John 20:11-18: Mary Carries the Good News

INTRODUCTION

When I was a child Mary was the most popular girl’s name. We had so many Marys that often our Marys added their middle name to distinguish themselves. We had lots of Mary Janes and Mary Anns. I remember a Mary Jean, a Mary Ellen, a Mary Nell, a Mary Elizabeth, a Mary Beth, and a Mary Margaret. My sister’s name was Mary Lynette. We called here Mary Lyn.

But Mary was an even commoner name in the Holy Land in Jesus’ time. An historian writes that 28.6% of the women in the Holy Land in Jesus’s time were named “Mary,” although they would have pronounced it in their Aramaic language, Maryam.

So it is not surprising that we read of seven Marys in the New Testament. There is Mary, our Lord’s mother; and Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus; Mary, wife of Clopas, who was with Mary Magdalene and Mary, our Lord’s mother at the foot of the cross. We also read of Mary, the mother of Mark, in whose house the disciples met after Jesus rose from the dead. And at the end of his Roman letter Paul greets a Mary, a friend of his who lived in Rome.

My favorite New Testament Mary—if we set aside Mary, our Lord’s mother—is Mary Magdalene. She is the most prominent of Jesus’s women disciples. She is mentioned more often than most of Jesus’s men disciples, and in every list of the women who accompanied Jesus, Mary Magdalene is mentioned first.

She is called Mary Magdalene because she came from the town of Magdala.

I. Legends have grown up around her name. Books have been written about her. But all we really know about her is what we learn from the New Testament.

A. Mary Magdalene is mentioned along with Joanna and Susanna in Luke 8, where we read that they were among several women who accompanied the disciples and “provided for them out of their resources.” We can assume that they did the grocery shopping, did the cooking and washing and mended the clothes. They no doubt spread Jesus’s message among the women along the way.

Luke writes that Mary Magdalene had been tormented by seven demons before Jesus cured her. We can only imagine what torment Mary must have experienced that it is described as seven demons living within her.

Her deliverance from such a terrible affliction must explain why Mary was especially devoted to Jesus. Mary’s prominence in the gospels seems to indicate that she was the disciple who loved Jesus best—because he had done so much for her.

B. Tradition has it that Mary Magdalene was the “sinful woman” we read of in the beautiful story in Luke 7 of Jesus at Simon, the Pharisee’s—house.

This was the woman who bathed Jesus’s feet with her tears and continually kissed them as she dried them with her hair. This woman is not named by Luke, and I think that the tradition grew up that this woman was Mary Magdalene because of the extravagant love she showed to Jesus that day.

C. The next time we read about Mary is at the foot of the cross. She was one of the women who stayed by Jesus to the last, after the men disciples—except John—had fled in fear.

She was there with the Lord’s mother, two other Marys and Salome and the Beloved Disciple. Mary Magdalene—her heart breaking—stayed to the last and heard Jesus’s last words and watched as he was laid in the tomb. Then she went home for the Sabbath rest.

II. Our lesson today is about Mary on Easter morning. This is Mary’s starring role in the Gospel story.

A. According to John’s gospel, Mary came to the tomb early, while it was still dark. We know from the other gospels that some other women came with her, but John tells us only about Mary Magdalene.

Mary saw the stone rolled away, and she ran to tell Peter, who came running with John. They entered the tomb and found only the linen cloths lying there. John says, “They saw and believed.” But evidently they didn’t believe anything except that Mary had told them the truth. Jesus was not there. So John and Peter went home wondering—still not realizing that Jesus had risen.

B. Let me tell you now about the tomb, so that we can picture the scene in our minds.

The tomb was a cave carved out of rock. Many of these cave tombs still exist in the Holy Land.

There were steps leading down into a cave carved out of rock. The entrance of the caves are so small that one has to crawl into them. That is why we read that John stooped to look into the tomb.

Covering the entrance was a large circular stone—a big disk—that could be rolled over the entrance and sealed to keep out wild animals or intruders. This stone weighed several hundred pounds.

