Two Questions for Easter

9th of April

Question 1. Woman, why are you weeping?

Both the angels and Jesus ask this of Mary Magdalene, but we are not privy to the way it was spoken. The way this question was put to Mary makes all the difference to our understanding.

For example, was it spoken quickly and harshly?

Woman! Why are you weeping?

Almost as if to say ‘Snap out of it girl. Can’t you see that it’s all OK? It’s me you silly sausage.’

If the question was posed like this, then Mary’s grief is a hindrance to her seeing Jesus and she fails to understand what has really happened. Sometimes our grief is a cement wall around us to which no one gains access and we are imprisoned.

I don’t subscribe to the theory that the Master was giving Mary Magdalen a polite verbal slap on the wrist and that her grief was inappropriate, a stumbling block to faith.

When I read this question from the Master, I hear him speaking it gently.

‘Mary,… why are you weeping?’

I hear Jesus inviting Mary to a conversation. ‘Tell me what it is that is hurting you so much. Why is it hurting you? Together let us explore this most personal and poignant and terrifying and painful experience that you are living right now.

For me then the Master is not saying ‘Don’t cry, it doesn’t matter.’ He is not saying ‘There, there it will be Ok.. just get over yourself.’

Woman why are you weeping…is a tender way of saying I want to get alongside you and walk with you in your grief.

Mary Magdalene, bless her, is honest and authentic in her answer.

She genuinely believes that the body has been snatched.

“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.”

And you can feel the great wrench and hurt deep within her. The Lord who she loved is taken away and she doesn’t know where to find him; and if you scratch just below the surface it’s not only Jesus’ body that is lost, it is her. It is her own self. She is lost.

And Jesus' response is to simply stay. He does scurry away from her. In fact, in this little excerpt, he says embarrassingly few words. My hope would be that if you have ever been like Mary Magdalene at a grave, then would have found someone just like the Master. Someone who did not shirk with embarrassment, someone who said very little and offered you instead big dollops of silence. Maybe a tissue and a high-quality glass of something.

My hope for you is that you have found someone who has walked this rocky road before you, who helped you avoid the potholes, someone who reached out a wounded hand to lift you up, even when all you wanted to do was just lie there and wallow and say its all too hard.

“The one I love has been taken away from me. And I don’t know where he is.”

At least that is how it appears to her and when we have wept and grieved, that is how it appears to us.

Question 2. ‘Who are you looking for?’

Tell me about this person who you have loved so much. What was he like? How did you meet, what was it that endeared him to you? What are your favourite memories of him?

Which should turn and point Mary Magdalene and us towards the rocky, but ever so slightly smoother road of thanksgiving.

My sister, how blessed you were to have known and enjoyed this man who you loved so much. How fortunate you were. How marvellous to have loved so deeply and dearly that you now find yourself in the only viable expression of love, which are your salty and abundant tears.

These lovely questions ‘Why are you weeping?’ and ‘Who are you looking for?’ also apply to us today on Easter Day 2023.

Every time He is not as close as we would like him to be. When he seems separated and distant from us. When the coals of faith have grown cool and grey.

When we simply don’t know where He is?

This is when He comes to us afresh and if we are authentic and credible… if we tell it how it  really is, then he gives us that same invitation to engage with him

Why are you weeping, who are you looking for? And when we have told him everything in no uncertain terms when our grief is spent and our angst is vented when there is nothing left within us and even our tears have run dry. Then he speaks just one word, the same single word he gave to that distraught woman in the early morning gloom all those years ago.

Intimately, tenderly with great affection, He says just one word. He speaks our name. He speaks Your name. Then we will know that we have found him or rather, that He has found us again or maybe he was just there all the time.

When we hear him speak our name...

Then we will truly know: He Is Risen! Alleluia!