Why Are You Weeping? - Easter - A - John 20:1-18

Easter - A
John 20:1-18
April 24, 2011

Why Are You Weeping?

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church

Decorah, Iowa

The author of John’s gospel tells us that the stories that are found in it are “signs” that have been “written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”¹ If this story is supposed to be a sign, then I am confused.

I see lots of signs every time I go somewhere. Signs point to something. That’s what makes them signs. Signs label streets and highways. Signs tell us where to stop and how fast we may go. A lot of signs try to sell something. They point to a product or a service we could buy. Sometimes these signs merely offer information. It might be good to know where I can get a plumber when I need one. Other signs try to stimulate a desire in me for something I didn’t even know I wanted. But always signs point to something and it’s usually something pretty obvious.

So what is it that this story is pointing to? This isn’t very obvious at all.

The story begins with Jesus dead and buried in a tomb. I picture a cave cut into a hillside, with room for more than one body. A large circular stone is rolled in front of the entrance to seal the grave. In our story Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb early on Easter morning. In John’s gospel she is one of the women who are part of the inner circle of disciples. She does not have red hair as she has been portrayed. Nor had she ever been a woman of questionable morals.

Mary went to the tomb early in the morning only to find that the tomb has been unsealed. She jumped to an unjustified conclusion. She ran to wherever the disciples were hiding out and breathlessly announced: “Jesus’ body has been stolen and it is missing!” This is not what she saw. What she saw was merely a disturbed grave, not a plundered one.

Then two of the disciples ran to the tomb. We presume that it was their way of responding to Mary’s news. One of them was Simon Peter, who was well-known then—as he is now—to every Jesus follower. The other isn’t named, but we all know who he is. He is the “other” disciple. We might conclude from that fact that he isn’t very important, but we would conclude wrongly. He is also “the one whom Jesus loved.” He is nobody in particlar and he is extra special. I have a sweatshirt that my youngest sister gave me. It says, “Jesus loves you, but I’m his favorite.” I can’t wear it anywhere, but I love it. It could have belonged to the “other” disciple.

There’s something weird going on between the two disciples, between the well-known disciple who is no one special because Jesus didn’t love him and the “other” disciple who is extra special. They start running toward the tomb and the first thing you know they’re racing to see which one can get there first. Simon Peter, the unspecial disciple, loses the race. But wait, they’re not done. The “other” disciple stops at the entrance of the tomb. Why? We don’t know. Peter goes into the tomb first, so I guess he wins. But wait, they’re not done. The “other” disciple follows Peter into the tomb and is the first one to “believe.” Believe what? We are told what he didn’t believe: he didn’t believe that Jesus had risen from the dead. We are not told what he did believe, but he believed, and that’s important in this gospel, so I guess that makes the “other” disciple the winner.

Scholars tell us that this little testosterone-driven contest between Peter and, we assume, John reflects a struggle between groups within the early Christian community, some of whom counted Peter as the founder of their tradition and others of whom counted John. Not surprisingly, this gospel, which comes from the John group has John winning this contest.

But then to what does this story point as a sign? If the writer has let a church squabble shape the story just so he can step back and tell the Peter group, “Nyah nah na nah nah!” this story is a sign that people in church have a hard time getting along with each other and that’s not news to us. How this sign is supposed to prompt us to “come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing [we] may have life in his name” isn’t clear at all.

Then there is the question that is asked of Mary Magdalene. She looks into the tomb after the men have gone away and she sees two angels. They ask her, “Why are you weeping?”

If the question came only from the angels then I could understand it a little more easily. Angels in the Bible are notoriously inept around humans. Apparently they are fairly intimidating, since people’s first reaction is almost always fear. But they don’t show up gently. They don’t knock on doors or call from another room. They just pop in. Words like “suddenly” and “immediately” are pretty common in stories about angels. And the first thing they usually say is, “Don’t be afraid!” And it’s always too late!

I get it, then, why the angels would ask such a clueless question. “Why are you weeping?” Mary has followed Jesus for the better part of three years. He has been her friend. He has been her teacher, giving her and other women a place in the inner circle of disciples that they would have had with very few other teachers. She has given herself heart and soul to Jesus’ teaching and ministry. She witnessed him executed, the victim of the empire’s counter-insurgency strategy. And now he is dead. Not only dead, but she can’t even find the tomb where his body is buried. And the men in the group of disciples have been entirely unhelpful. She is distraught, beside herself with grief, and all the men can think to do is have a foot race. “Why are you weeping?” It’s a pretty lame question.

But the angels aren’t the only ones who ask it. Jesus asks it, too. “Why are you weeping?”

