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Summary
Here in Denver, at our local amusement park, we used to have a “Haunted House.” It was fully mechanized. One would ride through in a cart on rails. No monsters, just darkness, swirling things, and automated mannequins. It was really spooky as a child, but pretty boring for adults who had gained the knowledge of mechanical automation.
One day in high school, a friend and I, trying to impress girls, got out. It was amazing. To the children, I was just one more semi-real dummy in an already enchanted world. But the adults would look, look again, and freak out. Just as we were about to get caught, I jumped into a cart with a mother and daughter saying, “Excuse me, but my cart broke down. Do you mind if I ride out with you?” I don’t think this woman heard me; she wouldn’t stop screaming. I wanted to say, “I’m just a teenager trying to impress girls at youth group. It’s me. Fear not.” But instead, I said, “Thank you,” and left rather quickly. I felt terrible. But at least for that woman, that day the ride wasn’t boring, predictable, and lifeless.
What type of ride do you prefer? One that is mechanical, predictable, and lifeless or one that is haunted with life? Do you prefer mechanized dummies or real ones? A universe with spirits or one without?
In John 19:30, Jesus “gave up the ghost” (King James Version). In 1611, “Spirit” and “Ghost” meant the same thing. During the Enlightenment, however, people started saying, “There are no ghosts. And you may think that you have a spirit, but we call it a brain.”
John 19:41, “Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid.” John is not casually referring to a garden; he’s screaming, “This is the End in the Beginning; this is the Revelation of the Plot — the Plot to every story that’s any story — the story of everything and you.”
Long before our modern addiction to materialism, early church fathers, in line with the Judaism of Jesus’ day, taught that the garden wasn’t simply situated in space and time. The garden shows up in the beginning in Genesis, at the end in The Revelation, on the Holy Mountain in Ezekiel, and in the heart of the Bride in The Song of Solomon: “Let my beloved come to his garden” (4:16).
The Garden is that place where eternity touches time. And the garden was in the heart of the temple, which wasn’t only a place and not even a time, but the very presence of the age to come — eternity. In that inner Sanctuary, behind the curtain and under the Wings of the Cherubim, which guard the way to the tree of life in the garden, was “the coffin” or “the Ark (same word)… of the Covenant,” containing the law written in stone.
The top of the box was called the Mercy Seat, Judgment Seat, and Throne of God. When God would speak to Moses, the Glory of God would appear on top of the box (I bet He looked like a Lamb.) Not dead knowledge of the Good, but the living Good — the Good and the Life. He told us in John 2:19, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” He was crucified on the sixth day, everything stopped on the seventh, and He is raised on the eighth day (Shemini Atzeret, the endless seventh day, the Sabbath of God),which in Hebrew, reckoning is the third day from his death, as well as the first day of the new week.
John 20:1, “Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early…” As we preached last week, we are all Mary: Mary the mother of Christ, Mary the bride of Christ, and Mary the harlot who abused the Christ. Humanity is the harlot. Eve listened to the lie and took the fruit as though the Good and the Life were a commodity, and that first Adam who was with her, did as well—that’s harlotry.
Last week I said, “The Bible never claims that Mary had been a prostitute, but only that she had had seven demons. But I’d like to think she was a prostitute because Jesus seems to have this great affection for prostitutes, and all humanity is a prostitute, and that includes me.” But I had one other reason for saying this.
I have a friend who was horrifically and ritually abused as a child, then sold and trafficked for a time in the sex industry. Over 14 years, I watched Jesus deliver her from numerous demons and transform the meaning of her story — His-story. His love for her wrecked me, for I realized that I am her, and she is us, and this is the way that Jesus loves each of us for, in fact, all of us are Mary. We are Eve, and He, “the Last Adam,” is our Helper, our Husband.
Mary sees that the tomb is empty and tells Peter and John. They see. John “believes.” John 20:10, “Then the disciples returned to themselves (their own psyches).” Our psyche is the self that we think we control, the self that reduces others to objects and traps us all alone within ourselves.
Next verse: John 20:11-17: “But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept, she stooped to look into the tomb. And she saw two angels [cherubim are a type of angel] in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one 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.’ Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?’ 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 and said to him in Aramaic, ‘Rabboni!’ (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for 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.’ ”
After thousands of years, patriarchs, prophets, priests, and kings, the resurrected Christ appears first to Mary… Why Mary? I don’t know but I have a few ideas.
