“Whom are you looking for?”
Jesus likes to ask this question. He asks it this morning, of his friend and follower Mary Magdalene, who got to see him and interact with him because she stayed by the tomb to weep. I wonder if this conversation honors not just Mary Magdalene, then, but grief itself, too. She is at the tomb for a while this morning, not to do anything really, but simply to weep. (But that alone is doing something.) Jesus has already shown that he knows about grief, and in particular he knows about grief at burial sites. He joins Martha and Mary in their grief for their brother Lazarus, and he shares their outrage about the vicious bite of death. And here he is again: Jesus, near a grave, connecting with a woman who is there to grieve.
“Whom are you looking for?” is his question to her. If it rings a bell, then you may faintly recall Jesus asking this exact same question in another garden, just three days ago. He was in the Garden of Gethsemane, and he asked this same question to the soldiers and police who arrested him. They came for him carrying “lanterns and torches,” which is a hint to us that they are the forces of darkness, and so they need artificial light to guide them on their dreadful errand. And then came his question, the question: “Whom are you looking for?”
When he asks it this morning at the entrance to his own tomb, it's actually his second question. His first question is the same one the two angels had just asked: “Why are you weeping?” And then Jesus asks, “Whom are you looking for?” And so it seems like Jesus is interested in helping her find whomever she seeks, but he is also interested in her grief. He is also interested in her.
Jesus also asks us this question today, for we are the siblings and friends and companions of Mary Magdalene. We linger with her in the garden, at the entrance to the empty tomb, this morning, and like her we are looking for something. No, we are looking for someone.
Whom are we looking for?
I think we are looking for someone to take away our grief, just like Mary Magdalene wanted to find and take away the body of Jesus. We want someone to take away our grief, even though, like Mary Magdalene, it is our grief that holds us in place long enough for Jesus to arrive, for the Risen One to draw close; and it is our grief that prompts him to connect, or better said, it is our grief that he finds interesting enough to be given the honor of his first question to us: “Why are you weeping?”. So, yes, we are looking for someone to take away our grief. But as deeply understandable as that is (and please hear me, I am your brother in this desire!), is that … wise?
I think we are also looking for someone to restore the old “normal.” What is normal? For many of us, normal was what life was like just a few weeks ago, when we had jobs and workplaces and could shop and travel and eat out and hug our grandkids and simply live in a world that made sense. And yet, just like our desire for someone to take away our grief, this second desire for someone to restore the old “normal” may be misplaced. For one thing, lots and lots of people were suffering greatly in the old normal. There were plenty of unemployed folks, people who did not have access to resources, people who lacked health care, people who were isolated and lonely and strung out. So, yes, we are looking for someone to restore the old “normal.” But as deeply understandable as that is (and please hear me, I am your brother in this desire!), is that … wise?
I think we are also looking for someone to win. We want to grab onto this person and make him our leader, our champion, our warrior king who tramples sin and death in a way that makes sense, in a way that feels like a clean victory, in a way that routs the enemy forever, so that there are no more suffering children, there is no more senseless loss, there are no more lonely deaths or violent conflicts or unjust human systems; there is no more racism or sexism or classism or any of the other awful and wretched things we do to ourselves and to one another. We are looking for a winner. Yet the Risen One stops Mary Magdalene from touching him, from holding onto him, from resting in the satisfying belief that he is going to be her champion and everything is going to be great. Now, even as he pushes her back from holding onto him, note well that he is not indifferent to her! He calls her by name, and when he shows her that intense, personal intimacy and affection, it is in that moment that she recognizes him. He is present to her grief, and he even asks about it, encouraging her to express and work with it. His friendly familiarity with her promises something from the old “normal” that she can recognize and trust, even as he is now demonstrably very different than he was before his death. But it is Mary Magdalene, not Jesus, who will go to the others with the Good News. So, yes, we are looking for someone to win all the battles and solve all our problems. But as deeply understandable as that is (and please hear me, I am your brother in this desire!), is that … wise?
And so, finally, we are called to respond to the Risen One’s question, “Whom are you looking for?” as the provocative, challenging, prophetic question that it truly is. It is a lot like another question God asks the human ones — again in a garden! — when God walks through the Garden of Eden at the time of the evening breeze and asks us, “Where are you?” God knows where we are. And God in Jesus knows whom we are looking for. But these divine questions prod us; they call out to us; in their asking, these questions create. They are asked in gardens because God the Creator is always and forever cultivating gardens, places where life flourishes, places where life is nurtured, places where life is propagated and shaped and tended so that it can flourish even further, rising in vigor and beauty. “Whom are you looking for?” is a question that encourages us to flourish: it encourages us to go deeper, to reflect further, to discern what, beneath our all-too-understandable desires for comfort and satisfaction, what — whom — we truly are looking for.
We are looking for life: for life that flourishes even in a world that seems nearly defeated by death; for life that restores even in a world that wears us out and pulls us apart; for life that not merely tolerates but welcomes our grief and our longings and our desperate search for Jesus, our great Friend — for life that welcomes all of us into the center of God’s garden, where even the worst in us, and the saddest parts of us, and the most fearful and fraught corners of our consciousness can be healed and nourished and restored. We are looking for life that does not safely carry us away from the world, but forms us into life-dealing people, into gardeners ourselves, into the Body of the Risen One.
We Christians love to surround ourselves with flowers, and one of the unsung losses of this time is the loss of the Easter garden in our worship space. At St. Andrew’s we have our own St. Martha, who leads the group of gardeners here that is charged with adorning our house of worship with life. This Easter, there are no fragrant flowers in one large room, elegant images that help us reflect on this question our Great Gardener asks us, “Whom are you looking for?” But maybe this particular loss can, in a backwards way, be a gift for us.
This year, we are not just gardeners, but we also are the flowers that flourish in God’s garden. We rise up in beauty, and our beauty is at its best when we grow alongside one another, even now as the world seems to be doing all it can to keep us separated. Whom are we looking for? We are looking for the Great Gardener to tend us as we grow amid thorns and droughts and floods. We are looking for the Great Gardener to help us be the Body of the Risen One, a Body that looks like, and is, a garden, a place where those who grieve can come, and be met, and be welcomed, and be restored, and be invited to add their own beauty to our pageant of color and fragrance and delight.
As the Body of the Risen One, then, when God asks us, “Whom are you looking for?” and when we stop, think about our answer, and recognize that each one of us is a flower in God’s garden, then perhaps this answer, this Easter Day answer, to the question comes to our lips:
Whom are we looking for? We are looking for each other.
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Preached for the online Easter Day worship at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Burke, Virginia, April 12, 2020.
John 20:1-18