There’s a funny thing that parents will often do when they’re irritated with one of their children. They might say to one of them, “go and tell your sister to come here!” Which of us hasn’t heard this before? Perhaps parents even use this circuitous way of speaking with each other. “Go and tell your dad that it’s time to mow the lawn!” It’s a funny thing we do, isn’t it? When we find ourselves angry or irritable, we distance ourselves from the sources of our irritation by failing to use their names. It's as if we’re saying, for the length of our annoyance, that the relative isn’t ours. It’s everyone else’s: it’s the son’s or the daughter’s or the wife’s or the husband’s.
Such verbal distancing is usually a rather harmless thing, a momentary response from out of human impatience. But broadly speaking, we could read it theologically, too. Our world is full of such distancing. Thank God I’m not like those people. You go tell him that he’s out of line. We can’t let them into our close circle.
The pronouns that families use to momentarily create estrangement amid conflict should be personal. Your father and your mother and your brother and your sister tell us that we belong to each other, even though that’s the opposite of how we use them in familial tiffs. But when Mary Magdalene encounters her risen Lord at the empty tomb on this day, the first day of the week, pronouns are full of theological meaning. And they’re very personal.
The scene is intensely personal, too. It’s poignant and heartbreaking and sweet, all at the same time. When Mary arrives at the tomb, she doesn’t yet understand what has happened. In her confusion and in the twilight of this hour, she reports back to Peter and the Beloved Disciple that they have taken away the Lord. Neither we nor she know who they are. And it’s the Lord, as if in her grief, her Lord is one step removed from her.
But after Peter and the Beloved Disciple have come and gone, noting the fact of the empty tomb but going no further in emotional or theological reflection, Mary stays at the tomb, weeping. And in the pain and emptiness of her grief, in her lingering consternation, she decides to look inside the tomb. She sees two angels, who ask her what she is looking for, as if she were searching for an object, maybe just a cold, dead body. And from out of her sorrow, Mary shifts her language. They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him. We still don’t know who they are, but as Mary goes deeper into her heart, Jesus is no longer the Lord but my Lord. It’s personal now because it's always been personal.[1]
Then, Jesus himself appears, although Mary mistakes him for the gardener. Whom do you seek? he asks, suggesting that Mary isn’t looking for a dead body but a living man. And finally, in the most touching of moments, Jesus calls Mary by name. She’s not merely Woman, but Mary. The Good Shepherd has called the sheep by name. Mary knows his voice. She’s always known his voice, and now, she knows just who he is. He’s not it, some impersonal dead body. He’s her Lord and Savior. In turn, she calls him Rabboni, Teacher, because he’s not just any man to her. He’s her Lord and the Lord of all. He’s also the one who taught her in the past and will continue to teach her by the power of his Spirit. And he’s the one who will continue to teach the whole Church.
But Jesus responds by saying something strange. He tells Mary not to cling to him. Perhaps she was reaching forward to embrace him. It seems cold, as if Jesus is distancing himself from her. But he’s not. He’s drawing her closer, and not just Mary, but others as well. This personal exchange has broadened beyond the garden to encompass the entire world.
And as Jesus looks at Mary, it’s the look that we remember from Maundy Thursday as Jesus washed our feet. It’s the look from the cross on Good Friday. It’s the look of love that entrusts us with a mission that we can’t reject. Go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. This charge is both personal and universal. Mary can’t hold on to the risen Christ, because to do so would be to make this moment of resurrection glory about only her and Jesus. But this moment, this Gospel mission, is about Mary and the whole world. It has always been about the entire world, the world Jesus came to save. It will always be about the whole world that Jesus continues to save and heal.
It should all make sense now. As Jesus formed community in the upper room, commanding his disciples to wash the feet of one another, and as he formed community at the foot of the cross on Good Friday, entrusting his mother to the Beloved Disciple, so on the first day of the week, Jesus entrusted the members of the young Church to one another. He gave them the Gospel message, the Easter proclamation.
And here we are, too, on this first day of the week. We’ve followed Jesus from the cross to the empty tomb. We’ve stuck with him. But in an individualistic age, we must beware that this Easter Gospel doesn’t get warped into an individualistic faith or an individualistic sense of salvation. This Gospel is personal, but it’s also about the entire world, not just you, me, and God.
The powers of death and the systems of oppression that crucified Jesus didn’t win. It was believed that, by eliminating this perceived troublemaker, earthly power would win the day. But in crucifying this man, the powers of darkness failed to understand that something far stronger and lovelier and more beautiful would triumph in the end. And it all came about at the foot of that cross on Good Friday, when the Church was formed. And it persists this day, before an empty tomb, where the absence of a body is not the conclusion of a story but only the beginning. Jesus’s words to Mary Magdalene are words to us as well.
We aren’t here to fulfill an obligation or to soak up our Easter joy and then leave as if we aren’t changed. Jesus says to us, Go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. In these words, Jesus has drawn us into the very life of God. We’re no longer servants but children, children of God, who is Jesus’ Father and our Father, too. Go and tell the good news, Jesus says. Go and tell all whom you meet that the Good Shepherd has found you and given you life. This message is not for you alone. This saving message is for the whole world.
On this day of a new creation, we undo our betrayal on Palm Sunday. That betrayal is like Peter’s, where we sit by countless fires as people judge our Lord, denying our relationship with him. I do not know him, we say. Today, our Lord bids us tell the whole world that we do know him, who is not only for me but also for all of us.
The One who calls our name in a nameless world, asks us to call others to him. The One who gives his life for ours commands us to bring others who are lost to him. The One who feeds us with his very Body asks us to feed others and bring them to the Bread of Life. The One who gives us life commands us to go and tell about this life to others so that they can have life. The victory of life over death is this: even after the world has crucified its Savior, his power to heal and give life persists. It lies in the Church, inspired by his Spirit, which will continue its community until the end.
The empty tomb on the first day of the week is a celebration that life’s worst cruelties can’t defeat the Easter Gospel. No anonymous abuse of the least of these, no divisions within the human family, no distortions of Christianity, no exclusive connection between Jesus and a particular group of people, no brokenness within the Church herself can undo the Easter Gospel. The truth that Christ rose from the dead and still lives is not my truth or your truth or any sole individual’s truth. It’s our truth. It’s the truth that Jesus came to bring for the entire world.
So now, go. Go and tell your friends and my friends that on the other side of the empty tomb, our world is not the same. Go and tell the whole human family—show them with your lives—that there’s a truth that will always outlast betrayal and deception. Go and tell the entire world that your Lord and my Lord, our Lord, has risen indeed. Alleluia!
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Day of Resurrection: Easter Day
April 20, 2025
[1] This observation is from John, Gail R. O’Day and Susan E. Hylen (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2006, 193.