FROM THE SHADOWS TO THE LIGHT: John 20:1-18

 

 

It was still dark when Mary went to the tomb. She has no idea that the world through which she moves is a very different place that morning. It is the first morning after the resurrection, but no one knows what has happened. The world slept right through it.

Mary goes to the tomb in darkness. Maybe it was less painful that way. Perhaps the shadows numb her disappointment. Maybe she is embarrassed that she still cares about the body of Jesus after all that happened on Friday.

Mary moves in a world of shadows, and shadows have a way of disguising the truth.  They distort what is before our eyes. Mary can still see among the shadows, but she sees wrongly.

 Mary believes the Light of the World has gone out. Perhaps she feels foolish. Maybe she asks herself: "Was I fool for following him? Did I misunderstand what he was saying?” She saw in Jesus unrivaled grace and beauty, unmeasurable love and mercy. She had believed he was God’s Son. Yet it all ended in the ugliness of crucifixion.

The darkness distorts Mary’s vision. She gets it all so wrong.

 When I was a child, we moved to a house with second-story bedrooms and big trees around it. The wind would blow at night and make shadows dance on the wall, and I was frightened. I would long for the light of morning to come. Have you ever felt the morning would never come? Mary believed morning would never come dispelling her grief.

Mary sees so wrongly it is almost funny. She finds the tomb is empty. This is the best news ever. Jesus is not there; he is alive. But Mary assumes the worst news, that someone has taken his body, adding insult to injury.

Even when Mary sees the angels, she still believes the worst has happened. Mary still believes that Jesus can be taken from her, that she can be separated from the love of God.

The Apostle Paul writes in Romans 8:

³⁵ Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?...³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹ neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

Mary does not yet know what Paul knows. She believes things in this world can separate us from the love and grace of God. She believes we can find ourselves alone and lost in the world.

When she turns from the angels, Jesus himself stands before her. She does not recognize him because she is not looking for a living presence of God. She tells her sad story again about the body being taken and asks if Jesus knows where it is.

She is still looking for a dead body among the shadows. She sees through eyes of defeat and despair. So, she mourns in the presence of the living Lord.

She still believes this world is a place where all human caring and love are finally meaningless. The death of Jesus has convinced her that life goes nowhere. In the end it has no lasting meaning. The death of Jesus meant to Mary that the most sacred things of life can be taken from her by cruelty and hate.

Sometimes we can feel cruelty, hate, greed, racism, and fear of others can threaten all we hold dear. When we find wealth and power being used to injure and impoverish others and serve selfish ambition, we wonder if those things in which we have so long believed can survive the onslaught.

We wonder how long Mary’s obliviousness will go on. We want to shout at her, but Mary cannot hear us. It is like shouting at the TV that the villain is in the basement, don’t go down the steps; but they never listen to us.

Mary finally recognizes Jesus when he speaks her name, “Mary.”

In John chapter 10, Jesus says “the Good Shepherd calls his sheep by name. They know his voice and follow him because they know his voice.” Jesus is the Good Shepherd, and Mary recognizes his voice when he calls her by name. In that moment the darkness is overcome; the shadows melt away. No one can separate us from the Good Shepherd who loves us and cares for us. Mary now knows that.

Morning dawns on Mary. The light of what has happened floods her soul. She knows the power of God’s love is again loose in the world.

What was true for Mary is also true for us. The same light that flooded back into Mary’s life also floods our lives every day. The shadows and lies that mislead us are driven back. We now know anew: loved dashed to the ground always rises again; goodness when attached and wounded always emerges stronger; and God always has the last word in creation.

In chapter one of the Gospel John told us “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome the light.” Nothing on this earth or in the heavens above can separate us from the love and grace of God…Nothing.

The Jesus who called Mary by name knows our names and says to us: “You are mine; all is never lost. The night is not forever.” He calls us from the shadows of discouragement into the light of faith. His spirit washes over us with hope. He warms our hearts with forgiveness. He opens our eyes to joy.

The resurrection of Jesus means the light of God’s love is winning against all the darkness. Jesus meets us in the shadows of this world and invites us into the light and warmth of God’s love. So hope lives in us.

Jim Kelsey—Executive Minister of American Baptist Churches of New York State

Easter 2025

A God Who Grieves Us

 

As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it—Luke 19:41

As Jesus summits the Mount of Olives and looks down upon the city, the tumult of the parade breaks off raggedly in Luke’s telling of the story. The scene grows quiet, and we are pulled in close as Jesus pauses there.