Her answer is that the body of Jesus is missing. But of course behind that, we notice that she is not fully aware of what has happened. This ignorance runs through the whole gospel, but we’ve seen it twice in our story alone. We are told that the “testosterone kids”—the racing disciples—do not understand “the scriptures” and so do not know that Jesus must rise from the dead. And then when Mary is questioned by Jesus about why she is weeping, she fails to recognize him and supposes that he is the sexton.

Jesus and the angels know something important that Mary and Peter and John do not. Even the narrator knows it. It’s something about “the scriptures” and Jesus rising from the dead and the fact that the tomb is empty. It’s important and we’d like to know it, too.

Because we, too, are weeping. Oh, I know we’ve put our sorrows aside for the day. It’s a day of joy, after all. We’ve pushed our pain into a corner. It’s a an American kind of thing to do. We’re not very good at coming to grips with unpleasant realities. We’re inclined to believe that with a little positive thinking or the right kind of therapy or a trip to self-help section of local bookstore we can solve any problem, eliminate any discomfort or pain, and finally be a peace with ourselves and our world. Our national disposition is in this direction. So most of us haven’t been all that willing to walk the whole Holy Week journey—too much suffering and sorrow. We like to bounce from the triumph of Palm Sunday to the joy of Easter without going through the pain of Good Friday. And who can blame us?

But we’re still weeping. In the little corner of our souls where we’ve shoved aside our sorrows, we are weeping. We weep for many things, some sad, some silly: We weep for those whom we have loved and love still who have died and we still hear them in the other room or see them sitting in their favorite chair, but they are not here and we know it. We weep for our poor planet—torn, exploited, damaged—and the scars left on it by one of its more successful and ambitious life forms. We weep for ourselves, for chances lost, for roads not taken, now closed to us. We weep for our race—the human race, that is—and our seeming inability to share with each other this world and the good things that it offers to us. We weep for children in Afghanistan and Libya. We weep for parents in the slums of San Salvador and our nation’s capital who struggle to make a living where there are quite simply no jobs at all while outsiders tell them that their poverty is their fault and they don’t deserve anyone’s help. We weep for breeding dogs in puppy mills and chickens in egg factories. We weep for the sick, for the war-wounded, for the abused and oppressed.

We don’t weep for all these reasons. If we did, we’d be overwhelmed. We know that, so we’re careful to limit our exposure to these things, careful not to allow ourselves to be confronted by them in ways that we cannot deny. We construct walls of rationalizations and we reduce our lives so that they will fit behind those walls. But still, we know what pain and suffering there is in the world and we weep while keeping our weeping a secret, even from ourselves.

And so Jesus asks us, “Why are you weeping?” And we are at a loss. Why are we weeping? Because there’s all of that and we’ve tried as hard as we could and it’s still there and we had thought that you would fix it or at least keep us and those we love safe from it all, but we’re not safe from it and people die even though we love them and they hurt in ways we can’t fix and how can we possibly not weep?

I know that’s not the conscious question we brought with us this morning, but you know how it is. Sometimes someone who knows us well has a way of asking a question or making a comment and suddenly we see ourselves clearly, more clearly than we had ever wanted to. And that is what Jesus has done to us. And we try to come up with some sort of response that will sort of answer the question without really answering it in hopes that we won’t have to come to grips with the real problem and that is that we are afraid that we are alone or that we will be.

And Jesus speaks a single word to Mary, a name, her name, and her weeping is transformed from an outpouring of grief to an expression of joy. Here is the turning point of Mary’s story and it’s the turning point of ours as well. The point of Easter is not that Jesus’ body was resuscitated. The point of Easter is that we are called by name by Jesus who has walked our path—all of it, even the parts of our journey that lie on the other side of death itself. He addresses each of us, knows each of us, and promises each of us that wherever we may have to go, whatever we must face, whatever we must endure, we will not be alone. We will be accompanied.

That doesn’t erase our sorrows or sponge away our pain. But after ever hurt we bear, every loss we have suffered, every fear that eats at us, Jesus write “yes, but...” Jesus contradicts our loss and our brokenness and our anxiety, and takes them from the main text of the stories of our lives and places them in the footnotes. Our lives are no longer about them. Our lives are no longer about absences; now they are about presence. They are no longer about brokenness; they are about wholeness. They are no longer about death; they are about life.

It turns out that Mary was right, after all. Jesus’ grave has been plundered. The grave has been plundered by life! Christ is risen! So is Mary! So are Peter and John! So are we!

©2011, John M. Caldwell. Permission is given by the author to reproduce and distribute the unaltered text of this sermon provided this notice is reproduced in full and provided that this sermon shall not be offered for sale, nor included in any collection or publication that is offered for sale, without the express written permission of the author.

1John 20:31.