In the hands of a great composer, a musical theme is recognizable but never stays the same. The stamp of superior craftmanship lies in how the themes are developed over time. Take, for instance, a piece of music in which the main theme is clearly stated at the beginning of a piece and then developed as the music unfolds. At some point, the theme will return, but in the hands of a first-rate composer, the theme will reappear not in its original form but in a different guise. Perhaps a trill or mordent has been added, or the rhythm is slightly varied. But because the theme has journeyed through time, it has changed. It’s as if the music has a life of its own. No musical theme can move through time and remain static.
There’s a profound question in John’s Gospel that is like a musical theme in the hands of a superb composer. It’s first stated in the exposition of this grand symphony, back in chapter one, when two of Jesus’s disciples begin to follow him. Jesus turns to them and asks them the question that will experience its own theme and variations until it reappears in altered form at the end of the Gospel: What are you looking for?
The entire Gospel is, in some sense, a development of this question. What are the disciples looking for? What is the world looking for? What are we looking for? By the conclusion of John’s Gospel, this question has been implicitly threaded through Jesus’s life-giving and controversial Galilean ministry, his miracles and signs, his final fellowship with the disciples, his journey to the cross, his entrance into the grave and depths of hell, and his resurrection from the dead. Now, on the other side of the empty tomb, the question reappears. But the question is not the same as it was in chapter one. It has changed.
At the Gospel’s end, Mary Magdalene stands outside Jesus’s empty tomb, weeping. The other disciples came to see the vacant tomb for themselves and then went home, trying to return to life as normal. But something has compelled Mary to stay. It’s as if the original question spoken to Jesus’s first disciples has become ingrained in her mind, too, perhaps by osmosis. What are you looking for?
Outside the empty tomb, Mary remains. She stands in a liminal space between the past and her future, which is still unknown to her. The question, what are you looking for?, became her question, too, when she decided to follow Jesus, and it must still haunt her, weeping at the tomb. Maybe that very question, for which she seems to have no answer, prevents her from going inside the tomb. Over the course of this theme and variations, the original question—the main theme—has not remained static. It’s as if Mary knows that going back into the tomb is not the answer. But her tears testify to her confusion about where to go and what to do next.
Could it have been a rustling on the path behind her? Or did she simply sense that the angels in the tomb weren’t the only ones with her? Whatever the case, she turns, and she sees Jesus, although she doesn’t recognize him in his resurrected body. And the theme of this grand symphony returns from the mouth of Jesus, although it hasn’t been heard in this variation before. Whom do you seek? Jesus beckons Mary’s gaze from the empty tomb of death to himself. Things have changed. There’s no going back.
And then Jesus does something that summons Mary irrevocably to the future. He calls her name, but it sounds different now because things are different. The world is different. Hearing her name spoken, Mary finally sees her new future. Yes, death is still there with her, just as it’s still here with us, but the theme of death has been transformed, just as the theme of life has changed over the course of this symphony. Back at the beginning of the symphony, it was Jesus who first turned to look at those disciples and posed its theme. Now it’s Mary who turns and looks at Jesus. He stands on the other side of death. He is her future, her life, her Savior, and the Way forward. Whom do you seek, not What do you seek?[1]
On this day, the first day of the week, we, too, have come to the tomb, as the darkness has given way to the light, and we stand at the open entrance, signifying the defeat of death. It may be that some of us are weeping over losses in the past year since we last gathered here at the tomb to greet the dawn of a new creation. We’ve all changed since last Easter, and the theme of this symphony doesn’t sound the same to us as it did last year at this time. Our world stands, too, at the gateway to the tomb, weeping as it always does over wars and natural disasters and planetary peril, but the world has been altered, too. Things aren’t the same as they were last year. There’s no going back.
And yet, there’s a subtle dynamic at work here at the entrance to the tomb in that space between past and future, between death and life. We celebrate that the victory over sin and death has been definitively won, but we know and recognize that sin and death are still with us. If we’re honest, we acknowledge that Easter isn’t a crude, triumphant erasure of our past, for then it would be injurious to all of us who still bear the marks of past wounds. And at the same time, things aren’t the same either. The persistent themes of sin and death are with us, but through the development of this symphony of salvation, they’ve been eternally altered, too. They will never be the same because they’ve lost their power.
Like Mary, we’ve heard the voice of Christ calling to us in the present and from our future, Why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for? In our worst and most despairing moments, we turn briefly and see him but don’t recognize him. We’re still looking for his dead body to provide its proper burial. We’re still gazing at an empty tomb, paralyzed with weeping. We struggle against the wiliness of sin and death as they try to drag us back into the past and into the empty tomb to search for something that isn’t there in the way we wish to find it.
We feel the pull of old anger and resentments. We feel the loss of hope and the firm grip of despair. We find ourselves rehashing the past that we want to control and correct. We find it so difficult to turn. But the truth is that we’ve changed. On the other side of the empty tomb, we can’t go back in. On the other side of baptism, we can’t cling to sin and death. So, weeping outside the tomb, like Mary, our future lies in following the voice that calls our name, because it knows us intimately and loves us so. He calls us by the name we’ve always had, but it sounds different now, uttered by the Risen One who is risen from the dead.
Our names have been developed and transposed over the course of this symphony. Now, as Jesus utters our names, we understand that although we were lost, now we are found. Although we were dead, now we are alive. Although we are imperfectly human, now we are invited to share in the divine life with him who calls us to his Father and our Father. We’re different. We’ve changed. We can’t go back. We’ll never be the same again.
And because of this, the power of our name being called by this One from whom no secrets are hid and who knows every hair on our heads has more allure than the tendrils of sin and death trying to grasp us back into the grave. Our name, signifying our new future, draws us out of loneliness into community, out of despair into hope, out of the old creation into the new, out of death into life. We’ve changed. There’s no going back. We will never be the same again.
And the questions come back again, one final time: Why are you weeping? Why are you so anxious? Why are you so resentful? Why do you envy the love that God has for others, a love he also has for you in equal measure? Why are you rehashing the injuries of the past? Whom do you seek?
And so, we turn. We turn, knowing that at this time next year, we will once again stand weeping at the tomb, trying to look inside. We turn, knowing that the wounds of our past are still real and will always be real. We turn, knowing that sin and death will always try to drag us back into their hell. But in spite of that, something is different. We celebrate that we’ve met the One who has given us life because he first found us. We’ve been found by the One we were seeking. Alleluia! Christ is risen! And because he has risen, we’ve changed. There’s no going back. We will never be the same. And we step away from the tomb of death and walk towards the life ahead.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Sunday of the Resurrection: Easter Day
March 31, 2024
[1] See David Ford, The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary (Ada, MI: Baker Academic, 2021), 440.