Do Not Hold On To Me, by He Qi. Used with permission. Find more images at https://www.heqiart.com.
Watch this sermon on video here.
Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me.”
There are so many Easters that I want to hold on to, forever. I want to hold on to that Holy Saturday night in the early nineties when I first experienced a Great Easter Vigil. I was thrilled by a wise, long-bearded elder in that community proclaiming the reading about God putting new flesh on the dry bones, the reading where God says, “I will open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people.” I want to hold on to the memory of that Minneapolis congregation holding aloft their new paschal candle and placing it atop a huge mountain of flowers, a triumph of color that seared my soul with gladness.
Oh, but I am still holding on to older Easters. For several years, I was an excited kid in a dark theater on Easter morning. Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, we kids were choristers at Memorial Auditorium in Worthington, Minnesota, singing for the sunrise service our church held there. Why there, and not at the church itself? Because our pastor was a painter, and he had created a huge mural of the resurrection garden, and they rigged the theater lights to slowly come up on the mural. In my memory they also piped in birdsong — a bit much, but why not? And there were so many, so many, so many pungent Easter lilies.
I want to hold on to each Easter lily.
I want to hold on to the people who celebrated Easter with me over all these decades, many of them (of course) long dead now, the people who taught me about Easter, the people who taught me how to keep this glorious, triumphant springtime holiday, always hard-earned, whether we live on the snow-driven prairie of southwest Minnesota or this rain-drenched coast of western Washington. I don’t want springtime to yield to summer, or Eastertide to yield to “ordinary time.” I want to stay here. It’s nice here.
But our companion in holding on to Easter joy, our patron saint of Easter Good News, our patron saint of bear hugs, Mary Magdalene — she makes an even stronger case for holding on, for bear-hugging for dear life, for holding on to Jesus. Easter is personal for Mary. Jesus is personal for Mary. She calls him “Rabbouni,” not “Rabbi.” Rabbouni doesn’t just mean ‘teacher.’ Rabbouni means ‘teacher-I-adore.’ Mary wants to hold on to her teacher-I-adore, to reach up and around him and hold him tight, to never let him go. Oh, I get that. I know that. I feel it. Do you? I remember my beloved dead, of course… What would I give, what would I give up, for just five minutes of holding on to my parents, my uncle, so many people who right now are beyond my reach?!
But Mary teaches me that this desire to hold on to Jesus is even more personal than that. Much earlier in the story that led to Mary trying to hug her Rabbouni, Jesus calls a blind man by name, and the blind man recognizes the voice of Jesus, and gains the ability to see. For the first time in his life, the blind man is the center of attention, the protagonist. His story of gaining sight — it is all about him. The Good Shepherd knows him, not just him-and-everybody-else. He calls him by name. Have you ever felt known like that?
A bit further on in the story, Jesus calls Lazarus by name, and Lazarus comes out of his tomb, regaining life, regaining abundant life. “Lazarus, come out!” Jesus calls. Not, “Hey, you there, come out!” Not even, “Hey, brother of Martha and Mary, come out!” The Good Shepherd knows Lazarus, not just Lazarus-and-his-sisters. Have you ever felt known like that?
We preach community ethics here in church, as well we should: that we’re all in this together, that when we break the one bread into countless pieces, everybody has enough to eat, and everybody becomes one people, one Body. True, true. And yet, the Easter Good News is personal to you. It is about you, about you alone.
It is for you alone to say what Easter means, what Easter is, what Easter does. We baptize on Easter, because what better day to baptize can there possibly be? In Baptism we die and rise with Christ; we plunge down into the dark tomb and breach up into life like a humpback. But it is for the baptized person alone to say what Easter means, what Easter is, what Easter does. Today, the risen Jesus calls Isabel by name. Today Isabel is baptized in the name of the Holy Three. I was baptized years ago, just like many of you here. And so we all share in baptism, we have a shared baptismal identity, and we make baptismal promises together. But today, this Easter Day, today is when the Good Shepherd calls Isabel by name.
