Readings for Easter Day (Year B)
Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
John 20:1-18
This sermon was preached by Fr. Daniel London at Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka CA on April 1, 2018.
This year, since our great Feast of the Resurrection falls on April Fool’s day, I feel invited to begin my sermon with a joke. St Peter was guarding the Pearly Gates (the doors to heaven) where he would welcome and then interview new souls who were coming into heaven. He saw Jesus walking by and caught his attention and said, “Hey Jesus! Would you mind guarding the gate for a bit while I go run an errand?”
Jesus said, “Sure. What do I have to do?”
Peter said, “Just find out about the people who arrive. Ask them about their background, their family, and their lives. Then decide if they deserve entry into heaven.”
“Ok,” Jesus said, “Sounds easy enough.”
So Jesus manned the pearly gates for St. Peter; and the first person to arrive at the gates was an old man. Jesus welcomed him and then looked closely at him and asked, “What did you do for a living?”
The old man replied, “I was a carpenter.”
Jesus remembered his own earthly existence and leaned forward and asked, “Did you have any family?”
“Yes,” the old man said, “I had a son, but I lost him.”
Jesus leaned in more closely and said, “You lost your son? Can you tell me about him?”
“Well,” the man said, “he had holes in his hands and feet.”
Jesus leaned forward even more and whispered, “Father?”
The old man leaned forward and whispered, “Pinocchio?”
In this story we have a misrecognition of Jesus just as we do in our Gospel reading this morning. Just as the old man Geppetto thought Jesus was his son Pinocchio at the Pearly Gates so too does Mary Magdalene think Jesus was the gardener at the tomb. It is not until Jesus says Mary’s name that she recognizes him as her Risen Lord and cries out “Rabbi!” So a question for us this morning is how do we recognize and experience the Risen Christ in our lives?
After recognizing Jesus, it appears that Mary then rushes to embrace him since, according to our translation, Jesus says, “Do not hold on to me.” Other translations render the phrase “Do not cling to me.” However, the Greek verb here is actually hapto, which means “touch.” So Jesus is actually saying, “Do not touch me.” Now these words are very mysterious, especially since throughout the Gospel of John, Jesus invites us to use our bodily senses to understand and appreciate deeper spiritual realities, but here Jesus says, “Don’t touch me.”
What makes this statement of Jesus also very mysterious is the fact that in this very same chapter in John (chapter 20), Jesus invites his disciple Thomas (often known as Doubting Thomas) to put his finger on his hands and side. So why does he tell Thomas to touch while telling Mary, “Do not touch”?
All apparent incongruities in Scripture are not simply mistakes or mere contradictions, but rather invitations into the deep, paradoxical mysteries of God. So what mystery are we invited to understand and experience, even with our sense of touch, on this Easter morning?
What does Jesus say to Mary after saying, “Do not touch me”? He says to Mary, “Go to my brothers” (20:17). With these words, Jesus is telling Mary that if she wants to touch Jesus’s body, she is now invited to do so among the community of believers, which, after Easter, is understood to be the Body of Christ. In one sense, the Risen Christ has ascended to heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father; and in another very real sense, the Risen Christ remains here among us, whenever we gather in his Name. This is why it makes sense for Jesus to invite Thomas to touch his risen flesh in the very same chapter because Thomas is in the midst of the community of believers, the Body of Christ.
The Gospel of John teaches that if we want to experience and touch the Risen Christ today, we can do so whenever we gather as a worshipping community, as the Body of Christ. Because we do not live in first century Palestine, we cannot touch that same tangible body that Mary Magdalene touched. But we can touch the Body of Christ as it is made manifest to us today, in the Eucharist and in this very gathering of people who proclaim the resurrection.
My spiritual journey has led me to explore other faith traditions and to seek wisdom from various spiritual leaders such as the Buddha, Lao Tzu and even the prophet Muhammad. However, after a few years of exploration, it became clear to me that Jesus was my rabbi and spiritual guide and guru. I appreciate understanding Jesus as my guru because a guru functions as one’s access to the divine as Jesus is for me; and also because the term reminds me of an experience that my father shared with me about his own spiritual journey. My father, who grew up Jewish and explored a variety of spiritualties, wanted to become a follower of a living Indian guru named Sri Chinmoy. However, Sri Chinmoy turned him away because, in his apparent wisdom, he sensed that my father’s true guru was actually Jesus. At the time, my father was disappointed by this because he felt that it was much more helpful and spiritually beneficial to have a living guru with whom he could physically engage and interact, rather than a teacher like Jesus who died 2,000 years ago. But it was actually through a group of Jewish believers in Jesus that my father came to understand Christ as very much alive (as we proclaim today on this Easter Sunday) and very much present within the church. As I have grown in my own personal understanding of Christ, I have also come to experience him as very much alive and present; not just present within our thoughts and memories and prayers; but present in the physical and tangible sacraments; the consecrated bread and wine; and present within and through our own bodies, which are temples of the Holy Spirit.
I also came to understand that in order to truly grow in my experience of the Risen Christ, my relationship with him needed to expand beyond an individual and personal relationship to a communal relationship. In other words, if I wanted to touch and be touched by the Risen Christ, I was invited to do so within the community of believers, the Church, within the Body of Christ. I was invited to listen to Christ’s word to Mary, “Go to my brothers.”
And that’s really why I am here now as a priest, because I have come to experience the Risen Christ tangibly within the church, and I want others to experience that as well. Moreover, that is why I am here at this particular church in Eureka, a church which lumberman Thomas Walsh, back in 1868, felt called to name after the One whom he experienced as his access to the divine, a church which he intentionally chose to name “Christ Church” in order to highlight the Risen Christ as our (quote) “Door to Heaven.”
So can we recognize the Risen Christ among us today? Can you hear him calling you by your name, inviting you to touch and be touched by him? Can you hear him inviting you to receive his overflowing joy and ever-abundant life, which he wants to embody uniquely in you, and in us as a community, so that we can be, for Eureka and Humboldt county, a tangible and touchable expression of God’s love and so that we can fulfill Thomas Walsh’s 150-year-old vision for this church to be an ever more welcoming and open “Door to Heaven.” May it be so. Amen.
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 