Please turn with me to the resurrection account that we find in the Gospel of John, John chapter 20, and we'll read the first 18 verses of John chapter 20. John chapter 20, beginning at verse 1, this is God's own word. Now, on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early while it was still dark and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, they have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we do not know where they have laid him. So Peter went out with the other disciple, and they were going toward the tomb. Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. And stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed. For as yet they did not understand the scripture that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples went back to their homes. But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept, she stooped to look into the tomb, and she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her, Woman, why are you weeping? She said to them, They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him. Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing. But she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking? Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away. Jesus said to her, Mary. She turned and said to him in Aramaic, Rabboni, which means teacher. And he said to her, Do not cling to me, for 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. Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, I have seen the Lord. And that he had said these things to her. So far, the reading of God's Word. Each of the Gospel writers tells us different details about the resurrection of Jesus, but each of them mentions that Mary Magdalene was there at the tomb on that first Easter morning. But only John gives us some more specifics about her experience. what she saw, what she heard, what she thought. And John is following what he has done throughout his Gospel in leading us into personal experiences of various disciples of Jesus in ways that many of the other Gospels do not. And so this morning, as we think about meeting with the risen Jesus, We want to follow the steps of Mary Magdalene for that meeting that came to her on that first Easter morning. And the first thing that we should note is her distress on that morning. Mary did not get up like most of us and say, it's Easter. Mary got up on that Sunday and said, he's dead. She said he was buried in such haste that some of us should go and ensure that he is more properly laid in his grave. You remember he had died on Friday afternoon and the Sabbath was approaching. And so it was with hurry that he was placed in his grave. And Mary and other women then went, while it was still dark, in their grief and out of their love, to minister to his corpse. They did not go to the tomb with faith. They did not go to the tomb with expectation. They did not believe in the resurrection. They went to anoint a corpse. They went in the gloom of duty and in the sadness of loss. And their distress was deepened as they arrived to find the tomb as they thought desecrated. The stone is rolled away and they look into the tomb and the body is gone. And you notice the repeated reaction of Mary. It's not, oh yes, he said he was going to rise from the dead. But her repeated reaction, she says it three times to different listeners. Where have they taken him? Where is the corpse? What have they done to him? It is not that Mary and his other disciples had not followed him and listened to him, had not loved him and in many ways believed in him. but the word of the resurrection was too much to believe you know so often we read the bible and think oh if I'd only been there or if only other people could have been there and seen those things the miracles could have heard his gentle words they would have been drawn to him so many more would have believed in him Fully, we could have seen those things. Well, Mary had seen so much. Mary had heard so much. But she didn't get it. She didn't get his mission. She didn't really get his purpose. In the profoundest sense, she didn't really understand who he was and what he was doing. And what he would accomplish. In some ways, it makes us love her all the more. She is so human. And when we find people scoffing at our belief in the resurrection of Jesus, our first reaction ought to be a kind of sympathetic response. It is pretty unbelievable. It's pretty unbelievable. And Mary went to the grave not in anticipation of finding an empty grave, but in her distress and found, as she thought, only a desecrated grave. And she went and ran and told Simon Peter and John. I think part of the reason that this part of his gospel in particular is so intimate is that he was there. He saw her. He heard her. He shared in that emotion with her. But Peter and John, as they looked into the tomb, had a slightly different reaction than Mary Magdalene had had. And perhaps Mary had hardly seen it with her weeping. But they looked into the tomb and saw something remarkable. They saw grave clothes. They saw the cloths in which he had been bound and prepared for burial. And they saw the cloth that had been wrapped around his head. And these cloths lying there, undisturbed, indeed folded up. Now, John and Simon, I think, had been with Jesus when Lazarus was raised from the grave, as John describes it in John 11. And there we read that when Lazarus came forth from the grave at the command of the Savior, he came bound in grave cloths, so that Jesus had to say to the disciples who were there, loose him he came out bound as they had laid him in the grave he came out with his head covered with the cloth and I think what happened is that Peter and John look into the grave and they think if someone had stolen the body they wouldn't have