Easter Sunday: A sermon on John 20: 1-18

So here we are, finally…It’s Easter. It’s funny how this week, almost every day, I had at least one or two people asking me: “So your big day is coming uh?“, and I guess they’re right: Easter is a big day and it is a big deal for all of us Christians. Actually, all what we believe in could be summarized in those two sentences we proclaim during Easter season: Alleluia. Christ is risen. (And you respond: The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia). That’s what our faith is all about isn’t it and it is the miracle of all miracles: “…that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to [the disciples]” as Paul reminds the Church in Corinth in our second reading today.

If you’re interested in miracles, and I bet you are if you’re here today, there is a very good movie on streaming right now, it’s called “The Miracle Club”. It’s the story of four women from a small village in Ireland in the 60’s who go on a pilgrimage to Lourdes together. Lourdes is a place where it is believed that the Virgin Mary appeared in the 19th century and there is a spring there whose water is supposed to cure all sort of diseases and infirmities. One of the women has a boy who can’t speak and so she wants to bring him so he can bathe and be healed. As they journey together, the women learn more about each other – they fight a lot actually – but they also cry and laugh, limp and dance, and then start sharing their burdens and confide to each other their secrets (no spoiler here). They’re a bit disappointed though, and a bit mad at their priest, that the dramatic miracle for the boy does not happen. Have they been misguided? And yet, as we watch them learn and grow, release their pain and forgive each other, find the strength to mend their lives and to go on, we understand that maybe something even more important is taking place, a deeper healing is occurring. The final sequence shows the women coming back to their hometown, and as they hop off the bus and hug their families, excited and happy, we see the boy who cannot speak holding a snow globe of the Virgin Mary he got on the trip, and as he looks at it (spoiler) he whispers the word: Home. But there is so much chatter and laughter in the village that nobody, expect the spectator, will hear him. What is home? Is it the village? Is the boy an angel whose home is this place with the Virgin Mary and whose purpose was to bring the people together? Or is home this place when we enjoy each other company, when we are reconciled and happy to see each other again, when heavens and earth touch together? Many questions are left to our own interpretation.

As for me, I find that this movie resonates with our Gospel today. John, the writer of the Gospel we have just heard, tells us that the miracle of the resurrection happens while it was still dark, very early in the morning. And so at the beginning, there is nothing much – actually at the beginning there is nothing at all. Mary Magdalene goes to the cemetery, which must have been awfully quiet at that time of the day, and she finds the tomb empty. Jesus is dead and, as if it wasn’t bad enough already, now his body has disappeared. And this breaks Mary. She has been the faithful one, she has followed Jesus when he was betrayed and arrested, she has been there at the crucifixion, she has seen Jesus breathe his last. And now she cannot hold back her tears anymore, and she cannot snap out of it. I like it that the illustration for our cover page (I couldn’t find the name of the artist) shows Mary with such a big handkerchief in her hand. You may not know that Mary Magdalene is believed to have finished her days evangelizing the South of France and in this region there is an expression people uses a lot: Instead of saying “to cry like a baby”, people say “to cry like a Magdalene”. Now it’s a little sad that, with all that Mary Magdalene ended up saying and doing in her life, that she is mostly (dismissively) remembered as the one who cried a lot and who just couldn’t stop, no matter how senseless or embarrassing. And indeed we have to acknowledge that according to John, Mary Magdalene is not a heroine of faith, to start with. In our story, we hear of Simon Peter and of the beloved disciple who “sees (the empty tomb) and believes“, and then they just go home and go on with their lives, Their immediate belief is contrasted with Mary who lingers at the tomb weeping. As the story goes, it seems clear that not only Mary Magdalene does not believe yetand that maybe, probably, she does not even see, many have noticed that at this point she was probably “blinded by her tears” both concretely and symbolically: She is so sad that she cannot see, cannot comprehend what’s going on. In our passage today, John insists a lot on how difficult it is for Mary to see and to believe in spite of all the signs: The empty tomb, the linens rolled (a thief wouldn’t have done that!), and then the faith of the other disciples, even the presence of the angels do not convince her. Isn’t it extraordinary? She sees the angels but it’s like they weren’t even here and she couldn’t care less! And then she sees Jesus but she still does not recognize him, thinking it’s the gardener. Only the sound of his voice and hearing him speak her name will convince her.

Well, I don’t know what you think but I love it. I love it that Mary is not a heroine of faith to start with. I guess we can all admire the two disciples’ faith, but I find it easier to relate to Mary and actually (and interestingly) the story is all about her, it’s not about those whose belief is seems easy. I love it that Mary reacts the way she does because it shows so much the deep sensitivity of her soul and especially because it shows her love for Jesus. I am not making this up, Jesus says it himself in another passage of the Gospel: She has shown great love [to him] (Luke 7). And actually, I don’t think John tells us all of that about Mary to point out what an incredulous person she was, a bad believer, a bad disciple, who couldn’t acknowledge the Resurrection. Rather, again, I think John wants to show us the depth of her pain for the loss of Jesus. You know that when you have lost someone or something you really care about, you’re not going to be easily comforted.

And so it’s quite paradoxical that what may seem like Mary Magdalene’s lack of faith at first (compared to the other disciples) could be due to her intense love for Jesus. Wow. Think about it: She could not believe because she loved too much. She will need Jesus to tell her that it’s okay now to let go. She does not have to hold on to him anymore to her pain, her grief, her memories of him because he is for ever alive with his God and her God.

Now, what does it mean for us?

Well, I think that a lot of us struggle with much grief, whether because we mourn literally the loss of a loved one, or we mourn for the suffering of friends and family, and we also lament the state of the world, the abuse of creation, the violence inflicted on innocents. Maybe we mourn for the church, that isn’t doing so well these days, we all mourn, in a way or another, because of suffering and death, and how tough life is. We mourn the perceived absence of Christ and the absence of his kingdom of justice and peace. Well, the good thing is that looking at Mary Magdalene I think Easter is for people just like us. After all, she may not have the biggest, obvious faith, but she is the one who will first see Jesus. Because she is the one who cares. Jesus does not come at Easter to prove wrong those who have condemned us, and Jesus does not even come at Easter to prove right those who have followed him, Jesus comes at Easter to those who miss him and to those who love him. It does not happen with a bang, the miracle comes to us in silence. I love it that on our cover page Jesus sort of stand behind where he looks at Mary but she cannot see him, and we hold our breath caught in this moment right before she turns around. And I also like that the image is kind of split in two: on the left side Mary’s grief and on the right side Jesus’s glory. Earth and heavens and the coming together of two realities, where the miracle happens. Yes, we take it all in: the pain of the world and the many struggles of our destinies and the perceived absence of God AND we also can let go a little bit because we believe that Christ is coming, and that in fact he was there all along. Christian life isn’t about fleeing from one world for the other clinging to certainties, and it’s not being so weighed down that we cannot turn around, rather it’s about being be able to hold those two realities together, both the pain and the glory, and it is in this that we can find resilient hope, a sense of peace and undying joy. In the movie, when the women are mad at the priest because the miracle does not come as expected, he responds to them: You don’t go to Lourdes for the miracle, you go to Lourdes for the strength to go on. But it’s clear enough that the strength to go on is the miracle, the living Christ living in us, lifting us up and loving us. All what we believe in could be summarized here: Alleluia. Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.