Easter is what makes all of this matter, the beginning of the last act of that whole lifedeathandresurrection thing. On Easter, the palms are justified and the alleluias return. Like the rainbow after the flood, the empty tomb shows us the truth of all that God has promised, all that Christ has taught.
Χριστός ἀνέστη!
What more can be said?
So imagine my surprise as I am listening to the Easter text from John this morning, a text I have already read at least once this week during worship prep, and something jumps out at me that I had not noticed before. And,as in lectio divina, I listened to that word.
In the second half of today's reading from John we hear about Mary Magdalene's encounter with Jesus in the garden. Now, beyond the fact that I can't help but picture Jesus singing a little Chumbawumba (I get knocked down/But I get up again/You're never gonna keep me down) this encounter has a very interesting line in it, a line today that highlighted the Incarnation.
Easter is a time we often focus on Christ's divinity. I think our Enlightenment sensibilities have a difficult time with the idea of a bodily Resurrection. It is so much easier to think of the risen Christ as something else. Perhaps we are so stuck in our own dualistic tendencies that we want to see Jesus before his death primarily in his human nature and Jesus after the Resurrection primarily in his divine nature. We have a difficult time with the idea that Jesus is both for all eternity. It is not simply that this is Jesus' ghost roaming around like the Ghost of Christmas Past. Why else would the gospel writers make a big deal of not just the closed doors but also the Risen Christ eating with his disciples?
So what does this have to do with Mary in the garden that day? I'm getting there. I just have a couple more pieces to draw together.
First, we have to remember that Mary Magdalene is one of Jesus' followers. The gospel writers make a point of this which means it is important. At a time when women for the most part were treated little better than property of their closest male relative, we have the names of several women who were important in Jesus' ministry. Mary Magdalene is one of a few who followed Jesus and supported his ministry. Sounds an awful lot like one of the Disciples. But while the gospel writers might go so far as to highlight the status and role of women in their community, they couldn't bring themselves to make them equal to the Twelve - even though the women were the ones to remain with Jesus to the end, even though the women were the first ones to report the empty tomb, even though the women were the first ones to see the Risen Christ.
But what if? What if the disciple that Jesus loved was not John? What if this gospel comes from a community that followed a different tradition? What if hiding this gospel under the name of John was merely a convenience of the time? .
And to go in a different direction, if Jesus never married, why isn't that ever pointed out? Paul makes a huge deal of his bachelor status? Does it make sense that in the absence of evidence to the contrary, in a culture where that was normative and expected, he was likely married by the time of crucifixion and resurrection? And if so, does his wife appear in the gospels somewhere? It would certainly give a new spin to Jesus telling the disciple he loved from the cross that his own mother is now the disciple's mother and the disciple is now his mother's child.
Of course, this is all speculation. While there are certainly some scholars that have written about these possibilities, these thoughts are not widely held.
But now I have to turn back to today's text. In John 20.17 Jesus says "Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father." Though the text doesn't say it, I can only imagine that Mary's first instinct upon realizing that the man she had mistaken for a gardener through her tears was in fact Jesus was to go to him and hold him whether he was only her teacher or something more. And for me, these words from Jesus show through just as much of his humanity as his eating with the disciples in other appearances.
After all the pain and sorrow of the last few days, after being arrested on trumped up charges, being beaten in police custody, being executed as an enemy of the state, feeling alone and abandoned by God on the cross, it must have felt good to be held by someone who cares, to know that this woman stayed there until the very end and then continued to show up out of devotion to him.
Maybe there was a last temptation for Jesus that involved Mary Magdalene, but maybe it happened in the garden on Easter morning instead. Maybe the last temptation was the temptation to return to his life on this Earth and the friends and family that he had.
Maybe there are a few words missing from that verse. "Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father, and if you hold me I might not go."
If we truly believe in the bodily Resurrection is not the Risen Christ also always fully divine and fully human? If so, how does that color our perception of his post-Resurrection appearances?