Honey, I'm home...

I'm back.  It's been a while, but I'm back.

I've been writing bits & pieces elsewhere, but in the last week or so I've felt something moving me back to this space, and so here I am.

I don't know how much I'll get back here, but I hope it will be often.

I think that a large part of this returning has been to do with reading the writings of others, feeling like I needed to find my voice again. Weird how that happens.

This last few days has been a whirl of reading and thinking and digesting, mainly because of the vote by the General Synod of the Church of England to not pass the motion to admit women Bishops at this time. I'm not going to write about that right now - enough has been said, by people much wiser and more eloquent than myself, and if you've read my post on Jesus being a feminist you already have an inkling about what I feel on the matter. 

Time to reflect and heal and ponder is needed.

But I did get to thinking about Mary Magdalene, Apostle to the Apostles, the first person to see the Resurrected Jesus and be sent out by Him...

I got to thinking about the conversations that might have been happening between her & Jesus as the House of Laity voted against the motion last week. I got to thinking about how she must have felt to see women being held back and about how, until Jesus came into her life, she must have experienced that same feeling - held back, restricted, not 'enough'.

Mary Magdalene holds a special place in my heart. I am fascinated by her journey, by her deep and wonderful relationship with Jesus. She reflects so much of the heart of Jesus to us.

This past Resurrection Sunday 2012 at the Church I get to journey with, we were thinking about the encounter in the Garden, and, indeed, gardens in general. 

Eden, The Garden of Resurrection, The Garden and the City at the end and beginning of all things.

I got to inhabit Marys world that Resurrection Sunday and in the weeks running up to it as I pondered her journey.  I got to stand before the gathered, Resurrection people and share her story in the hope that her words would resonate with our stories, that the truth of the Man who made all things right would bring life, and life in all its fullness.

So...as I re-start this journey, I share her story with you.

The woman who was released into fullness of life and fullness of ministry.

May it be so in our time.

Marys Journey

I just...

I just don’t know what to say.

I’m stood here, in this garden, and I…

I can’t…

I can’t believe it.

But I have to.

I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

We buried him you see.

I watched them torture him, then I watched them kill him, and I saw Joseph bring him here, to this tomb in this garden.

He was dead.

My best friend.

The man who saved me.

The man I would have given my life to follow.

Dead.

I just…

that was enough to get my head and my heart around, but this…

this…

Everything changed the day I met him you know. He literally saved me.

Up until that point I was alone, afraid, but he changed that. 

He taught me how to be alive again, to love, to care, to be cared for, to be ME again.

Mary.

Whenever he said my name, he said it as though I was the most precious person on earth, me, Mary.

I know he made everyone feel like that, it’s just the way he was. He had that kind of intensity - you know, the kind that when he spoke, you just wanted to drop everything and listen.

It never stopped being special, hearing him say my name.

I would have followed him to the ends of the earth and back again.

 

He wanted everything to be put right again you know.

No one was too crooked to be led back to the straight path,

no one was too sick to be healed,

no one was too far outside community to be loved.

He said that about himself once…how did he put it again…‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life,’ he said.  And he meant it.

Everywhere he went, life sprang up, things were put back in their right place.

And we, this rag-tag mismatched bunch of friends and followers saw it all…

The dead raised back to life, the lame healed, the blind given their sight, enough food for everyone.

Life and life in all its fullness. That’s what he brought. Life in all its fullness.

And he just would not shut up, that man.

That beautiful, amazing, infuriating man.

 

Anywhere he saw injustice or religious pomp or lies or double standards, he spoke up.

One of the lads told me that even way back at the start of all this he stood up in the temple, took the scroll, read from Isaiah, and declared that the Spirit of the Sovereign Lord was upon him, that he was anointed to preach good news to the poor, proclaim freedom for prisoners, give sight back to the blind, release the oppressed. He declared the year of the Lords favour.

It’s not like we didn’t warn him that he was headed for trouble.

Peter tried a few times.

Everywhere we went there were whisperings, questions, people trying to trick him.

But he saw straight through it all, and he just carried on, as if he could see the bigger picture.

He just wanted everything to be put right again.

And a week ago, in the run up to Passover, it really kicked off.

