An Easter Sermon
Happy Easter, y'all.
Today is Easter Sunday. You probably knew that already. When I consider how vastly different my Easter observance is this year compared last year, I am shocked. Last year, I preached the Easter sermon in a light-filled art gallery. This year, our family is without a church home—a reality I didn’t see coming just one year ago. We decided to travel to Grand Rapids and visit our friends and attend church with them, and I’m so grateful for their hospitality and warm welcome on what is a busy weekend.
I’ve decided to share last year’s Easter sermon. It’s a bit longer than what I usually share here. (It turns out 30 minutes of talking is a lot of words!) I have shortened it slightly, but kudos to you if you make it all the way through.
There are over 100 of you here reading these emails, and even among the smallest sliver of that group, I know the range of beliefs about Easter is very, very wide. No matter how you show up to today, I hope you imagine me standing before you, offering a big hug, and hoping you feel the presence of the God who loves you.
Can I tell you a funny story I always think about this time of year?
The church I grew up in really stayed away from anything that could be called “traditional.” There was no liturgy, no call and response prayer, no vestments, no hymns.
Fast forward quite a bit to adulthood, and I was working in children’s ministry at a very different church. It was Easter Sunday, and I was posted by the double doors that led in and out of our children’s ministry space. As one older gentleman was walking back out into the main lobby, he looked at me and said, “He is risen!”
I happily responded, “Yes, Happy Easter!”
He kept walking, but turned back to look at me with utter confusion and maybe even a little disgust. I didn’t know, in the moment, what warranted his response and was very confused; I kept thinking about it all morning.
It was hours later when the light-bulb above my head clicked on. Ohh yeah, I thought. I was supposed to say, “He is in risen, indeed.” It was an unfamiliar tradition to me. Those words didn’t flow off my tongue naturally, because that call and response wasn’t something I had practiced.
It’s been almost a decade now, and I’ve since learned this a thing many people in many churches do on Easter morning. So, now, if I were to say to you, “He is risen,” you might know to say say “He is risen indeed.”
“Indeed” is kind of a funny word, sort of old fashioned and antiquated. My children watch a lot of Bluey these days, and we’ve adopted quite a few Bluey-isms in our home. If we were having this conversation with the Heeler sisters, instead of “indeed,” I imagine they would say, “For real life?!”
“Indeed” implies we really mean it—that He is risen… for real life. The invitation today is to reflect on this idea. If Christ really is risen, what does it mean for me, for us, and for the world?
In 2019, I travelled to New York City with my mom and my sisters for a girl’s trip. We were in the city for less than 48 hours, mostly to see Hamilton. We arrived on a Friday when the Museum of Modern Art—MoMA—just happened to have free admission. I’m not sure if I gave my mom and sisters much of a choice about what we were doing that evening. Art museums are one of the places where my full nerdiness can shine; I find great joy in reading every little plaque and soaking up the colors, lines, and shapes. (I was once yelled at by a security guard in Chicago for getting too close to a Jackson Pollock, but that’s a story for another day.) I was mostly excited to see Van Gogh’s Starry Night, which we did, and it was wonderful. But it was actually another piece of art that really captured my attention that evening. I was aimlessly wandering from one gallery to another, when I turned and suddenly stood face to face with Monet’s Water Lillies.
When you look at a piece of art in a textbook, on the internet, or maybe on a postcard, it can be hard to have a sense of the scale of the piece. Some pieces (like perhaps the Mona Lisa) we assume are large but aren’t. This iteration of Water Lillies is enormous, taking up three full walls. I actually gasped aloud when I saw it.
I stood there silently for a minute before I began looking frantically side-to-side, searching for my mom or one of my sisters. I needed a familiar face. I felt compelled to ask someone—anyone—“Are you seeing this? Do you see what I see right now? Did you know? Did you know it was so big? Did you know it was this amazing?”
I’m not sure I’ve ever had another experience quite like that. Witnessing something incredible, I could not help but want to share it with someone else. I was face-to-face with something so overwhelming, so far beyond the expected that I needed someone to affirm what I saw, to help me know I wasn’t dreaming.
I’ve since learned that Monet’s idea was to create art that would actually surround and envelope the viewer. The three panels at MoMA are almost 42 feet long, and those are only three of the more than forty he painted. He wanted us to be surrounded completely by the color, by the light, by this beautiful creation. When you’re standing in front of it, it’s almost impossible to take it all in at once. You can only see glimpses.
I wonder if the resurrection of Jesus is similar. It is mysterious. It is surprising. It is big. It is impossible to take in the entire story and all its implications at once, let alone put it all in a sermon (or a Substack newsletter).
Today, the particular glimpse of Jesus’ resurrection I want to focus on is what we find in John 20—an interaction between Mary Magdalene and the resurrected Jesus. This is a passage with a lot to say about women, about Jesus, and about the hope of the resurrection.
First, some context.
Jesus spent about three years traveling around the ancient Near East, what we would now consider parts of the Middle East or Holy Land. During that time, he taught about Jewish theology, he performed miracles and signs, he told stories, and he ate lots of meals with questionable characters.