Inside the cave shelves were cut into the rock on which they laid the bodies, wrapped in their grave cloths.

The body would be left on one of these shelves until the flesh had decayed. Then the bones would be gathered and placed in a stone container called an ossuary.

The family used the same tomb for generations of its members. But we read that the tomb Jesus was buried in was a new tomb, prepared by Joseph of Arimathea for his own use.

Joseph had become a believer in Jesus, but had hid his faith until the crucifixion. But Jesus’s death so impressed Joseph that he went boldly to Pilate and requested the body of Jesus. He wanted to honor Jesus in this way—perhaps because he was ashamed that he hadn’t owned up to his faith while Jesus was alive.

C. Here’s Mary’s story from John 20:11-18:

Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as he wept, she stooped to look into the tomb, and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet.

They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”

She said to them, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”

Saying this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus.

Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?”

Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”

Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher).

Jesus said to her, “Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your father, to my God and your God.”

Mary Magdalene went and said to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

III. Let’s imagine that we are there that first Easter Sunday morning.

A. Picture Mary, standing there at the entrance tomb, weeping because her heart was breaking.

She wept because she was sorry for the Lord.

She wept because she was sorry for herself.

She wept because of the horror she had witnessed as her Savior suffered and died.

She wept because she had lost her Lord Jesus and with him all that made life worth living for her.

She wept because she thought someone had stolen the body.

She stood there, riveted to the spot, because her life had been so wrapped up in her loving Savior that she didn’t know what to do next.

B. Imagine her stooping down and look into the tomb. Imagine her surprise to see two angels in white, sitting on the ledge where the body had lain—one at the head and one at the foot

This is one of the rare times in scripture when someone saw an angel and wasn’t terrified.

In her grief Mary didn’t even register who they were, or how they got there, or why Peter and the other disciple hadn’t seen them just a few minutes before.

The angels asked Mary: “Woman, why are you crying?” And Mary said, “They have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they have laid him.”

The angels didn’t reply, but she must have seen them shift their gaze to something behind her, and when she turned to see what they were looking at, she saw one she took to be the gardener. It was Jesus, but she didn’t recognize him—perhaps because her eyes were so full of tears.

Then Jesus said, “Woman, why are you crying? Who are you looking for?”

And she begged him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

(I think this is a little humorous. If Jesus was still a corpse, he was wrapped, we read, with cloths saturated with 100 pounds of spices. However strong Mary was, she would have had a time carrying that body anywhere. She would probably have run and gotten Peter and John to come back and help her.)

Then Jesus said, in the gentle, loving voice she had heard so many times: “Mary!” Mary recognized that dear voice.

And Mary responded: “Rabboni!” a title reserved for an especially honored teacher. “Rabbi” meant teacher; “Rabboni” meant an especially-loved teacher.

When we lived in Japan, we visited a missionary named Irene Webster-Smith. She had lived in Japan for a long time before the War and was much honored by the Japanese Christians. She was privileged to be allowed to visit some of the Japanese generals in their prison cells after the war, before their execution to bring the gospel to them, and, I understand, she led some of them to Christ.

On the wall of the small room where she lived in in Tokyo, we saw a framed picture with the single word in it “Rabboni.” This was the way Miss Webster-Smith expressed the same love for Jesus that Mary showed on that day in the garden.

Back to our story—

Overcome with emotion Mary sought to take hold of Jesus, but he said, “Don’t hold me, for I haven’t yet ascended to my Father.

I think that the reason Jesus didn’t want Mary to take hold of him is that she would have never wanted to let him go. She would be determined never to let him out of her sight again.

And there is another reason. After Jesus has ascended to the Father, the Holy Spirit would come to dwell in the hearts and lives of all believers. Mary then would enter into an intimacy with Jesus beyond anything she had ever experienced with Jesus on earth.

C. But Jesus had a job for Mary: he sent her to be “an apostle to the apostles.”

Do you remember when you were a child and had a great piece of news to share? It made you feel so important and happy. Well, there was no news in the history of this world that was as important or joyful as the news Mary was privileged to carry to Jesus’s friends.

