Easter Sunday, April 20, 2014 | 8:00, 9:30, and 11:30 a.m.

In This Together

Joyce Shin
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 118:14–24
Acts 10:34–43
John 20:1–18

“Do not hold onto me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father.”
John 20:17 (NRSV)

Hell took a body, and discovered God.
It took earth, and encountered heaven.
It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.
Christ is risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead.

Attributed to John Chrysostom

Have you ever felt that you needed to be in more than one place at one time? Some of you may be familiar with the need to become expert jugglers, keeping in the air all the demands of the day—demands perhaps of family, friends, job, or even church responsibilities—all valuable and worthwhile. Relying on carefully planned schedules, we try to keep up in the air all the balls we constantly juggle.

But we know that sooner or later what goes up must come down. This is the principle of gravity.

The people of the ancient Greco-Roman world also understood this principle. They understood that “whatever goes up must come down.” Our Gospel writer John understood this principle too, and the Gospel he wrote is all the more radical because it is based on its great reversal. As early as in chapter 3, John spelled out the principle in reverse: “No one has ascended into heaven,” John wrote, “except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. . . . The Son of Man must be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” The Son of Man, John wrote, descended from heaven, and he must be raised if anyone is to believe in him. In other words, “he who has come down must go up.” For John, the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ could never be comprehended by people whose beliefs were limited by the physical principles of nature alone.

Resurrection is not at all a natural event. Death is natural. So when the early Christians proclaimed Jesus Christ to be risen, they were in fact confessing the incomparable power of God—a God who was not only the creator of nature and all of its principles, but also the sole master over it and certainly not constrained by it.

Having followed Jesus throughout his ministry, we have seen and empathetically felt for Jesus whenever he encountered the constraints of his own physical limitations. As his popularity grew, everywhere he went, throngs of people crowded around him, hoping to be healed, fed, taught, and touched by him. They could never get enough of him. We can imagine that trying to be all things to all people must have been exhausting. Trying to heal every disease, ease every pain, accompany every mourner, address every wrong, Jesus must have encountered his impotence to be with all people everywhere and at one time.

How painful this must have been for him, for he knew that the world needed not only a Wonderful Counselor, a mighty God, an everlasting Father, a Prince of Peace, but also Emmanuel, “God with us.” Jesus knew that the world needed him to be with them. It wouldn’t be enough for him to be all things for some and not for others, for him to be with some and not with others.

Of all the Gospel writers, John seems to have taken this predicament most to heart. In his Gospel, we find Jesus saying things like, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” It is as though Jesus, in preparing his disciples for his death, wanted them to know that his death would bear much more fruit than his physical life ever could. It is as though Jesus knew that, when raised to be with his Father in heaven, he would finally be able to “draw all people” to himself. Better than most of us, John understood the paradox that only by ascending beyond the constraints of his physical limitations could Jesus truly be with everyone.

We see this conviction at work in John’s account of Jesus’ resurrection. John’s bold proclamation was not simply that the tomb was empty or that the risen Jesus appeared, which are in themselves amazing events, but moreover that Jesus was ascending. To Mary, who was the first to encounter the risen Lord, Jesus said, “Do not hold onto me, because 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.’” We can imagine how moved Mary was when finally she recognized her Lord. Lost in grief at his death and then beside herself with the need to find his body so that she could give him a proper burial, Mary must have grasped and clung onto him. But Jesus resisted. Jesus would not let her hold onto him. The close bond between teacher and disciple could not be resumed. Things could not return to the way they were. Jesus was going away again, and as much as Mary wanted otherwise, he could not stay.

The care with which Jesus, in the Gospel of John, prepared his disciples for his death and then guided them through their grief has helped me and, I hope, many of you on more than one occasion. More than once, when I have grieved the death of someone I have loved, I have been comforted and challenged by Jesus’ lesson: that sometimes, in order to be close to the people we love, despite how much we want them to stay, we have to let them go.

Two weeks before my wedding, the best friend I ever did have died from a very aggressive cancer. Prior to her death, when the date of my wedding was still far off into the future, she had helped me to make lots of plans. As my dearest friend, she would, of course, be my bridesmaid, standing by me during my wedding. When it became apparent that standing during the wedding would tire her, we adjusted the plan. We reimagined that she would process in and then be seated in the front pew. As her strength waned further, I began to imagine her in a wheelchair from beginning to end. Unfortunately, in time, I had to adjust my expectations altogether to accept the fact that she would need to stay in the hospital, unable to be with me on my wedding day.

So when I got the call from her husband, saying that it was time for me to say good-bye, I took the very next bus from my hometown in Kentucky to Chicago, took a cab from the bus station to the hospital, and rushed straight to her hospital room. But my friend was not there. The bed was made; the room was cleaned; and my heart sunk. I had wanted so badly to be with her, to touch her, to hold onto her.

It wasn’t until after my wedding that in my sleep I dreamt the most vivid dream—so vivid that I can still remember every detail of it. My friend, looking rosy-cheeked and healthy, with her hair beginning to grow back—she and I were together in the most pleasant, airy, sunlit room, and giving me her full attention, she said to me, “So, tell me about your wedding.” And I remember even in my dream thinking that she knew everything that happened, because she had been there. No longer physically confined to her hospital bed, she had been free to be with me. Still, in my dream I went on to tell her all about it.

There are some stories in the Bible that can so profoundly impress themselves upon our psyches that, especially when we find ourselves in experiences of extreme grief or joy, they come to our aid. We can draw upon them immediately. Some stories offer us comfort. Some offer us challenge. But most of all, they help us to make sense of things. John’s telling of the story of Easter is one of those stories. For Christians, it is a story through the lens of which things that would otherwise be absurd can make sense. Even though there is nothing sensible about the resurrection, even though we cannot make sense of it, it makes sense of everything else.

Therein lies its revelatory power. The Easter story is revelatory not because it is an in-and-of-itself, once-and-for-all, self-contained, unique, incomprehensible, miraculous event. It is revelatory because it makes sense of, illuminates, all of reality. It is in Jesus’ resurrection and ascension that God finally revealed the true glory and greatness of Jesus, because it is there that he revealed Jesus Christ in relation to all. No longer constrained by physical limitations and no longer bound even to those closest to him, Jesus could finally establish a new fellowship—a fellowship in which all people can call upon God as their “Father” and treat each other as brother and sister.

Into this new fellowship, the risen Christ draws all of us. Christ draws people like you and me—people who at first may or may not have much in common, people who may come from different walks of life, who may speak different languages, and who may be from different races—into God’s family. And as family, we are in this together. What happens to some matters to all. When any one of us grieves, we are not alone, and our community is the greatest consolation. As painful as it is to lose someone we love and as lost as we may feel, it is by the ties we have to one another—the responsibilities that we have for one another—that we keep our bearings. So we can stop looking for Jesus in the tomb. We can stop searching for his body. As difficult as it is, we can let him go. For wherever we love one another, there we will find our risen Lord. If we love one another, the sorrow of losing him will turn into the joy of finding him, not as he was before, but in all his glory, risen and ascended.