As he did so, he claimed to be one with God and to be acting on God’s behalf to usher in God’s kingdom. This got him on the bad side of the Jewish religious leaders, who didn’t think he had the right to say such things or do things like offer forgiveness of sins. They thought, “Only God can do that.”
Jesus also got on the bad side of the Roman government authorities, because he went around claiming to be Lord, insisting he was in charge of things. The Roman government secured their rule and authority via violence, wealth, and immovable social hierarchies. Into their midst, Jesus proclaimed that the last shall be first. He went about creating a community in which peaceful nonviolence was the way, and where slave & free, Jewish & Roman, rich & poor, men & women lived and learned and ate and created a new kind of community together. They thought, “Only Caesar gets this kind of authority. It’s our way or the highway—this man is leading a rebellion.” So, they arrested him and executed him. (But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.)
As Jesus began his ministry, he sought out a group of followers, called disciples. “Disciples” implies apprenticeship and following—he was the teacher and they were the students. In children’s ministry (where I spent most of my time in ministry), we also referred to the disciples as “Jesus’ very good friends,” because they were that, too. There were twelve men in Jesus’ inner circle, but Scripture also tells us there were larger groups of people traveling with him at various points, submitting themselves to his teaching, and trying to figure out who, indeed, he was. Among those people was a not insignificant number of women, one of whom was named Mary Magdalene.
Magdalene isn’t her last name, exactly—it refers to the town she was from, Magdala. It’s a fishing town near the Sea of Galilee. She’s called Mary Magdalene mostly to distinguish her from the other Marys because, you know, there are a lot of them in the Bible. (Some historians estimate the name “Mary” was given to one in five Jewish women at the time of Jesus’ life.) So, this woman becomes “Mary Magdalene” and is mentioned—by name—twelve times in the Gospels. That is more than most of the male disciples and more than any other woman besides Jesus’ mother (who, you know…also Mary).
It is the Gospel of Luke that explains how Mary Magdalene and some of the other women came to follow Jesus. Luke 7 tells the story of a sinful, anonymous woman who comes before Jesus and anoints him—that is, she pours expensive, extravagant perfume all over his feet. (It’s a scene that has echoes in Jesus’ washing of the disciples feet later.) She rinses his feet with her tears, and she wipes them with her hair. It is a vulnerable scene with intense intimacy. The men present are dismissive and denigrate her, but Jesus offers her nothing but respect and grace. There was a pope who once speculated that this woman was actually Mary Magdalene, but historians and Biblical scholars have mostly refuted that, at this point. That anonymous woman is not Mary, but she sets the stage for what Luke says as the beginning of chapter 8:
“After this, Jesus travelled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from whom 7 demons had come out; Joanna the wife of Chuza, the manager of Herod’s household; Susanna; and many others. These women were helping to support them out of their own means.”
No one is surprised to know that in biblical times, men were favored over women in marriage, family, law, and custom. When talking about the Bible with people, the assumption is often that the Bible promotes that kind of inequity between men and women. And yes, there are certainly verses from Paul’s epistles and Old Testament stories that can be interpreted that way, but it’s worth asking if those inequities come from God or from the surrounding culture. In Luke’s account, these women act independently from their fathers or husbands and support Jesus’ ministry with their own money.
When trying to make sense the Bible, it’s helpful to ask ourselves about the overarching paradigm—from beginning to end, what story is God telling? As far as I can tell, the story God tells in Scripture is one of ever increasing freedom for all of humanity—including women.
The first person in Scripture to give God a name is Hagar—a woman who is enslaved and mistreated by Abraham and Sarah.
The first person in the Bible to call God “anointed one” (the word we eventually translate as Messiah and Christ) isn’t Abraham or David or Isaiah. It’s Hannah, Samuel’s mother.
Of course, we know the first person to learn of how God is going to send the Messiah? That’s Mary—an unwed, poor, teenage girl.
It is Elizabeth who first proclaims Mary as blessed, who seems to understand and confirm what Mary is participating in.
Who is the first prophet in the New Testament to declare Jesus as God’s son, the first prophet to speak after more than 400 years of silence? That’s Anna, an elderly widow.
All throughout his life, Jesus never hesitates to interact with women. He teaches them, touches them, heals them, and eats with them. He treats them with the same measure of compassion, interest, justice that he gives to men. When it comes to Jesus, there is obvious and intentional equity in how people are treated. Not only that, but in a world that dismisses the opinions and testimony of women, Scripture elevates their opinions. The women say what is true about God. This pattern continues, all the way up to Holy Week and Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection.
Eventually, the Jewish religious leaders and Roman Empire conspire together to arrest Jesus and, ultimately, to crucify him. John is the only male disciple mentioned as present for the crucifixion. Luke suggests that perhaps more men were present, writing that “all those who knew him” stood at a distance. But almost everything we know tells us they ran away, hiding because they were afraid.
But all four Gospels tell us the women were there, Mary Magdalene among them. And why?
We know these women were beginning to piece together the reality of who Jesus really was, and I can’t help but wonder if they stuck to close to Jesus because never before had they been treated as equals. Never before had they experienced that level of respect and care and equity. I imagine they understood—in a unique way—that Jesus was their only hope.