1.) Mary wanted Jesus… Jesus asked Mary, “Whom do you seek?” He once said, “Seek and you will find.” In our shame, we seek to be alone. And, “It’s not Good (that’s bad) that the Adam is alone,” said God on the Sixth Day of Creation before “the fall,” when we did not know Good or evil.
We seek to be alone, and then we find ourselves alone with other people who are also seeking to be alone yet cannot survive alone. And so, instead of loving each other as people, we bite and devour each other as things. And to me, that sounds like hell. And there are evil spirits that will help us do such things, so instead of being alone in ourselves, we find ourselves alone and yet haunted with evil. I suspect that God allows it, in order to scare the hell out of us or us out of hell, crying, “God, help!” that is “Yeshua”: Jesus.
I don’t know if I said that correctly, but having known the evil, Mary seeks the Good, even if He’s good for nothing — just Good. I don’t think there can be a better choice than choosing the Good when he seems to be good for nothing, just Good. I think that’s called Love. It’s actually the Judgment of God, that is God, having taken root in the soul like a seed, a seed that grows from an idea into an entire cosmos — a Kingdom.
Last week the sermon was titled “If God Is Dead?” And the point was, “If God is dead, then place His body in your tomb.” This week the sermon is titled, “If God Is Alive?” And the point is, “If God is alive, let Him out. Let Him out of your box.”
Mary thought Jesus was the Gardener and said, “Sir, tell me where you have taken him and I will take him.” Then, Jesus said, “Mary.” She ran to Him, and He said, “Don’t cling to me.”
God alone is Good. And Jesus is the Good in flesh. I’m so desperate for the Good that if I see the good, I’ll try to take the good, control the good, and keep Him in a box. Isn’t that what “the Sin” is? Trying to possess the Good like a commodity? A lie is Truth that I keep to myself. A murder is Life that I take. Fornication is a Love that I treat like a whore. And isn’t that what the Law is? Knowledge of the Good that I keep in a book, or maybe written on stone to be kept in a box, which I then try to use to make myself good because I don’t trust that the Good will make me Himself? And isn’t that what death is? To be trapped in that box all alone.
So Why Mary? 1.) She wanted Jesus. 2.) She surrendered control of Jesus; she let Him out of the box. “Tell my brothers that I am ascending to your Father and my Father,” said Jesus.
Jesus just spent four chapters (John 14-17) telling us where the Father is. “I am in the Father, and the Father is in me… In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” We are currently in Jesus, in the Father; and the Father is in Jesus, in us. How does that make any sense unless the Father is everywhere and nowhere, governed by our perception of space and time? As if space and time were a womb — or perhaps a bad dream that’s become a nightmare in the mind of a child asleep on her father’s lap, about to awaken to his presence, for a Word has been whispered in her ear: “Mary, now that you know who I am, don’t think I’m only small. I’m bigger than big. Don’t keep me in your box.” Jesus is “the only way to the Father.” But He’s going to the Father, and there is nowhere that the Father is not. Is He not the Breath trapped in the lungs of children too afraid to breathe until they hear the Word of Truth that descends into every nightmare, making all things new?
So, why Mary? 1.) She wanted Jesus. 2.) She surrendered control of Jesus. 3.) She didn’t despise gardeners. 4.) Mary wants to be His garden. Jesus is the Gardener; the eschatos Adam.
Jesus used to hold a mirror before the face of our friend. And she would see herself in a beautiful white wedding gown. In scores of vision and prophetic words, He would reveal that she had participated in His sufferings, and now He had dressed her in His righteousness. We discovered that, although her house had been haunted with evil spirits, it had somehow always been haunted by the Holy Spirit — or maybe I should say “enchanted”— enchanted with Jesus. Whenever and wherever she was willing to look, His presence would entirely change the meaning of each and every moment. The demons could no longer stay, and a world of terror revealed the most astounding truth: She is not a harlot. She is the Lord’s Bride. She is even His Mother.
Jesus said to Mary, “I want you to tell my brothers…” You know who it is that I AM.
If He seems to be dead, place Him in your tomb and hope. When you realize that He’s alive, let Him love you and your neighbor in every moment of your space and time. Soon you will see that we are all one house, everything is alive, and loneliness, death, and shame are no more, for everything is enchanted with Love. Everything is filled with God.
There is “one God and Father of all, who is over all, through all, and in all…” And “he who descended is also the one who ascended far above the heavens, that he might fill all things” (Ephesians 4:6,10).