A reading from the Gospel according to John, chapter twenty.
But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping. The text tells us she stooped down and looked in, and saw two angels in white, sitting where the body had lain. And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.
Then she turns, and someone is standing there, and she does not know him. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, asks where the body has been put, so that she can take it away.
Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master.
Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.
Here ends the reading.
Start where she starts. She is standing outside a tomb, crying. The others have come and gone. The text tells us two disciples ran to the tomb, looked in, and went back to their own home. She did not go home. She stayed.
Some of you know that kind of staying. You stay at the grave after the cars have left. You stay in the hospital car park because you cannot yet drive away. You stay in a life that has ended because you do not know where else to stand. Nobody told her to stay. Grief kept her there, and grief is a kind of faithfulness. It is love with nowhere to go.
Notice what she is asking for. She is not asking for a miracle. She is asking for a body. Tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away. She wants one small thing, to know where he is and to tend what is left. When you have lost everything, your prayers get very small. Let me just know where. Let me just have this much.
And she is asking the very one she is looking for. He is standing in front of her, and she takes him for the gardener.
We do not think that is a failure of faith. Her eyes are full of water. Her mind is full of the cross. She watched him die. Of course she does not expect him. People who are hurting are often told that if they only believed more, they would see. The text does not say that. The text says she wept, and she looked, and she did not know him, and he came anyway. He did not wait for her to see clearly. He came to her while she was still wrong about who he was.
Then comes one word. Mary.
He does not argue with her. He does not explain the resurrection. He does not say, look closer. He says her name, and she knows.
Think about what it is to be called by your right name. Many of you have been called other things. You have been called sinner, and problem, and too much, and not one of us. You have been given names by frightened people, and some of you have carried those names so long that you answer to them.
This church has a reading, and I will say plainly that it is our reading and not the plain sense of the page. We read the Scarlet Woman of Revelation as Mary Magdalene, and the Scarlet Beast as Jesus Christ. Each was handed a wrong name by a frightened age, and each is still looking for the other. Most churches do not read it that way, and you are free to weigh it. But here is why this garden matters so much to us. In the garden, for one moment, the wrong names fall away. He is not the gardener. She is not whatever they said she was. He says Mary. She says Rabboni. Two people know each other by their true names. That is what recognition is. Someone finally says who you are, and it is not an accusation.
If no one has said your name that way in a long time, hear this. The one who stood in that garden knows it. He is not waiting for you to stop crying before he says it.
Now comes the hard part. She knows him, and the very next thing he says is, Touch me not.
Other translations put it as, do not hold on to me, or, do not cling to me. That is where this sermon takes its title. But the King James says, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father.
It sounds cold, and I do not believe it is. Think what she wanted. She came for a body to hold. Now he is alive, and everything in her reaches for him, to keep him here and never lose him again. Anyone who has grieved knows that reach. If I could have one more hour, I would not let go.
And he says, not like this. He is not telling her she is unworthy to touch him. He is telling her that he cannot be kept. The one she loved is not going back to how it was. The road from the tomb does not lead back to the days before the cross. It leads on.
This is a hard word for anyone who is grieving, and I will not make it soft. Some things do not come back in the form we had them. The person, the marriage, the church that put you out, the self you were before it happened. We want to hold the body of it. And love, real love, is sometimes asked to open its hands.
That is not the same as ceasing to love. He does not tell her to stop loving him. He tells her to stop clinging. Clinging says, stay as you were, for my sake. Love says, go where you must, and I am still yours. Letting go is not forgetting. It is trusting that what is true between you does not depend on your grip.
And look what he puts into her open hands. But go to my brethren, and say unto them.
She came for a body to hold, and she is given a task instead. She is given a message to carry. The text tells us that Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that he had spoken these things unto her.
She is the first to see him and the first to be sent. Later tradition gave her a title for this, the apostle to the apostles. That phrase is not in the Bible, but the thing it describes is. The first news of the risen Lord was put in the mouth of a weeping woman who had stayed when the others went home.
There is a later text outside the Bible, called the Gospel of Mary, which pictures her comforting the disciples when they are afraid, and pictures some of them doubting that the Lord would have spoken such things to her. I only paraphrase it, and it is not scripture. But it remembers something true to this garden. The one who is sent is not always the one who is welcomed.
You may know that too. You may have been told that your voice does not count, that people like you do not carry the message. Look at who was chosen. He did not choose her in spite of her tears. She was there because of them.
And hear what the message was. My Father, and your Father. My God, and your God. The word she is given to carry is a word of belonging. He calls them brethren, the same men who had fled. No one is put outside in that sentence.
So here is what we take from the garden today. Stay if you must stay. Weep if you must weep. He comes to those who are still at the tomb. Listen for your name, your right one. And when you are asked to open your hands, look for what is being placed in them. Your grief may have left you with something to say, to someone who needs to hear that you have seen the Lord.
Let us pray.
Lord, you found her weeping and you said her name. Say ours. Where we cannot see you for our tears, come anyway. Where we are clinging to what cannot stay, loosen our hands gently, and do not leave them empty. Give us a word to carry and someone to carry it to. And bring us at last to your Father and our Father, to your God and our God. Amen.