“Jesus said to her, ‘Do not hold on to 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.’ Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord.’” John 20:17-18
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” 1 Peter 1:3
Easter is all about family. Sure, for many of us, it’s about our actual families: the family activities of getting dressed up and attending church, egg hunts, and Easter dinner. This year my child ate his weight in chocolate before worship even began. Easter is in fact a celebration for our own families to enjoy, but it’s bigger than that. I believe Easter is actually about God’s family – the kin-dom of God as I like to refer to it – and our inclusion in it through the power of the resurrection.
When Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene in the garden by the empty tomb, it is the first time in John’s gospel that Jesus, who had always called God “my Father,” refers to God as “your Father.” From this Easter moment on, Mary and the disciples all have the same relationship with God as Jesus does. They – and we – are all now God’s beloved children.
In the beginning of John’s gospel, we hear the story of the incarnation: the Word was with God in the beginning, the Word was, and is God, was light, and life for all people, and became flesh and lived among us, and even though the world came into being through him, the world didn’t know him, didn’t recognize him as Beloved Creator, didn’t want the light and preferred the darkness. “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of [any human effort], but of God” (John 1:12-13).
And going back father than that, in the Old Testament, in the book of Exodus, God says this: “Israel is my firstborn son.” The people of Israel had ever and always been children of God. But much like the prodigal son in the parable Jesus told, the people of Israel, time and time again, wanted their inheritance now. And we, too, today, want the promises and blessings of God on our terms, on our timeline. And when we don’t get what we want, or how we want it, we turn away from God again and again and put our trust in ourselves, or in human structures and systems, or in our ability to achieve and attain and succeed by the standards of the world.
In this Easter moment, in this garden by the empty tomb, Jesus calls us all back to God, to remind us all of who God really is and who we really are: God’s own children, beloved, cherished, part of a family, called and challenged to connect and reconnect with each other, each one a beloved child, called to participate in resurrection life.