unwrapped it They'd have picked up the body as it was buried and as it was wrapped in the cloths and carried it out, carried it off. They wouldn't have taken the time to unwrap it. There'd have been no point in unwrapping it. And so John tells us at that moment he believed. And then, not wanting to sound too proud, he said, although I still didn't really get it. I didn't really understand the whole of what the Scriptures had been saying about the meaning of this resurrection. I still didn't understand that he must rise from the grave. I still wasn't fully gripped. I'm reading this into it a little bit. I still wasn't fully gripped by those remarkable words of Jesus in John chapter 10. I have power to lay down my life and I have power to take it up again. but he saw that Jesus had come forth from the grave, not as Lazarus had come forth, alive but still bound. But apparently he had passed through the grave cloths and left them behind as he entered into life. He had laid down his life on the cross for sinners, and now he took it up again. In glory. They understood something of that. They believed that that is what had happened. But they yet had not seen the risen Lord. They had not yet heard the risen Lord. But they had interpreted, they had understood something of what had so remarkably happened in that tomb. But what they had seen and come to understand had not occurred to Mary. And she continued to stand by the tomb, weeping. Looked again into the tomb, saw angels and asked them her question. Wandered in the garden and saw, she thought, the gardener and asked her question. Where have they taken the Savior? What have they done with the body? Where is my Lord? She was still in distress, weeping and wondering. And then comes the moment at which her distress turns to delight. It doesn't happen immediately, does it? It's intriguing. She sees him, but doesn't recognize him. And that, too, sort of validates her experience, doesn't it? She didn't expect to see Jesus. Have you ever seen someone you knew really well, but they were somewhere where you didn't expect to see them, and for a minute you didn't recognize them? And, of course, she's weeping. Her eyes are full of tears. She's not seeing clearly. And then she hears his voice. But she doesn't recognize that either initially. She's not expecting Jesus. And then he says to her, Mary. He called her by name. And when he called her by name, she knew who he was. That personal relationship they had had over years flooded back to her. and it was in the moment of being called by her name that she knew this was Jesus that he was alive and I think John very deliberately tells the story this way first of all of course because it's true but secondly to remind us that he knows every one of us by name he calls every one of us to himself by name We're not called as a group. We're not called as a crowd. We're called to him individually, each one, by name. And that's our hope. That's our encouragement. And I believe that Mary did what every sensible person in that situation would done. she gave him a hug. She threw herself into his arms. Wouldn't you have done that? You've gone to the grave of a loved one. And there the loved one stands, alive. Wouldn't you give him a hug? It was a moment of delight, of joy, of life. What delight and joy must have flooded Mary's life? And I suspect that Mary, for a moment, thought, let's go home and have coffee. She had banquette. It was going to be a nice... Don't you think for a moment she thought, I'm going to be able to experience what Lazarus' sisters experienced. I'm going to have my loved one back. We're going to go home. Life's going to go on. Won't it be great? She knew he was alive, but she still didn't quite get it. Just as Peter and John hadn't quite got it. And Jesus has to be the teacher. She greeted him as my teacher. Jesus has to go on teaching her. And in just those little few words, he teaches all of us so much. John 20, verse 17. Do not cling to me. That's why I think they're hugging. That's why I think she's fallen into his arms. Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. I haven't risen just to go back to the old way of life. I haven't risen like Lazarus to die again. I have risen to enter into a whole new life. A life in glory. a life that will lead me from here in my ascension to be enthroned in heaven where I belong at the right hand of God. Now, Jesus had tried to prepare them for this message. He had tried to explain to them that his work was a work of deliverance, that delight must give way to a fuller understanding of deliverance. His work, in a sense, was yet to be completed. When he died on the cross with the words, It is finished, he meant that his work of humiliation was finished. His work of suffering was finished. His work of bearing the wrath of God for sin was finished. But he would continue to work for his people. He would rise for their justification. He would ascend to ensure their glorification. He would pray for them so that they would know they are never alone. And he had sought to prepare them for that during his earthly ministry. He had said to them, as we find it in John 16, It is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the Comforter will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. That was an understandably hard message for the disciples to take in. It's an advantage that Jesus would go away? How can that be? Well, if Jesus were here physically in his human body with us today, that'd be nice, wouldn't it? The sermon would be better. But if he were here in his body with us, he couldn't be anywhere else, could he? That's the nature of his humanity. When he's here with us, he's in a space. And it would be great for the Escondido United Reformed Church, which would probably be his first