Jesus didn’t choose a famous disciple, like Peter or John, to bear the news; he chose Mary. I think that was because she was the one who loved him best, and she was the one who lingered at the tomb. This was Jesus’s gift to her: to let her be the messenger.

There’s something interesting here that I want us to notice: Jesus sent Mary away with these words: “Go to my brothers…” Only here in all the gospels does Jesus call his disciples his “brothers.” He has called them disciples, servants, friends, and apostles, but not, so far, “brothers.” And that word means brothers and sisters. In Greek the word for brothers is adelphoi and the word for sisters is adelphai which is almost the same. In speaking of brothers and sisters, they used the word adelphoi. So Jesus’s words would be correctly translated: “Go to my brothers and sisters.”

It seems that our risen Jesus is indicating that his relationship to his disciples is more intimate than it was before. Soon they will see him no more, but he will be close. He will be always their brother.

We read no more of Mary Magdalene. We don’t know how she served God after she delivered that message. But we can be sure that her life after that was exciting and important. If she hadn’t been important in the early church, her name wouldn’t have been remembered with so much honor, 30, 40, maybe 50 years later when the gospels were written.

We can be sure that wherever she went she told the story of what Jesus had done for her and invited others to come to him too.

We can be sure that she continued to minister to the Lord Jesus, by serving his poor and needy people.

Mary Magdalene has been, through the ages, a favorite subject for painters. They usually show her to be a beautiful woman. We don’t know whether she was beautiful or plain. We don’t know whether she was a person of great talents or had a brilliant mind or a magnetic personality. We only know that she loved Jesus very much, that she experienced his love in a remarkable way, and that Jesus chose her to bear the greatest message the world has ever heard: “I have seen the Lord. He is risen!”

CONCLUSION

My favorite part of the story is when Jesus calls Mary’s name: “Mary!”

Jesus didn’t go out to the street corner and shout: “Hey! I love you! Come to me!” Over and over we read that Jesus called people to himself one at a time.

Wouldn’t we like to know Mary Magdalene’s story? How Jesus came into her life, put his hand on her, and took away the terror of her affliction—the seven demons? Someday, I believe I will meet her. I’ll ask her to tell me the rest of the story.

In Isaiah we read these words from the God of Israel:

“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;

I have called you by name, you are mine.”

So Jesus calls you and me. He calls us by name.

Have you ever heard Jesus calling you?

Not in words we hear with our ears but in words that we hear in our hearts.

And he waits to hear us say, “Rabboni,” “Master,” “Lord,” “Savior.”

Just as Jesus called these to himself during his time on earth, so he calls you and me to himself now.

None of us has had seven demons cast out of us, but Jesus has drawn us to himself and given us the gift of eternal life. He has become our friend, and someday soon he will welcome us into the Father’s house, where we will see him and know him and live with him for ever.

John 12:27-33: Our Lord Reigns from the Cross

Introduction:

Today is Palm Sunday, the first day of Passion Week. On this day nineteen hundred, eighty-three years ago, Our Lord Jesus came riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. A crowd led him, laying their cloaks on the road, and followed, waving palm branches and shouting “Hosanna! Blessed be the one who comes in the name of the Lord!”

It would be an eventful week, such an important time that our gospel writers devote the largest part of their writings to this last week of Jesus’ life, leading up to his death on Good Friday.

Jesus knew his days were numbered. He was a marked man—feared and hated and reviled by powerful people. And yet he was also much loved, especially by the poor, who had been captivated by his grace-filled life, his heavenly teaching, and his works of compassion.

I would like to read to you some words Jesus said, recorded in John’s gospel, just after his account of the Palm Sunday entrance.

Jesus said,

“Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father glorify thy name.”

Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”

The crowd standing by heard it and said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.”

Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the ruler of this world be cast out; and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself”

He said this to show by what death he was to die (John12:27-33).

