March 31, 2013 | 6:30 a.m. | Easter Sunrise

Coming Out Singing

Joyce Shin
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Isaiah 25:6–9
John 20:1–18

“Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father.”

John 20:17a (NRSV)

Most of you may recall the tragic earthquake that devastated Haiti in January of 2010. An estimated 3 million people were affected by the quake, and though we cannot know for sure, it is likely that more than 220,000 people died from it. Morgues were overwhelmed by dead bodies, and eleven days after the earthquake, the government of Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, officially called off the search for survivors. I’ll never forget watching the news on television one evening. Two weeks had already passed after the earthquake, and search efforts had begun to wane. Still, small groups of individuals sought to find their loved ones buried beneath the rubble. It was one of these desperate efforts that a news cameraman caught on tape, and it happened to be one of the last successful rescues. From beneath layers and layers of rubble, a woman was pulled out alive. The camera caught her thin, collapsed body being carried by a few good men, and as I beheld this most remarkable scene, I was even more astounded by what I heard. She was singing. With a parched, frail voice, the woman came out singing.

Because of the singing, I will never forget that moment. I did not know what song she sang. I did not know what words she sang. I did not know the language in which she sang. And yet I felt as though I knew exactly what she sang, because as she was singing, I was praising God, the God who raised her out of the rubble.

For me, the song I heard was an expression of faith that in this moment God was most certainly present. Again, I do not know what she actually sang. It is simply because of my own faith that I imagined the song as one of sheer joy and amazement at God’s saving presence in her life.

In writing about Jesus’ resurrection stories in the New Testament, biblical scholar Willi Marxsen says that all the stories about Jesus’ resurrection are such expressions of faith. They are not reports that can prove that Jesus, once dead, was brought to life or, moreover, that Jesus, once dead, was brought to life by God. None of the stories gives testimony of an actual eyewitness who saw a dead Jesus come to life or an invisible God raising Jesus to life. They are instead stories told by and for a people of faith who drew upon their faith to make sense of and to make meaning out of Jesus’ death and the empty tomb.

Different followers of Jesus made sense of Jesus’ death and the empty tomb in different ways. This is evident in the varying stories of Jesus’ death and resurrection told by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. In John’s account, we do not find a report of all that happened to Jesus after he died. That’s not what John was most interested in. In fact, we don’t even find John’s main Easter message to be “Jesus is risen!” Instead, the main Easter message in John’s Gospel is that because he is risen, “all has been accomplished.”

When my daughter was five years old, she was carefully cutting out shapes, focused on the hard work of controlling her safety scissors so that she cut only along the lines. While she was hard at work, I was playing the piano nearby, and without looking up, she said to me, “Mama, the thing about the piano is that when you make a mistake, you can just play it again.”

It’s true. Music has a fleeting quality; it’s forgiving that way. But it’s not only our mistakes that we want to be fleeting; sometimes we benefit most when we do not cling permanently to the things we value the most, even to the people we think we cannot live without.

This is the lesson that John’s story of Jesus’ resurrection teaches us. He teaches us that because Jesus is risen, “all has been accomplished.” According to John, it is imperative that Jesus ascend to his Father in heaven in order that all can be accomplished. Conversely, if Jesus were to remain as an earthly presence, physically tangible by his disciples, God’s plan for the world would not be accomplished.

In the Easter story we read this morning, Mary Magdalene is the one who, after discovering the stone removed from Jesus’ tomb, rushes to Simon Peter and the other disciple to report the distressing news: “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” “Where is the Lord?” Once the tomb has been found empty, this becomes the question upon which Mary and Jesus’ disciples fixate themselves.

In fact this is the question that has been raised throughout the Gospel of John, not just now in the predawn darkness of Easter morning. The very first question posed to Jesus by one of his disciples is “Rabbi, where do you dwell?” (John 1:38). In John’s Gospel, the principal difference between Jesus and his enemies turns out to be that Jesus knows where he is from and where he is going, while his enemies do not. In John’s portrayal of Jesus’ final farewell speech to the disciples, the question of where Jesus is going becomes central: when Jesus tells his disciples that he must go to be with his Father and will prepare a place for them there, Thomas says to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”

For the disciples, while Jesus was living, he was the Light of the world. Following him, they could walk knowing where they were going, but in the darkest hour of the passion, Jesus’ closest followers find themselves groping. They do not know where Jesus is or how to follow him.

We can imagine how they felt. When someone we love and depend upon dies, we can lose our bearings and for a while we may not know how to proceed. We may feel as though we no longer have anyone behind us to push us along or beside us as our companion or ahead of us to show us the way or even clear the path. This is perhaps how the followers of Jesus began to feel when Jesus died.

And so it is understandable that Mary, Peter, and the other disciple are distraught when they cannot locate Jesus’ body. When Peter and the other disciple discover for themselves that Jesus’ tomb is indeed empty, they return despondently to their homes. In her distress, Mary, however, remains and weeps outside the tomb. So full of sorrow is she that she doesn’t even recognize Jesus when he stands before her and speaks. Jesus tries to refocus her attention with the question “Whom do you seek?” Mistaking him to be the gardener, she says to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him.” Her grief seems to have been so fixated on the loss of his physical body that for a while she cannot see that her beloved Lord is addressing her.

What follows is perhaps one of the most moving moments in the New Testament. Jesus calls her by name, “Mary,” and at that, she recognizes him. We can imagine that at that moment Mary wants more than anything to grasp and cling onto her Lord. But in that very moment, Jesus says to her, “Do not hold on to me.” Though he is standing within her reach, he says, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father.”

Jesus refused to allow Mary and the disciples to relate to him as they did in the past. They must not encounter the resurrected Jesus as if he were resuscitated from the dead. They must let go of his physical, earthly presence, because very soon, he will no longer be with them.

In the very next few verses, beyond what I read to you already from chapter 20, Jesus makes a surprise appearance in the house where his disciples are meeting. There, the resurrected Jesus commissions them, and in doing so—John writes—“he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” As Jesus told his disciples before he died, but which they did not comprehend at the time, he would have to leave them so that he could send his Spirit to be with them. Just as he promised them that he would not leave them orphaned, Jesus gives them the gift of the Spirit.

All is accomplished, according to the Gospel of John, when the followers of Jesus no longer look for him in the world, when they no longer search for his body and hold onto his physical, earthly presence, but when instead they find him among his family of faith—among his spiritual brothers and sisters, all children of his Father in heaven.

Where is our Lord? Don’t look for him in a tomb. He won’t be there. He is here.