It may take Isabel a number of years to work it all out, but only Isabel can truly tell us what this Easter Day means, what this Easter Day is, what this Easter day does. She will tell this to us as her years unfold, and may God grant her five score of them. I pray that Isabel will have a century’s worth of Easter Days to preach the Good News of Resurrection to us — the Good News according to Isabel.
And so we must let go of this Easter Day. We must not hold on to it, lest Isabel not have her own special, personal, unique access to the Risen One. Mary Magdalene rushes Jesus, she presses upon him, she grasps him — in my reading, she seizes his wrists, then his shoulders, and then the great moment of embrace, their two beating hearts drawing astonishingly, thrillingly close, and then she tries to hold on.
But no: there is this great heartache in every joyous Easter Day. No, Mary, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father.” What a strange and jarring thing to say. We are not to hold on to Jesus, even after he calls us by name, because if we do, Isabel won’t have her chance. If we hold Jesus close forever, the next baptized person can’t be named and embraced.
Many of you don’t know this, but we’ve already had a full Easter Day here. We were up before dawn for the Great Easter Vigil, and we baptized Alexander. The Risen One called Alexander by name, and he recognized his Rabbouni. It was splendid. I wept with joy. Oh, how I want to hold on to that Easter. It was just a few hours ago! But Alexander has already let go, so that another Easter can dawn, this time for Isabel.
Today is the Easter Day when Isabel hears the Risen Stranger call her by name. Today is the Easter Day when Isabel recognizes her Rabbouni. But then she must not hold on to him. She must let go, so that he can ascend to the Father.
And what does “ascend to the Father” mean? I will tell you. When Jesus says, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father,” he means that the power of Resurrection continues to rise up and move out. Jesus calls me by name, and I recognize my Rabbouni. Then I let go. Then he calls you by name, and you recognize your Rabbouni. Then you let go. He has called Alexander by name, and Alexander recognized his Rabbouni, and let go. In a few minutes the Risen Stranger will say, “Isabel!” and she will recognize her Rabbouni. But then yet another person will find themself in this garden, and Easter will be all about them.
On and on this will go, eternally, until all the earth is God’s Easter garden. This is our great hope, our great Good News. This is what we know. And once again, Mary Magdalene — the Apostle to the Apostles, the patron saint of Mama Bears — once again Mary Magdalene is our teacher, our exemplar. She readily obeys Jesus when he tells her to let go, and she realizes that she must let go for not one but two reasons. First, she must let go so that the Good Shepherd is free to call the next person by name. But second, she must let go so that she herself will be free to go to the others and tell them what she saw, and who she saw.
This is our mission, our purpose. This is what we will do, as we go out from here, as we wrench ourselves away from this Easter garden to find those who are outside the garden, still struggling with all that is wrong and violent in the world. Adam and Eve were thrown out of the first garden in the painful moment when we human beings first became aware of ourselves, became aware of the complicated and mortal world around us. But this time, Mary Magdalene leads us out of the garden voluntarily, to tell the others what we have seen.
I will now tell you what I have seen.
I have seen the Lord. I have seen the teacher-I-adore. He called me by my name. He showed me that there is a garden here on earth, and it is getting bigger. Life is rising up here, and moving outward. The brute violence and wretched cruelty that we see all around us, even the awful sadnesses of our personal losses that break our hearts so badly — none of that has the last word. All of it is being overcome. The victory is beginning here, here in this garden. The healing, the resurrection — it all begins when we eat together, and make room for Isabel, and teach her our ways. The healing, the resurrection — it all begins when we learn each other’s names, just like the Good Shepherd knows each one of ours. The healing, the resurrection — it all begins when we share the peace of the Risen Lord with one another, a peace that often is hard-won, because it can only happen when we practice honest confession and brave forgiveness. The healing, the resurrection — it all begins here, in this garden.
I have seen all of this. It is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in my eyes.
***
Preached on Easter Day, April 20, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington.
Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:19-26
John 20:1-18