Easter Message -- OK, So It's a Bit Late

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?” 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 toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” which means Teacher. Jesus said, “Touch me not, for I have not yet returned to my Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, I return to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God.”

At the Easter service I attended this was our Scripture reading. Whether or not familiarity breeds contempt, it certainly breeds inattention. In its repetition, have we missed what a remarkable passage this is?

We learn that this account contains the central theological message of Christianity, yet it is surprisingly human and ordinary. Mary Magdalene cares nothing for prophesies, salvation or victories over death. Instead, like Antigone’s fixation on her brother Polyneices, Mary is concerned only with the proper burial of her lord, and she is horrified at prospect that the body has been desecrated. I have read elsewhere that Mary’s lament uttered amid tears – “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him” – is perhaps the most heartfelt passage of all Scripture.

And then, not content with just poignancy, the Bible writer throws in some humor. Here, at the moment of Jesus' supposed cosmic victory, Mary Magdalene mistakes him for the gardener. What she thinks a gardener might be doing outside the tomb at that -- shall we say "ungodly" -- hour on a Sunday morning is not clear.

And finally, what about Jesus' injuction to Mary to "touch me not"? According to The New Yorker critic, Joan Acocella:

This scene is the New Testament’s most powerful statement about the confrontation with death, about losing forever the thing you love. The setting is beautiful: the green garden, the morning light, the angels. Then we hear the cruel words: “Don’t touch me.” He was there; he had called her name; she had reached out to embrace him. Now she must stand back, let him go, and make her way alone.

Billy Collins in his poem “Introduction to Poetry” describes how he feels a poem should be viewed. He then describes the usual approach:

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

This method, of course, is also the approach that many take to Scripture as well, and there has been lots written about what this passage from John really means, like it’s written in some kind of code that can only be understood if it is de-cyphered. My feeling is that, while there are hints and suggestions here, if you don’t see this passage as essentially unfathomable, you have missed the boat on it.

N.B. Not that Christianity is any more unfathomable than any other major religion that has demonstrated some staying power; there is simply a tendency in religion to have the bottom drop out on you. In this way, the subject of religion is like the subject of science: the more closely you study it, the more mysterious and ultimately unknowable it becomes.


In Rembrandt's painting, we see Jesus as Mary did -- a gardener. He's got a spade and a jaunty red gardener's hat, while striking a noticeably relaxed pose. The two angels comically sprawling about the tomb seem mostly uninterested in the proceedings.