesus will call each of us by name from the tombs in which we linger;
• We pray that we will know the Lord not by the words of others but by the sound of his voice and the name he has called;
• We pray that he will send us to announce the good news to every man, woman and child.