Jesus’ death took place on Friday, as you may know, which means the next day was the Jewish Sabbath. John 20 describers something like a flurry of activity, in preparation for the Sabbath. Some of Jesus’ followers are able to attend to his body and place it in a tomb before the Sabbath begins, but then they have to just wait. There is nothing that can be done until the Sabbath ends.
John 20 begins by saying, “Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb…” We know the Sabbath is over, but the sun’s light isn’t even fully visible, yet Mary Magdalene headed to Jesus’ tomb as soon as it was possible for her to do so. Immediately, she sees that the tomb been disturbed. She goes to grab Peter and John, and they come running as well. Peter and John see the empty tomb, they see the discarded linens and cloth in which Jesus’ body had been wrapped…and then they leave. Verse 10 says they “went back to where they were staying.” It’s not really clear why, but the idea that Jesus could possibly be alive has not even entered their minds.
Meanwhile, Mary stays at the tomb. Nadia Bolz-Weber calls Mary Magdalene “the patron saint of showing up.” She shows up, she stays put, and because she is there, she is the witness. All four Gospel accounts of this event tell us that Mary was first.
First, she sees angels who ask, “Woman, why are you crying?” John tells us she began to look around. Can’t you picture that? Can you see her surprise? I imagine her almost looking side-to-side as if to say, “Hello, is anyone else seeing this?” When she turns back around, she sees a man whom she mistakes for a gardener.
Mary mistaking Jesus for a gardener is one of my very favorite things in all of Scripture. It’s easy to imagine an account of this story where John writes, “Mary, in her distress and with her eyes blurry from all that crying, mistake Jesus for a gardener, but the had the disciple whom Jesus loved been there, he would have known,” (see John 20:4). If Thomas became “Doubting Thomas,” Mary Magdalene might have been “Mary the Mistaken.” But that’s not what happens, and so I think it must have been easy to mistake Jesus for the gardener. Despite that, have you ever seen a portrayal of the resurrection in which Jesus looks like a gardener? He is usually wearing all white, and he’s usually glowing or surrounded by light.
I don’t consider myself a gardener by any means, but I do have a small 4x4 raised bed that was my COVID project. I try my best, and from May through September, I have dirt under my fingernails constantly. My knees and the soles of my feet are often tinged black with dirt and mud. Wearing white is a terrible idea.
Appearances aside, Jesus as a gardener reveals so much about the hope and purpose of the resurrection. Christians often say the resurrection gives us hope, but I was raised believing that hope was about going to heaven instead of hell. But that is not the good news Jesus proclaimed.
The good news of Jesus—that he proclaimed, that the New Testament writers explain and the Old Testament prophecies—is that of the kingdom of God is here, now. God is redeeming and reconciling all of creation. We are not escaping; heaven is coming here. Jesus tells the disciples, “As the father sent me, so I send you.” He insists, “the kingdom of God is at hand.” Jesus’ mission is to set the entire world to rights, to make every sad or bad thing untrue.
When Jesus was crucified and buried, God demonstrated a willingness to enter into our suffering, to be humble, to face the worst humanity can drum up, and to say, “It doesn’t have to be this way.” When Jesus walked out of the tomb, God declared that life had new meaning. Mary mistaking him as a gardener is not a cute blunder—it’s a sign of what Jesus is doing at that moment and inviting us to participate in now.
Resurrection is not a reversal. When John says it was the first day of the week, he implies a new beginning. Jesus did not simply go back to how he was before. (If he did, everyone would have had a much easier time recognizing him.) God is not asking us to go back to Eden. God is doing a new thing, in and among us.
This “new thing” is not complete yet—because the other reality is that we are invited to participate and help bring this to fruition. God begins the work, and will be faithful to complete it, but we get to participate. Sometimes, we will need to get a little dirt under our fingernails.
That is the hope I need. Most days, I look around and the view I see is less like Monet’s Water Lillies and more like what my sad, dead small garden plot looks like in February and March. I don’t need to remind you of all the death and destruction, sadness and hopelessness, evil and inequity present in the world.
But just as Jesus’ relationships with women hint at a new way of doing things, so does his whole life. The Sermon on the Mount, the Lord’s prayer—these are all beautiful explanations of what God’s new creation will be like, the reality that Jesus’ resurrection began.
And when I’m really paying close attention—when I am willing to show up and stay put—I see the evidence. I want to be like Mary Magdalene—devoted to Jesus, showing up, staying put, witnessing and participating in creating a new kind of world. A world in which every sad and bad thing is untrue. A world in which God’s perfect justice, love, and peace reign.
I have seen too much to believe sin does not have real consequences. Any time we worship something—whether money or power or ideology or ourselves—the consequences are real and sometimes dire, even to the point of death. We can not just continue living that way.
But I have also seen too much to believe that God is not alive—that God is not living and active, planting and cultivating signs of new life everywhere we look, and inviting us to say “yes” to being a part of that mission. For real life.
Mary finally recognizes Jesus when he says her name. “Mary.”
After that, she goes back to the other disciples and says, “I have seen the Lord.”
I see him too—with a little dirt under his fingernails.