I have chosen this afternoon to talk only about this half sentence in the above passage: “I, when I am lifted up from the earth will draw all people to myself.”

I. “Lifted up”

A. Twice before this Jesus has spoken of being “lifted up.”

In his conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus had said, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

And again in a conversation with some religious leaders who were opposing him, Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the son of Man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak thus as the Father taught me.”

We see that it was important that Jesus would die, and that he would die, not by being pushed over a cliff—as his enemies had once tried to do—or by stoning—as they had attempted twice—but by being “lifted up”—lifted up on a cross.

In the verses I read at the beginning, Jesus said that when he was lifted up from the earth, he would draw all people to himself.

That’s what I want to talk about today: how Jesus, lifted up on the cross, draws us to himself.

II. Execution by crucifixion was the most gruesome and horrifying means of execution that ancient people had been able to devise.

A. The practice of nailing a man to a cross, naked, along a public road, displaying him—hanging in the sun as he slowly died of exposure and dehydration—typically it took days for these victims to die—was intended to warn all passers-by against engaging in whatever crime that man had done.

The intention of Jesus’s enemies was so to put our Lord to shame that no one would ever be able to take him seriously again.

B. But that’s not what happened.

The time of Jesus’s greatest humiliation—as he died on the cross at Golgotha—was, we know, the time of our Lord’s greatest glory.

The ancient Christian believers had a saying, “Christ reigns from the Cross!”

They thought of the Cross of Golgotha as the throne from which Christ reigns over the earth.

They considered the death of Christ the greatest event in history and the greatest revelation of the love of God. St. Paul characterized his message thus: “I decided to now nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified”  (1 Corinthians 2:2).

That horrible event—the scourging, the scorn and ridicule, the crown of thorns, the cry of desperation—“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!?” and the agonizing death shows us—as nothing has before or since, the depth of God’s love for sinners, and the cost of that love that has redeemed us and set us free from our sins and opened up the doors of heaven for us.

III. Christ’s death was accomplished on that one day, the day we call Good Friday. But the consequences of that death are eternal.

A. On Easter—Resurrection Day—we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord.

Resurrection Day means that God has vindicated Jesus and given us assurance that Jesus’s death was the victory over sin and death and hell.

Easter is the “happy ending” to the story of our redemption.

But in each of the four gospels, the crucifixion is told in the most detail, because here it was that Jesus paid the price to buy us back from our bondage to this world of sin and darkness and make us his own.

B. The events of Good Friday lasted only a few hours. Jesus hung on that cross from nine in the morning to three in the afternoon, and then death came. But the consequences of that death are eternal.

In those six hours Jesus accomplished salvation for lost and sinful humans from the time of Adam and Eve to the end of the world.

Everyone who has or will become a child of God, comes to him through Jesus, who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me.”

People wonder: How can the death of one man at one time in history count for millions of people in all ages?

The point is that the death of Jesus—the Incarnate God—God in the flesh—is not an ordinary death. As God is Infinite, Jesus’s death was an infinite death, a death like no other, a death infinite in its pain and in its consequences. 
That is why, in the Book of Revelation, John almost always calls Jesus "the Lamb"—27 times, not because Jesus looked like a sheep but because Jesus was our sacrifice, our sin-bearer.

Application

This is why the Cross is the emblem of our faith. This is why we put crosses on our churches and at the front of our worship space, and why we print crosses on our Bibles and hymn books, and why wear them around our necks. This is why many believers, every time they pray, they make the sign of the cross.

This is why the Lord’s Supper Service—or Communion—or Mass—or the Eucharist—is the central part of our worship services.

These things remind us of what it cost for God to forgive us our sins, to bring us into friendship with God, and to assure us of everlasting life.

Some people fault God because there is so much trouble in the world. They say if God were really all-powerful and all-loving there would be no cancer, no birth defects, no germs, no earthquakes, floods or droughts or accidents.

