Meg Peery McLaughlin
I AM: The Resurrection and the Life
April 20, 2025
John 20: 1-18
Scripture:
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. 2 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.” 3 Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. 4 The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, 7 and the cloth that had been on Jesus’s head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. 8 Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed, 9 for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10 Then the disciples returned to their homes.
11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb, 12 and she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. 13 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.” 14 When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” 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.”16 Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). 17 Jesus said to her, “Do not hold onto me, 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.’ ” 18 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,”
Sermon:
The last few times I’ve stood in this pulpit,
I’ve ferociously clung to who Jesus promises us that he is:
the good shepherd, the bread of life, the light, the way, the gate, the vine.
Somehow these most basic statements of our faith
feel utterly radical in these days. To pledge our heart’s allegiance to One
who practices empathy, truth-telling, welcome, feels. . . revolutionary.
Today we claim the final of these seven I AM statements of Jesus in John’s gospel—
The promise that Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life.
For while it is still dark, Mary Magdalene,
in the depths of grief, comes to the tomb looking for Jesus’ body,
likely bringing myrrh and aloes. Not for embalming, as in the Egyptian tradition,
but to counter the smell of death and honor the body of someone she loved deeply .
And when she arrives that first Easter morning,
she smells nothing but lilies and finds the tomb utterly empty.
Most of my growing up years were in Charlotte,
Where I oft had the chance of going to Discovery Place, a science museum.
I understand that science may be an odd way to start an Easter sermon,
because to be very clear, I cannot scientifically explain Easter,
and nothing at Discovery Place can either.
But there was this experiential learning exhibit there
where you could choose markers of every color of the rainbow,
and the contraption would have them draw loops,
never in the same spot, but expanding, intertwining loops.
It was reminiscent of a spirograph,
but I think it may have actually been a harmonograph.
In my rabbit-hole research, I found words like roulette curves,
hypotrochoids, epitochoids, and Lissajous curves,
words I can barely pronounce, let alone define.
What I remember is this: expanding loops, colorful complex circles,
and it was. . . beautiful.
Church, I want to tell you: Easter loops.
Not in circles that keep us stuck in the same old track
but loops that spiral outward,
a holy geometry of grace.
Maybe you noticed that in our text,
Jesus doesn’t actually say “I am the Resurrection and the Life”
Nowhere in the Easter story does he say that. I suppose it’s odd.
He says: “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?”
Two good questions, by the way.
And Jesus calls Mary by name. Of course he does. Jesus always knows our name.
And he says: “Do not hold onto me, but go and say, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”
But never the big promise of today: “I am the resurrection and the life”
That he says nine chapters earlier in John’s Gospel,
when Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead.
That Lazarus story has some amazing foreshadows of Easter:
women weeping with grief
the very same question: where have you laid him?
a tomb with a stone rolled away,
and new life that defies all we ever thought.
Fred Craddock said, “It is as though one held up a light sheet of paper on which was written the story of the raising of Lazarus. But bleeding through from the reverse side of the paper, and clear enough to be read, is this Easter story of the death and resurrection of Jesus .”
They aren’t the same, but we can’t read one without remembering the other.
They’re intertwined.
In fact, the raising of Lazarus is
precisely what circles Jesus around to his passion story.
When Jesus calls Lazarus out of the tomb,
he performs the miracle that will place himself in his own tomb .
The Lazarus story concludes by noting that
“from that day on, the authorities resolved to kill him.”
The power of Jesus to give life, abundant life, free life, to all people,
is just too threatening for some.
Yes, that story impacts this next one.
Some stories are like that, they circle back set the trajectory for the next one,
do they not?
Morgan Jackson is a child of this church, now a young adult.
In 2014 she was a middle schooler.
University Presbyterian took her and nine other youth to
Washington DC to serve unhoused neighbors in our nation’s capital.
Last week Morgan interviewed for a new job and she told the story of that trip and how it’s continued to impact her.