choice. But think of all those poor disciples in other places. He couldn't be in Chicago. He couldn't be in Jerusalem. He couldn't even be in Grand Rapids. But he says, when I go away, I'll be with you through the power of my Holy Spirit. I'll be in every one of your hearts. I'll be in every one of your homes. I'll be in every one of your churches. I'll be with you. I won't really be gone. You won't see me. You won't be able to hug me. But I won't really be gone. I'll be with you. But he also tried to prepare them that there was work he needed to do for them. In John 14, we read, if I go, I'll prepare a place for you. And if I prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, that where I am, you may be also. You see, his ascension is the promise of our ascension. His enthronement in glory and in power and in authority is the promise that we will share in that glory with him. That's what he wanted to say to Mary. That's what he says to us. And then most remarkably, as if there aren't enough remarkable things in this text, he says, I'm ascending to my father and your father, to my God and your God. I'm ascending to my father and your father. Now, I suspect if we did a survey and asked people in America generally, what words they might use to describe God, I suspect that one of the words we would hear most often is the word Father. I suspect that for most of us, when we pray, we pray to our Father. Of course, Jesus taught us to do that, didn't he? Our Father, who art in heaven. And I think we have become so familiar with that that we take it a little bit for granted. That we can come boldly into the presence of the almighty God who created heaven and earth and all things visible and invisible and that we have a right to call him Father. If we go to England and see the Queen, we don't have a right to go up and say, Hey, Mom, how's it going? And actually, when we look carefully into the scriptures, what we discover is, in the Old Testament, God is very, very seldom addressed as Father. I couldn't find a single example in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament. I could find only two examples in the Psalter. Psalm 68, where God is called the father of the fatherless. Psalm 89, where the sons of David are allowed to cry out, You are my father, my God, and the rock of my salvation. You can find only four examples in the book of Isaiah, where God is called father. This was not a completely absent concept, but it was rare. It was not characteristic. It was only sort of in specially intense moments that Israel felt the privilege of being able to address God as Father. And then it's intriguing when we look in the New Testament. God is called Father in the Gospel of John far more often than anywhere else in the New Testament. Jesus talks over and over again in the Gospel of John about the Father and my Father. This is the first place in the Gospel of John where Jesus refers to God as your Father. He's used the phrase your Father only once before in the Gospel of John. And that's when he looked at those who were not his disciples and said, You are of your father, the devil. And so let's not take this word to Mary lightly or for granted. That Jesus, as the resurrected Lord, says to all his disciples, My father is your father. My God is your God. The intimate relationship that I have enjoyed from eternity with my Father is now yours. I am the eternal, natural Son of God, but you are now adopted children of God. I have finished my work. And in my ascension, you must know that heaven has become your friend. That God is now close to you. That you belong to him, and he belongs to you. And that what is Jesus is now yours. That's what Jesus says in this resurrection moment. This is what is so amazing. Mary met with the risen Jesus on that first Easter and in her meeting she not only saw that he was alive, but she saw much more deeply than ever before what his life meant. It meant she had a friend in glory. It meant that God was now her father for Jesus' sake. And this story, as all John's stories, has a single purpose, that you might believe. That you might believe. Now, John knew what some of you would be thinking. Some of you might be thinking, well, it's easy for Mary to believe. Because she was there, and she saw it, and she heard him, and she hugged him. It's harder for me to believe. Jesus says, I understand that. And he had a word for you, the word that he spoke to Thomas. We find it in John 20, verse 18. When Thomas saw the risen Lord, he said, My Lord and my God. And Jesus said to him, Have you believed because you've seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. We have something more certain than the testimony of our eyes. We have the testimony of God's own word, God's own promise, God's own declaration. And so it may be true of all of us today, that we meet today with the risen Jesus. That we know him today to be alive. And that in his life, we have life. So that we're promised glory. And so that we can come to God, not just as creator and Lord and king and majestic one, but we may come to God as father, for Jesus' sake. May each one of us have that Easter faith this morning and forever. Amen. Let us pray. O Lord, our God, we quiet our hearts before you in the mystery and glory of the resurrection of our Savior, knowing that his life means life for us as we trust in him and rest in him. And our prayer, O Lord, is that in every circumstance of life, we may know that Jesus is with us in the power of his Holy Spirit. That Jesus speaks to us in the truth of his word. And that Jesus assures us that because of what he has done, God is our Father forever and promises life, abundant life, now and forever in his glory. Fill us with that faith, we pray, O Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen.