Scripture: Luke 24:1-11 John 20:1-29 Sermon: “Mary’s Witness”
Adapted by Michael Burkley from the original work of The Rev. Marcia Ricketts
Pastor speaks (after message to Young Disciples at the beginning of the sermon): Today is our first Sunday
gathering after the Resurrection of Jesus last Sunday! It's a good day to be alive because Jesus is
alive!
“Thomas” (Ed) speaks (standing up and interupting Pastor as he says "alive."):
I know that some of you say that Jesus is alive. I wasn't here when you said you saw him. But it
doesn't much look like he's alive. Our doors are still locked, and we're still worried about being
arrested, maybe more so now that these rumors are flying around. Oh, I wish he were alive, but we
all saw him dead. He was whipped; he was beaten; he was crucified; he died. No one survives a
crucifixion. So no matter how much I wish that he were alive, I won't believe it. Unless I see the
nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will
not believe it! (sit down with energy)
Pastor: Thomas - Ed, I knew that you were going to say something like that, so that’s why I’ve asked Mary to
speak today. I want you, and everyone else to hear her story. Listen!
Mary (Lisa) rises and speaks:
I'm so glad you're here. I'm so excited, I think I'll burst!
I know what I saw, and he kept telling us we'd see it, you remember him saying that he'd rise from the dead, but I
still don't believe it! But I do, I do! He's alive!
You were here for his funeral: it's no funeral now! But some of his Disciples didn't believe me. Of course, I told
them, but I don't know if I would have believed me either, though the disciples are particularly good at not believing.
Sometimes I thought that Jesus would have to hit them over the head with the truth so they could see it. But there I go,
joking! Joking! I can joke now, because he's alive! Ah, what a day to be alive!
I'm not really sure I believe myself except that I saw it! Jesus talked to me. He said, "Mary." I knelt down at his
feet and hugged him around his knees; I listened to his voice; I saw him.
Oh, I've seen so much since he came to Magdala. I've seen the sick healed, I've heard the mute talk, I've seen the
deaf hear, I've seen the dead raised. If it were anyone else but him who did those things I wouldn't believe most of what I
saw, but I personally knew his power, and knew the life he had given me, that time he came to Magdala.
My life before him was ... well, I was dead before I met him.
I was living in the graveyard with the dead, when I first saw him, sleeping in the burial caves where the dead bodies
were laid. You wouldn't have wanted to see me, though you've seen others like me, covered with dirt, my hair matted with
leaves and sticks, my clothes filthy and stenching.
I was a wild-woman. For no reason at all, I'd start laughing or crying uncontrollably, it felt as though someone else
were inside me, a bunch of people clawing at my insides, trying to get out, and I'd kick and scream at the world.
At least, that's what they told me. I don't really remember. Thank God, there are only snatches of memory, glimpses
of the dead bodies lying in their burial shrouds, with wifts of decaying flesh and spices strewn to cover the smell.
But worse than the dirt or the smell, and the forgetfulness, were the times when I remembered. I would remember
my family sitting by the fire, listening to my grandmother tell her stories, hearing the synagogue songs echo, playing with
other children. Memory can be a terrible gift when it's held out in your mind just beyond your reach to do anything with
it, just a tantalizing touch that gets cut off as if a door were closing with a cackling laugh.
But most of the memories ached with fear, and that fear didn't stop. I remembered my father beating me...and
worse, and my mother hiding from him and from me, afraid to stop him, afraid of his rage. When he started in on me, I
tried to hide myself inside, to find someone else to bear the pain. And people came inside me and helped, and when the
worst was going on I could hide and let someone else do the surviving.
It worked until those other people took over, and I forgot who I really was, and those demons would scream and
fight to keep people away, but also gnaw at me until I was as good as dead, waiting for death to come.
There were times when I'd come to my senses and find myself eating grass - I don't know what else I ate. We were
thrown out of our families and banned from town. Sometimes people would leave food at the edge of the graveyard for
us. I couldn't even feel any gratitude. I was alone even though other demon-possessed people were there. Joanna was with
me.
And then one day, I remember it clearly now, we saw a man, surrounded by other men and women, walking past the
graveyard where I stood, begging for food. I started to reach out to him, to grab the sack he was carrying, hoping there
was food in it, but something stopped me. I saw his eyes and he looked into me, not at me but into me. I wanted to run. I
wanted to hide. I pulled back, started to run toward the big rock to hide behind it, but He called out to me, and there was
gentleness in his voice. He wasn't disgusted by my looks or my smell like everyone else, even when they tried to be kind.
He didn't run from my jabbering screams, but he kept looking into me. I heard him calling to the demons inside me telling
them to leave, and they left!
And I left, and went back to myself, back to my new self. I left that graveyard and began a new life with Jesus.
I became part of the group that surrounded him I helped with the cooking; washed clothes; found shelter, listened to
the people who came to listen to Jesus and taught some of them what I had learned, too. I did anything I could do to be
useful, to free him to teach so I could keep on sitting at his feet and listen and learn. I watched as he called out the best in
people and encouraged them to change their lives. I watched as he freed them from their sin and healed them -- as he
healed me.
I saw paralyzed people walk ... lepers made whole blind men see ... bent over women stand straight and the dead
brought back to life, not just dead souls, as my soul was dead ... but dead bodies as well. You've probably heard about all
of that. And even when there were no obvious miracles I saw hope bloom in eyes had seen too much pain.
He taught us that there was a better way to live than how the world lived. He told us that God wanted us to love
others just as God loved us -- all of us -- even me, even you, and that God forgives us and wants us to forgive others.
He showed us that what we do really matters. It really matters how we treat other people. He taught us that we
aren't judged by how much we have, but by how much we give of what we have. I remember that poor widow he used as
an example of giving, an example that gave me hope, too.
Life was great! Crowds everywhere we went, happy crowds pushing and shoving, but anxious to listen and learn.
Remember Zacchaeus having to climb that tree! Remember just last week entering Jerusalem! But then it all fell apart.
We all expected him to gather an army and set up his kingdom, though we really knew better than that. He kept
saying that his kingdom was different from that. It was like a loaf of bread slowly rising to fill the pan, making something
delicious. It was like a tree slowly growing from a seed giving both new seeds and beauty. I think he was talking about
his kingdom as the kind of place we were in when we were all together helping each other and caring about each other.
But Judas just wouldn't take that for an answer. He betrayed Jesus, his own friend, and brought the soldiers to the
garden to arrest him. I wasn't there then. I was back at the house, cleaning up after the Passover meal. The men had gone
together to the Garden because he liked to go there to pray. This time he went there to die.
Oh, there was a trial of
sorts, but we all knew it was over after his arrest. Most of the men hid, but I watched. It tore my heart, but someone had
to be there for him, I had to see, even though I wanted to scream and kick at the world, but there was nothing I could do.
I knew what he was going through because when I lived with death, I was jeered at and despised, too. So no matter
how much pain I felt, I had to be there for him. I watched him drag his cross up the road. I watched as they nailed his
hands and feet to the wood, and left him there, lifted up and waiting to die.
I watched though I could hardly see for the tears ... I watched him die. And then I stayed ... I helped them lift his
body off of the Cross; I followed him to the tomb. That was the hardest part of all to be back among the graves and see
him lying there, dead, but I had to see where they laid him, so I could come back today with Joanna and the other women
to wash his body and wrap him in his grave clothes. Yesterday was awful. We couldn't do anything but wait and cry
because of the Sabbath.
But this morning, while it was still dark we went back to the tomb to do our hard work, and IT WAS EMPTY! HIS
BODY WAS GONE!
I was scared to death. Now that he was gone were the demons coming back? And then suddenly there were two
angels there blinding me with their shining clothes. They said, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is
not here, but has risen."
I ran back and I told the others; most of them didn't believe me, but Peter and John went to look -- and he wasn't
there!
He'd told us that he was going to rise from the dead, but we didn't know what he was talking about. I'm still not sure
what all of it means, but I know that it means that Jesus is right, that his kingdom is the one that will win, that I don't need
to ever worry about those demons again.
Others have seen him, too. He appeared to all of them and he said that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be
proclaimed in his name to all nations. Repentance means that we all need to turn around from going our own way, no
matter how good or bad our own way is, and go God's way, following Jesus, listening to him when he says, "Take up your
cross daily, and follow me." Forgiveness means that God can take anyone in, just as he took me in - a filthy wild-woman
living with the dead, and give them a new life, forgiving and making us new because of what he did, on the Cross and by
the empty tomb. Listen to the good news! If he can make me new, he can make anyone new.
That's why I'm so glad you're here, so I can tell you that he's alive. There's a world out there that needs to hear! Will
you tell them too?