witnesses of a transformed life.
I want you to notice that Mary took her journey not by grasping on to the old
Jesus, but by letting him introduce her to the even larger Christ. In Mark’s
Gospel this utterly new mode of presence is stated quite deliberately, as it says,
“he showed himself under another form” (Mark 16:12). Other texts have him
bilocating, passing through doors, walking on water—all indications of a new
kind of presence, which we are here calling the “Christ.” (Some of these post-
resurrection stories are put in the Gospel as pre-resurrection events, like the
Transfiguration scene or Jesus walking on water.) We usually have to let go of
Jesus on one level before we can accept and believe in “Jesus the Christ.” If your
Jesus remains too small, too sentimental (e.g., “Jesus, my personal boyfriend”),
or too bound by time and culture, you do not get very far at all. For Jesus to
become Christ, he must surpass the bounds of space and time, ethnicity,
nationality, class, and gender. Frankly, he must rise above any religion formed
in his name that remains tribal, clannish, xenophobic, or exclusionary.
Otherwise, he is not the “Savior of the World” (John 4:42) at all. This is much of
the problem of credibility that we are facing now all over this same world that
he is still trying to save.
Mary Magdalene serves as a witness to personal love and intimacy, which for
most people is the best and easiest start on the path toward universal love. Then
in the garden at Easter, she experienced a sudden shift of recognition toward the
universal Presence or Christ. He, in fact, is the gardener! He has become every
man and every woman! She was not mistaken at all when she “supposed he was
the gardener” (John 20:15).
In our second witness, we will meet one who starts with the Universal Christ,
which then leads him to a deep devotion to the crucified and resurrected Jesus.
God can use either path as long as we stay on that path for the whole journey.