Broken is the image of men and women who hang around the market trying to earn a few pesos from our shallow pockets. The offerings to particular persons are diverse. There are vendors enticing us with watches, sunglasses, videos, belts and wallets, budbud, puppies, even Viagra. But despite persistent marketing, we may be a disappointment to their hopes. We may be another in a string of heart-breakers who turn them away empty and broken.
The Bible tells us in the book of John that while it was still dark on the first day of the week after our Lord Jesus had been crucified, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb, and immediately observed that things were different. The previous night when she left, there was a stone at the mouth of the cave like a tomb, and now it was gone! Without drawing near, she turned around, and ran to the disciples, and said to Peter and to John, The stone is moved. Somebody had taken our Lord and we don’t know where He is! Upon that news, John and Peter got up and ran toward the place of the tomb. As they arrived, first John, then Peter looked and observed that no one was around; John looked into the tomb, saw the linen cloth that had been wrapped around our Lord. The cloth was there, but He is gone.
Then the Bible says an interesting thing: after Peter and John had observed the cloth and the headband, they went home.
Now Mary Magdalene takes the spotlight. Peter and John left her as she was still standing there by herself, hanging around the tomb. Instead of saying, “Well that is that, it is empty, there are the cloths, now we are going home; if you need us, call us.” She stayed there and continued to hang around.
Mary had been broken and was struggling in life, she was even reputed to be a “woman of the night”, a woman who had been discredited, dismissed, marked and put down! It was difficult to see the way forward, the nights seemed long, but Jesus came by one day and said to her, “God’s love is for you.” He convinced her that she does not need to be all broken up in a multiple pieces and that she could have the integrity of personhood. Jesus had made all the difference in her life. The longs nights of brokenness had seen the sun rise. But now he is gone and she was hanging around broken again.
Then suddenly it happened. It’s what happens when you hang around, when you are not willing to give up on faith in spite of the darkness of pain and despair: Mary heard her name, “Mary.” Everything suddenly changes, the world lights up with possibility and hope. It was her Lord, the One who had turned her life around. And she said to him, “Teacher” and he taught her that day again. He said, “Don’t hold me” as if to say, don’t get fixated on material things, don’t let your possessions determine your whole life, not even your physical health, not even your social circumstances, don’t let these become the focus of your hope. Don’t put your hope on things that decay in time and space. Find your hope in something stronger than that, do not grasp for me materially, I am more than that now. Easter has arrived.
Easter is knowing there is no night without a sunrise to come. Easter is understanding that when we hang around, longing and praying for the healing and renewing presence of God, our name will be called. Easter is realizing that God is beyond the material things in life, more powerful, more permanent, but all the same, the compassionate source of turning our life from broken nights to the sunrise of a new day.
