It's Personal
John 20:1-18
If you have a dark sense of humour, it would be the perfect April fools’ joke – the perfect prank.
Imagine you are at what is supposed to be the viewing for a close friend who has died. You step forward to view the body and pay your last respects, but you are dumbfounded when you look in the casket. You can see the clothes and shoes and spectacles, all there laid out as if someone were actually wearing them, but there is no body. As you gaze in bewilderment, you feel a tap on your shoulder, you turn around and there is the person – the presumed deceased - standing behind you.
I am sure for some of us; they would have to call the paramedic to revive us. It would be the perfect prank, that is, if you have a dark sense of humour.
Jesus was dead, and Mary knew that to be a fact. She was there; she had witnessed his death. She was there when they took his lifeless body down from the cross, wrapped it in burial cloth, placed it in a tomb and sealed it. Now she was there at the tomb early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, and what she saw left her dumfounded – the tomb was empty! She did not know what to make of it.
She ran and told Peter and another one of the disciples; they went to the tomb and saw that it was empty; they too did not know what to make of it. They returned home dumbfounded.
But Mary could not let it go; she stood weeping outside the tomb - she was left to grieve alone. Yet she is not alone but accompanied by angels, though she seems to takes no comfort in their presence - apparently not recognizing them as angels. They ask her why she is weeping; after answering them she turns and sees a person standing there whom she presumes is the gardener. She says to him: “Sir, if you have removed the body of my Lord, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.
I can imagine her saying: If this is some sort of prank, let me know where he is because it is not funny. But it wasn’t a prank, and the person she was speaking to wasn’t the gardener as she presumed; it was actually Jesus her Lord, standing there face to face.
It’s an incredible moment. Mary knew Jesus very well; she had face to face encounters with him that were deeply moving and life-transforming, hence her devotion to him in life and her grief over him in death. Yet there he was standing before her, and she did not recognize him. How could that be?
The answer probably lies in the fact that it was still dark. Remember, John says that Mary went to the tomb early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark. That coupled with the fact that intense grief can make it extremely difficult to see past the moment and event of death, and often everything before you seems to be a blur.
So Mary’s failure to recognize Jesus is understandable. But it is Jesus’ response that I find quite interesting.
(Let me ask you.) What do you do when you encounter someone whom you would have met before but who does not now recognize you? What do you usually do in such situations? Is it not the case that you would seek to refresh that person’s memory? To remind them who you are and where you would have met them - to reintroduce yourself as it were?
When Jesus realized that Mary did not recognize him, all he had to do was reintroduce himself – “Look, it’s me, Jesus! I am your Lord for whom you are looking. Come touch and see I am alive!” That would have done it! But he did not do that; instead, he called her name: “Mary”, and immediately something shifted; she knew it was Jesus.
I believe that Jesus called Mary by name because he wanted her to know that he recognized her. She may not have recognized him, but he recognized her - he knew her.
It may have been dark, and Mary may have been deeply traumatized by what she had witnessed when she saw Jesus being crucified. Her grief and pain may have been unbearable, but when Jesus called her name “Mary”, simultaneously, she had the joy of recognizing him and the comfort of knowing that he recognized her - that he knew her.
When Jesus called her by her name, something shifted – not only did she come to recognize him, but even more importantly, she recognized herself in him. She understood how he saw her; not just as one of his many followers, not just as part of a group that was grateful for his ministry to them and was therefore devoted to him; she understood that he saw her for herself, she was “Mary”. It was personal -he knew her! “I have called you by your name; you are mine.”
My friends, “God has come in Jesus; the Word made flesh, to reconcile and make new.” The death and resurrection of Jesus bear witness to God’s act of renewing and reconciling. It is universal in its reach - it extends to all of creation. But that does not mean that God treats us as just a part of the grand scheme of things. It does not mean that God only sees us as just another member of the human species. When it comes to our relationship with God, it is also personal.
And because it is personal, God sees you, God sees me - each of us as a person and not just as part of a collective. God sees you as a person, not just as part of creation. With God, it is personal. What you go through in life is personal to God.
God knows you with your dreams for a better life and your desire to be your best self.
God knows you in your celebrations of life’s joys and your appreciation of life’s goodness.
God knows you in your failures and frustrations, your disappointments, and weakness.
God see you, and God reaches out to you as God does to all.
And in those times when, like Mary, you find yourself in the dark places of life, alone with your doubts and fears, with your pain and sadness, confused and seeking answers, finding it hard to push past your experiences of hurt or even shame, God recognizes you, God knows you by name.
It is in those times of darkness and pain that we most want and need to be recognized as a person in our own right, for it is in those times that we are most likely to be labelled by our circumstance and viewed according to our circumstances. We are referred to as sick, poor, unemployed, addict, divorced, abused, minority etc.; and it’s often difficult for persons to see past that, even those who are well-meaning; and it is sometimes difficult for us to see past that ourselves.
For Jesus, that woman, standing alone in the dark; sad, searching, afraid, confused, was not just another grieving woman, she had a name, and it mattered to him who she was: she was Mary.
For Jesus, you are not just another human dealing with life’s ups and downs, life’s joys and sorrows, life’s hopes and fears; you are persons whom God knows and loves.
It is personal, my friend. In all of life, whatever you are going through, God calls you because you matter to God, and nothing and no one can change that.
Thanks be to God.