She got the job. She is the new Pastry Chef at Miriam’s Kitchen
where she will serve DC’s unhoused.
That shelter makes all their food from scratch.
Every day will be like an episode of Chopped.
If someone donates a case of eggs, Morgan can make flan.
If someone donates a case of apples, she can make crostini.
She will take the skills she’s been studying
and honing in high end restaurants for years
to make 350 meals a day to delight the hungry.
And who knows, perhaps will also welcome some 12 and 13 year old Presbyterians into her kitchen—because stories. . . have a way of looping.
This story of the empty tomb and the folded grave clothes.
This story of the weeping turned to announcing: I have seen the Lord.
This story of Easter is the one that changes the whole trajectory of our faith,
and of every other story of which we’ll ever be a part.
Which is why Jesus tells Mary not to hold onto him,
because this story is not just about this day but every single other day ahead of us.
Jesus says ‘Don’t hold on to me.”
As one scholar writes, “it was a peculiar thing for Jesus to say since
there is no evidence that she was holding onto him anyway.
Unless it was what she called him—my teacher—the old name she used to call him. Maybe Jesus could hear it in Mary’s voice,
how she wanted him back the way he was so they could go back to the way they were. Rabounni, she called him, but that was his Friday name,
and here it was Sunday— an entirely new day in an entirely new life.”
If the story of Easter does indeed keep circling, but never in the same path;
if this gospel news is not a static thing,
but one that will push us to expand our circles,
and extend our paths to places we never thought possible,
then of course Jesus would say “don’t hold on to me.”
Easter doesn’t take us back to life the way it was before,
it takes us forward into the life God wants to give to us now .
On Monday, I was down the street at Purple Bowl with UPC visitor, Sasha Seymour, and while there, I ran into Hania Kantzer, our organ scholar.
Didn’t think too much of the meeting, just a handshake over a smoothie cup.
But Hania caught me later and
told me how she and Sasha’s circles had already intersected,
that she’d heard him give a lecture her freshman year
where he’d spoken of something called a Student Visa.
Now, to be clear this wasn’t about the F-1 Visas
that are currently being maliciously revoked,
it was long before such moves were being pulled on college campuses.
Sasha’s was a philosophy, really, of how as a student,
you have a pass, a gracious opening, to try things, to explore, to ask questions,
to expand, to color outside the lines.
And Hania said it’s been a lesson she’s looped back to time and time again;
in fact it’s part of the reason why she’s here this morning,
a chemistry major, playing the organ for our Easter anthem.
Easter is our visa to new life, and it can never be revoked.
It opens up a world beyond every stone that has been rolled across our path,
a way through grief that we thought would pull us under.
It takes the tools of violence and empire and abuse of power—
and turns it into stubborn symbols of salvation. Just look at that empty cross.
Easter keeps spinning out life, and life abundant.
And once this story is part of us–
hold up any other page in our own stories, and this one will bleed through.
Are you waking while it is still dark
trying to cover up the stench of this world?
Do it, but with the memory of the easter garden to fuel you.
Are you weeping in grief over everything that is lost,
all that can’t be put back together again?
Do it, but against the soundtrack of Jesus calling you by name.
Yes, Easter loops.
I have to confess that I did ask ChatGPT for another word other than loop.
I’m an English major who knows that you really can belabor a metaphor
until it really should be put in a tomb.
You know what ChatGPT suggested as a synonym?
A revolution.
A revolution.
Yes, of course.
Finally the tables are starting to turn,
talkin’ about a revolution .
Brian McLaren called Easter an uprising.
Not of hate, but of hope
Not of weapons, but of love.
Not of clenched fists, but of outstretched hands.
Easter is the “someday” we have always dreamed of,
emerging in the present, rising up among us and within us.
This revolution will not stop.
It will keep looping back, circling forward, over and over again.
Jesus says: I am the resurrection and the life.
Come on, church,
let’s join the revolution.