• Acts 10:34-43

In his Acts of the Apostles, Luke uses an occasion when Paul witnesses to an officer in the Roman army, named Cornelius, to provide a concise summary of the church’s proclamation.  Essential themes are included: this message is addressed to any and all– “Jesus is Lord of all.”  The story begins in Galilee, where Jesus was given power by the Holy Spirit; he traveled ceaselessly to tell about and to perform God’s transformational acts; he was executed “by hanging on a tree;” but ” God raised him on the third day;”  we are witness to all he did before and after the resurrection; “he commanded us to preach and to testify.”

• OR Isaiah 65:17-25

The mighty Book of Isaiah reaches its thematic and emotional climax with bold promises of “new heavens and a new earth”– a fresh start for all creation.  A second promise is for a restored, happy, safe. prosperous Jerusalem, which in the past has been the site of many tragedies, and so much sorrow and violence.  The final promise is made in the form of a striking image: “the wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent its food shall be dust!  They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain.”

• I Corinthians 15:19-26

Paul’s first letter to God’s people in Corinth bluntly addresses reports of their slipping away from the core of the gospel and its practice.  In this excerpt, he pens two crucial reminders.  First, the resurrection of Christ permeates every aspect of the gospel, giving Christians reasonable hope of resurrection in Christ in due course, following his “first fruits.”  Secondly, because death came through a human being, Adam, so now resurrection comes through another, Jesus Christ, who reigns over “all his enemies;” “the last enemy is death.”

• John 20:1-18

John’s gospel paints portraits in clear colors and delicate details of those who discovered the empty tomb.  In this excerpt, he paints a triptych– Peter on one panel, the “beloved disciple” on the other and in the center, Mary Magdalen.  She has had a central role throughput John’s gospel, as the woman “who had stood by the cross “(19:25) with the mother of Jesus; she is also the woman most mentioned collectively in all four gospels!  The scene opens with Mary Magdalene going to the tomb of Jesus early in the morning “on the first day of the week.”  She discovers that the stone covering the entrance had been rolled away.  She rushes back to tell Peter and the “beloved disciple” what she has discovered.  The two men rush to the tomb.  The “beloved disciple” reaches the tomb first, but defers to Peter who looks inside and see the discarded burial clothing.  The two men return home, but Mary Magdalene stays at the tomb, weeping.  She peers back inside and this time sees “two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been laying, one sitting at the head and the other at the feet.”  They ask her why she is weeping.  She is in despair because “they have taken my Lord,” she has no idea where.  Someone comes up behind her, whom she assumes is a groundskeeper.  He also asks her why she is weeping.  She only wants  to know if perhaps he has taken the body.  The man speaks her name and she instantly recognizes Jesus, addressing him as “Rabbouni! (which means Teacher).”  Jesus instructs her not to touch him for he has not yet ascended and to go and tell the disciples, “I have seen the Lord.”  Mary Magdalene is the sole and first person to see the Risen Lord in John’s narrative on the third day.  She is the one assigned by Jesus the task of relaying the news to others.  She is the apostle of Easter.

• OR Luke 14:1-11

(For a precis and commentary, see The Great Vigil of Easter Years A,B,C)

In his sweetly provocative essay Noli me tangere!: On the Raising of the Body, Jean-Luc Nancy considers in considerable detail the encounter in John’s narrative between Mary Magdalene and the Risen Christ.  In his essay he notes the significance that every major artist in Western art has been captivated by this encounter.  His text reproduces many of them and he provides a list at the end of more than fifty of the most notable from art collections around the world.  And, of course, he also provides his own unique interpretation of this encounter only in John’s gospel.

Nancy interprets the fact that Jesus deflected Mary Magdalene’s impulse to touch/embrace him as a reminder that although Jesus was human, ultimately God escapes our grasp.  It will be the absence of the earthly Jesus that makes possible the “glory” of the Risen Christ: “he is withdrawing into the dimension from which alone comes glory, that is the brilliance of more than presence, the radiance of what is in excess of the given, the available, the disposed.” (p.17) 

Only after looking into the tomb, staring down death, confronting the abyss, is Mary Magdalene — and by extension are we– open to what Nancy calls a new “stance” toward death.  The radical newness of this “stance” Jean-Luc Nancy describes this way:

“This ‘stance’ is literally anastasis or ‘resurrection,’ that is, the raising or upraising (‘insurrection’ is also a possible meaning of the Greek term).  Neither regeneration, reanimation, aplingenesis, rebirth, revivification, nor reincarnation: but the uprising, the raising or the lifting as a verticality perpendicular to the horizonality of the tomb– not leaving it, not reducing it to nothingness but affirming in it the stance….”  (p.18)

The final insight from Nancy’s essay for our consideration here is that the removal of the body of Jesus from the earthly plane of John’s story turns the action in the narrative over to those who still have bodies, beginning with Mary Magdalene.  Nancy writes:

“A spirit can do nothing of the sort.  A ‘pure spirit’ gives only a formal, empty index of presence entirely closed in on itself.  A body opens this presence; it presents itself; it puts presence outside of itself; it moves presence away from itself, and by that very fact, it brings others along with it: Mary Magdalene thus becomes the true body of the departed.” (p.48)

The modus operandi of biblical texts is consistently to reveal flashes of radiance that are “in excess of the given,” that illuminate the mundane of human existence, even death!  These revelations are rare, but they are orienting.  They do no belittle the mundane; just the opposite, they hint at a “glory” that puts all that is human, even death, in a new light; a new “stance.”  And they entrust this vital news to other human beings, in John’s case to Mary Magdalene.  The full presence of the Risen Christ deflects our attempts to embrace him.  All we really have in the beginning is one woman’s claim: “I have seen the Lord?”  Is she telling the truth?  And does this truth illuminate all the rest of life?  That is the decision to be made.

In the prologue to his essay, Jean-Luc Nancy established:

“There is ‘message’ without there first being– or more subtly, without there also being in the message itself– an address to a capacity or an aptitude for listening.  It is not an exhortation (of the kind “Pay attention!  Listen to me!”).  It is a warning: if you do not understand, do not look for the reason on an obscurity of the text but only within yourself, in the obscurity of your hearts”   (p.9)

John’s account, which relies on Mary Magdalene, makes no air-tight argument, it offers hints after confusion and doubt.  Like Mary Magdalene, we consider these hints and reach a conclusion.  The certainty of a risen body escapes us, but the words linger and we begin to “see.”  As Raymond Brown observes: “The Beloved Disciple was the first to believe; Magdalene is the first to proclaim the risen Lord.”  (Risen Christ in Eastertime, p. 73)  This is a task conveyed from one person to others.   The messenger conveys news, not belief.