Jesus is weeping. The ground beneath his donkey is damp with the tears of God. Here we stand on holy ground. From the beginning of time God has looked at the choices we make and grieves us. God grieves the damage we do to ourselves, to those around us, and to the creation itself.

The residential population of Jerusalem will quadruple with Passover pilgrims during the coming week. These visitors must be fed; sacrificial animals must be bought. Three hundred barrels of wine will be brought in so everyone can drink the prescribed 4 cups of wine mixed with crushed fruit, fresh fruit that will be sold in the market that week. The pilgrims’ money must be converted to Tyrian shekels, the official Temple currency. Profits will be made at the currency exchange tables.

Lacking water and other resources, stone was the only resource in the region of Jerusalem. The Jewish Temple and its festivals were the principal source of revenue for the region.

Jesus looks down on the city, the gold on the façade of the Temple glistening in the sunlight and the streets crowded with pilgrims and merchants. It all appears so wonderous, so prosperous, so hopeful, so lucrative.  As Jesus takes in the bustling city, his eyes are full. His cheeks are damp. We can almost hear his broken sobs. 

We might want to turn away from this private moment, but we should not. If we remain, we can learn something about God, about ourselves, and about the choices we make.

Jesus weeps at the brokenness of the city—the greed, the arrogance, and the violence that lies just beneath the surface. He knows the tendency of the city to destroy any voice that questions its legitimacy and supremacy, any voice that threatens the security of its income stream (Luke 13:34-35).

It should be noted that immediately upon entering the city, Jesus goes to the Temple and drives out the merchants. The people, before the week is out, will cast their vote for a strong economy rather than for peace when they turn on Jesus before Pilate.

Why does the city make such poor choices? Because the city has no idea what makes for its own peace: “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes” (19:42), laments our Lord.

The city took the promise of prosperity, the illusion of security, the reassurance of its invincibility, and its self-congratulatory arrogance as peace. None of these things make for peace, as they will soon learn. In the winter of 70 AD, the Roman General Titus will lay siege to the city. Within three years it will all be destroyed and its wealth carried off to Rome. Their city’s leaders played the people for chumps.

In that feel-good moment of Passover, the people of the city saw a fiction. Jesus saw the truth. And he grieves their poor choices, the losses they will endure.

God still grieves the choices we make, the things in which we seek passing security, the inebriation of self-interest that drives us, and the pride that blinds us to what makes for our own wellbeing and the healing of our communities. We go on making, to this very day, poor choices. And we break the heart of God.

So, what shall we do? 

Miguel de Unamuno wrote: “The chief sanctity of a Temple is that it is place where people weep in common.” We begin by mourning together our world and the choices we have made. We are all guilty; we are grieving ourselves. In that moment we share in the rhythms of God’s heart.

Then we turn to love; we give that a try.

We live in a day when words of kindness and mercy and reconciliation are drowned out, even mocked, by the voices of the people shouting the loudest, ugliest, meanest, most self-serving messages. We idolize people who amass obscene wealth to glorify themselves at the expense of those who struggle to get by and go without.  Love seems like a quaint memory from a bygone day, ineffectual and naïve.

None of this is an excuse to give up. It is reason, even more, to embrace the arduous and risky work of love and peace and reconciliation.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr in his speech at the 10^th anniversary of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, “Where Do We Go from Here?” said:

Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that.

And I say to you, I have also decided to stick with love, for I know that love is ultimately the only answer to humankind’s problems. And I’m going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn’t popular to talk about it in some circles today. And I’m not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love; I’m talking about a strong, demanding love. For I have seen too much hate. [...] and I say to myself that hate is too great a burden to bear. I have decided to love. If you are seeking the highest good, I think you can find it through love. And the beautiful thing is that we aren’t moving wrong when we do it, because John was right, God is love. He who hates does not know God, but he who loves has the key that unlocks the door to the meaning of ultimate reality.

Love is our task. It is one we must grow into. It does not come to any of us naturally; it is a capacity given to us by God.

Buried within the tears of Jesus is the key that unlocks the meaning of ultimate reality. Despite it all, God still loves us—all of us—and grieves us in all our brokenness. God still wants us.

To model this love is our greatest challenge. To embody it will be our greatest glory.

Jim Kelsey—Executive Minister ABC of New York State