Easter Flashbacks (April 26)

Reading, Psalm 23 and John 10:1-18
Image, Good Shepherd Sculpture, 280-290CE

Today’s gospel reading is out of sequence. Since Easter we’ve been enjoying the post-resurrection accounts of Jesus gathering up his wayward disciples, but now we jump back to well before his death. Why is that the case? Why have we been taken here? I think we can approach it like a flashback at the end of a movie. One of those brilliant moments, when at the crescendo of the film, with the camera swirling and the music welling, we revisit an earlier, seemingly small moment in the plot, which is suddenly imbued with vibrant significance. All of a sudden a passing comment, an innocuous act takes on a new and greater meaning. The moment is plucked out from its sequence, and shown again, now in new light and clarity, demonstrated to relate palpably and personally to this moment in our protagonist’s life. Such is the nature of a well-executed flashback, and such is the power of today’s reading in this season of the church.
 
We’re going to attempt then, to enter such a scene, to feel such a flashback, to encounter anew this teaching of Jesus in the light of the resurrection…
 
Picture, the scene: early morning, green fields, a woman approaches rocky tombs. Her feet were drenched from the dew. She had trod this path three times already this morning; once walking solemnly, twice running bewildered. Now, as she inhaled the morning air, its crisp freshness felt coarse in her throat and lungs. Bending to look in the tomb, reeling with exhaustion, she grabbed her knees for balance. She wept long and loud, sweat and tears ran down her face, drops painted the dirt below.
 
“Woman, why are you weeping?” came a voice from a stranger in the tomb. Her mind filled with all manner of horrors – Had the tomb been ransacked for valuables? Had Roman soldiers come by night, still giddy from the rush of power, to further violate the body of their victim? In desperation she exclaimed, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him!’ At that moment, still not having comprehended these figures occupying her Lord’s resting place, she heard footsteps and turned. She saw a gardener, sun rising behind his right shoulder. “Woman, why are you weeping?” she heard him say. Perhaps he had said it the first time too? Maybe the tomb was empty after all… “Who are you looking for?” For a split second she had a glimmer of hope, perhaps Jesus’ body just had been laid elsewhere, she asks the gardener if he moved her Lord, if so she will tend to the body. It is such a small request, surely if this man has any heart he will grant her this mercy.
 
“Mary.”

She hears her name. She hears his voice. He has risen. In the calling of her name the voice reaches out to touch her heart, and it is explodes with joy. Where she had asked for the smallest of mercies she has received the greatest of gifts: an encounter with her friend, her hope, her Messiah, her “Rabbouni!”
 
In that moment, as time seemed to stand still, she remembered one of his enigmatic teachings: “He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out… I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep… No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.” The teaching stood completed before her. He had taken up his life, and in speaking her name, he had taken up her life also. He had led her out – from despair, death, emptiness, into the greener pastures of his steadfast presence.
 
In the voice of the good shepherd, who in this moment vindicates his teaching, showing her his power to lay down his life for others and take it up again, she hears the truth of her own life: It is the Lord’s. Her life, her name, her past and future is claimed by Christ and entrusted to the heralding of his kingdom and glory. No other voice is able to define or limit who she is – no other voice is able to name her anything but “Mary”, one whom the Shepherd led into life.
 
She clung to his clothes and pressed her body to his – she wished to never depart from his presence. He lifted her face and she caught the tenderness of his gaze. “‘Do not hold on to me,” he said with a gentleness that allowed her to relax her grip, “because 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.” In that moment she knew her adoption complete. The Gardener, revealed as the Shepherd, identifies himself as her Brother; who, by his authority as the Son, invites her to live in the household of his and our Father, with his and our God.
 
She ran off, back to the disciples, commissioned to proclaim the resurrection of their Lord, her feet still drenched from the dew. Screen fades to black.
 
May it be so for all of us, whom the Lord of Life calls by name and sends forth with good news. Amen.
 
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Epilogue (Delivered later in the service)

Earlier, we likened the gospel lesson to a flashback in the scene in the garden. The moment in the movie where an earlier, seemingly small interaction, is proven to have great significance once all the pieces fall into place. But the other reading assigned today, from the second chapter of Acts, can also be understood well through this filmic analogy. Where after the final climatic scene in the gospel, where Mary encounters Jesus, where the triumphal music swells and all is put to right, the screen fades to black – but instead of rolling credits, it fades up again on some sunlit scene a little further in the future, and we get a little epilogue to see just how much the story we have witnessed has changed and transformed our protagonist and main characters.
 
So imagine with me, if you will, we have just watched this emotional and uplifting scene in the garden with Mary and Jesus. We have just heard Jesus offer his words of comfort and hope – I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God – and then we watch Mary run off to tell the others, her feet still wet from the dew. Fade to black, fade up… now, we see Mary and the other disciples, no longer huddled in fear but out and about in Jerusalem, and we see that:
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They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

Roll credits. This epilogue demonstrates the transformative power of the resurrection, the joy-filled response to hearing the Good Shepherd call us by name, and the possibility of a community forged by the Holy Spirit. And it is this epilogue that we step into each day, as siblings in Christ’s church.