 They think of God as some sort of a giant sitting on a throne in the sky working levers to control the world. If our God were that sort of a God, sure, there might be no trouble, but there would also be no freedom, no choice, no love. We’d be like characters in a puppet show, with God working all the strings.

God has made a world and made it free—humans are free and nature is free and many things happen that hurt even good people.

But God is not indifferent. God is here, as close as the air we breathe. God weeps when he sees the baby die. God grieves when he sees the hatred the demagogues are stirring up during this election cycle. God feels the pain of his people, caught up in the endless wars and the atrocities. As Jesus wept at the tomb of his friend Lazarus, he weeps with us when we bid “Farewell” to a loved one. Our crucified Savior is experiencing every pain that his people suffer.

Our suffering Jesus grieves, but he is also almighty to bring good out of evil. As on the Cross of Golgotha, Jesus brought good out of the greatest evil imaginable, and through his suffering won the salvation and eternal life of all who will respond to his love, so Jesus can bring good out of our sorrows—good we can’t imagine.

Our Lord is risen, but he still is our suffering Savior. He still comes alongside his hurting people. That is why we need to combine in our minds the picture of Christ in Glory with the picture of Jesus on the Cross.

Jesus knows, he cares, he understands, he weeps with us, and if we will join our lives to his by faith, we can share his victory of Resurrection.

A much-loved saint of the early church was Martin of Tours. One night, during a very troubled time in his life, as he was praying, Martin had a dream in which his cell was filled with glorious light. A serene and joyous visitor appeared clothed in royal garments, with a jeweled crown on his head, and gold-embroidered shoes upon his feet.

Martin was half-blinded by the sight and for a time was speechless. Then his glorious visitor said. “Recognize, Martin, whom you behold. I am Christ. I am about to visit the earth, and it is my pleasure to manifest myself to you beforehand.”

When Martin made no reply, the glorious figure continued, “Why do you hesitate to believe what you see? I am the Christ!”

Then Martin, as by a sudden inspiration answered, “The Lord Jesus did not foretell that he would come arrayed in purple and crowned with gold. I will not believe that Christ has come unless I see him in the dress and shape in which he suffered—unless I see him bear before my eyes the marks of the Cross.”

Instantly, the apparition vanished, and Martin knew that he had been tempted by the Evil One.

I had an older friend who, years ago told of getting on a streetcar with his Bible in his hand. The conductor saw his Bible and asked him, “Do you know what was made on earth but will be seen in Heaven?” When my friend hesitated, the conductor answered his riddle: “What was made on earth and will be seen in Heaven are the scars in Jesus’s hands!”

As an old, now almost forgotten, hymn has it:

When my life’s work is ended and I cross the swelling tide,

And the bright and glorious morning I shall see;

I shall know my Redeemer when I reach the other side,

And his smile will be the first to welcome me.

I shall know him, I shall know him,

And redeemed by his side I shall stand.

I shall know him, I shall know him

By the print of the nails in his hand.

The story is told of a popular monk in the Middle Ages who announced one Sunday that in the evening, he would preach a sermon on the love of God. The people gathered and stood in silence, waiting for the service while the light gradually dimmed in the stained-glass windows.

When the last bit of color had faded from the windows and the church was dark inside, the monk went up to the candelabrum where a single candle burned, took the candle and walked up to the life-sized crucifix. He held the candle beneath the wounds on Christ’s feet, then beneath the wounds on Christ’s hands, then beneath the wound on Christ’s side, and finally the monk raised the candle and let it shine on the throne-crowned brow. That was the sermon.

The people stood in thoughtful silence, everyone knowing that they were at the center of a mystery beyond their knowing, that they were indeed looking at the supreme expression of the love of God—a love so deep, so wide, so eternal that no wonder could express it, and no mind could measure it.

Jesus stretched out his arms on the Cross and took the world into his embrace—to welcome that great company of believers from east to west that were to come into his arms.

Jesus reached out his arms on the cross to draw all people to himself—to welcome you and me into eternal friendship with himself.

Our Lord Jesus reigns from his Cross.