Jesus had been doing what Jesus did, and it had gotten peoples attention – especially the religious leaders.  He didn’t help matters when he staged his entry into Jerusalem, coming through the back gates to the city riding on a donkey. The people started throwing palm leaves under his feet and crying ‘Blessed is the king of Israel’, whilst all the time on the other side of the city the Romans were making their very own triumphal entry, reminding the people that THEY were the ones in charge.  Jesus was turning everything upside down.

He was a marked man.

I don’t know if I’ve ever been so worried for someone in my whole life.

 

And all he wanted was for everything to be put right again.

The rest of last week seems to have gone past in a blur. It feels like we were on ‘fast forward’.

There were conversations and discussions and Jesus seemed to be making a lot of people very angry.

And then that night came. That insane, crazy beginning of the end.

Jesus was washing our feet, and then talking about the end, promising us that we wouldn’t be alone, that he was the vine and God was the gardener, almost like he was reminding us about the promise of Eden, the promise of God walking with His people in that Garden in the cool of the afternoon.

And he prayed this beautiful prayer for us that made me weep inside. This man. This amazing man.

From that point on it doesn’t seem real -  Jesus went off to the Garden in Gethsemane to pray, and they came for him. 

They came for my Jesus.

I don’t think I can put into words how the next hours felt.  Knowing that they had him, knowing that they wanted him dead, knowing there was nothing we could do.

There was that sham of a show trial that made me SO angry.

These people.

Did they not know who he was?

And they led him out.

Back bloodied, this awful crown of thorns on his head, digging in.

Carrying the heaviest of crosses.

We followed, all the way to the crucifixion site.

We were there to the end, the women and John and I.

If you listened hard enough I swear you could have heard my heart breaking inside my chest.

 

This man, who only wanted everything to be put right again, here on this hill.

And, just before he died, he made this amazing declaration…that ‘It is finished’.

 

It felt like it.

It felt like the end of all things.

Even the sun couldn’t bear to shine any more.

It was like the universe felt his pain, felt our pain, felt Gods pain.

And that darkness just continued.

Joseph and Nicodemus took his broken and bruised and torn body, and wrapped him so tenderly before laying him in the tomb in this garden.

And then the Sabbath began.

We couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything.

The Sabbath is supposed to be all about living as though there is no work left to do.

But it felt like life itself had ended.

The Sabbath of all Sabbaths.

As soon as the light came up I knew I had to come here.

I knew I had to be in this garden.

I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t bear it.

I didn’t care what people thought about me, this woman stealing through the streets in the half light.

I just wanted him to be here, and if he couldn’t be here I needed to be as near to him as I could.

I don’t know what happened in my head and my heart when I got here to see that the stone wasn’t rolled across the tomb any more, and that Jesus wasn’t there. I think the utter confusion and bewilderment of the last 48 hours had finally taken its toll. I just ran and ran and ran as fast as I could back to the house and got Peter and John, and they came running and saw what I had seen.

Jesus was gone.

I just…

I just didn’t know what to say.

I didn’t know whether I was coming or going.

I was here, in this garden, and I…

The boys left, but I had to stay. I couldn’t move.

The tears were flowing so thick and so fast.

Everything was changing. Nothing was the same.

I leant in to get a closer look and then I saw there were two men that were dressed in white sat where Jesus’ body should have been. They asked me why I was crying, and I couldn’t understand why they had to ask. Hadn’t they heard the stories, hadn’t they seen the empty tomb?

Why was I crying?!

Because my Lord, my everything, had been taken away, and I didn’t know where he was.

Couldn’t they at least have left us his tomb?

And then another man came up behind me and asked me the same question.

Why am I crying?

And I turned and I couldn’t see him through my tears and I thought he was the gardener and I begged him to tell me where he had put my Jesus.

And then He said my name.

He said my name.

He said my name.

Mary.

And as soon as heard him say my name I knew it was him.

My Jesus.

Here in the garden.

Calling me by name.

 

And I held him.  Oh how I held him.  I held him so tight he had to ask me to let him go.

And I looked into his face, and I heard him whisper my name, and then I knew.

He’d meant it you know, on that cross, when He’d said ‘It is finished.’

He’d only gone and done it.

He’d only gone and put everything right again.

 

I was stood with my Jesus in the garden in the cool of the morning.

And everything was new.

And he called me by name.

And he’d put everything right.

Death holds no power.

It is finished.