Who Did Mary See?

What most people remember from last Easter was that the new minister, in a white dress, ran up and down the centre aisle, making all the children look well-behaved, and revealing himself as sadly out of shape and out of breath. Not too many remember that I tried to connect that with the story of disciples running to and from the empty grave, and missing the main event of Jesus raised to life. This year, I ditched the robes, and stuck with the quieter story, up front.

I mused aloud about what people say they remember from worship, and from preaching. Many of you tell me you have counted the bricks on the front wall of the sanctuary – more are showing now that we replaced a big curtain and cross with the new window by Sarah Hall, featured on the cover of this month’s Canadian Roman Catholic missal. Others prefer to look up, and know how many laminate wood rafters rise above us, and how many boards run between each rafter.

Once you had remembered last year’s run, and refocused on the brick front wall, and then the rafters and ceiling boards, I quoted from John Ratey’s bestseller, A User’s Guide to the Brain, which popularizes current neurological understandings. Did you know that each time you refocused your field of vision, 126 million rods and cones in your eyes sent as many electrochemical messages through the lateral geniculate body, which relays electrical messages across synapses to various locations in your cortex? Imagine the complexity!

Ratey goes on to outline how beyond perception and sensory experience of eyes, ears, tongue, nose, or skin, the brain operates to make sense of data, in relation to our physical and social life. Our brains can change, and develop new pathways even when damaged. The truism Ratey often
cites is ‘use it or lose it’.

If once we construed seeing and thinking with mechanical engineers’ tiny models of the world inside our skulls, and language as referential reproduction of each thing in existence with a matching word, surely most of us are learning imagine software engineers’ operating systems of programs guiding flow and process as more plausible analogies to our own seeing and thinking. As the postmodernists put it, language is differential, not referential – compare and contrast, not match and replicate. We make sense by association, recognizing similarity and difference.

Semiotics is the study of signs and signification. Rather than metaphysical speculation about what happened to Jesus body, and what primary sensory empirical data reached the first witnesses, I invited you to some reflection on what signs people saw, and what sense they made of it all. As one recent commentary on John by Malina and Rohrbaugh puts it, our ‘objectivity’ in practice might be better described as ‘socially supported types of subjectivity’. What we see is shaped by our assumptions and expectations. I invited you to say aloud a term for part of the complex process of how we ‘see’, beyond sensory date: ‘semiotic awareness’. Say it with me!

Have you noticed that when you buy a new car, suddenly you see that kind of car everywhere? They were always there – but now you see them! Fashion follows a similar pattern – once you notice a trend, or adopt it, you see it everywhere. That’s semiotic awareness. Say it with me!

I confessed that when I was working with a congregation mostly Filipino, I started noticing folks I’d been oblivious to before, and when serving a congregation mostly of Caribbean background, I began to notice and expect to recognize another set of faces on the TTC. I noted that I rarely expect to recognize our church folks on the TTC – but that as I get older, I begin to fear strangers on the street, who will recognize what was always true, that I am unable to run or fight. These are all patterns of semiotic awareness – about myself and others. Who do you ‘see’ – or not see?

Ratey’s colleagues in neurology are learning the mechanisms of how we build neural pathways, using the same patterns of synapses until they are routine and nearly automatic. Riding a bicycle or playing a sport like curling can be routinized, and recovered even after a long break. Of course, as those who see me curl once a year, or roll out of the church on my bike, my lack of regular practice impairs my practice of those sports. Religious behaviour learned in childhood, but infrequently practiced, may be similar to my clumsy occasional curling and cycling – poor.

The Toronto Star today had an image of a Canadian Forces helicopter hovering over Somali pirates, showing the universal sign of a red octagon, meaning ‘stop’. Semiotic awareness may be nearly universal for something like a stop sign – but I note that there are exceptions. Driving in Thornhill, I believe that local signification of a red octagon is understood as ‘slow a bit’, or ‘merge with traffic at the corner’. What people see, and how they make sense of it, is contextual!

So, who did Mary see? John’s version of the gospel says that only Mary Magdalene showed up at the grave on Easter morning. The other gospels say that three women came, or two. John says it was Mary Magdalene – though it was the semiotic awareness of centuries of men who lumped the sign and signification of ‘Mary’ to either ‘virgin’ or ‘whore’, conflating gospel stories of several different women with or without the name of ‘Mary’ into one or two poor archetypes.

First, Mary sees nobody. What she sees is a stone rolled away. She sees that something is missing – or at least, not as she expected to find it. She makes sense of it by leaping to some associations: ‘they have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him’! She runs to get Peter and the disciple Jesus loved – who confirm that they see nothing in the tomb. She sees something is missing, or not as expected, and draws fearful conclusions.

Second, Mary sees two angels. What she sees are two figures in white at the head and foot of where the body had been, and cloths like those which had wrapped Jesus’ body. She sees that something is left. She makes sense to them of why she is crying: ‘they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him’. God knows, and hasn’t told me, what sensory empirical data her eyes might have received – but she’s still making sense, seeing the same thing.

Finally, Mary sees Jesus. But she doesn’t recognize him. She continues to see what she expects to see, in this case a gardener who is a grave robber. Expecting the worst, that’s what and who she sees. She does not recognize Jesus until he calls her by name, and she responds ‘Rabbi!’

Who did Mary see? Nobody? Two angels? Jesus? Set aside for this day the metaphysical speculation about what provided the sensory stimuli, and wonder with me about the semiotic awareness of a first witness to resurrection. What did she see was missing, or not as she expected to find it? What did she see that was white in the tomb, angels and cloths? What did she see that made her think ‘grave robbing gardener’? What kind of semiotic awareness, or defensive paranoia, is all that?

Who did Mary see? Who do you see? What signs do you perceive, and what signification do you associate with those sensations? How do you make sense of what’s missing, or not as you expected it? How do you make sense of the hints you find in the dark? Must it always be the investigative journalist’s conspiracy theory of ‘they’ having done something wrong, and ‘we’ being innocent and powerless? What makes you assume that the next person you meet is likely a grave robbing gardener? What kind of semiotic awareness is operating for you?

I used the benediction today ‘may you see the face of Christ in every one you meet – and may everyone you meet see the face of Christ in you’. How will you make sense of what you see, and how will you re-present yourself and God to your world? We can, perhaps, contribute to semiotic awareness, to how we ourselves, or at least our children, see our world, on this Easter Day and through this Easter season. I left you with Dorothy Law Nolte’s famous “Anthem”:

A child who lives with criticism
Learns to condemn
A child who lives with hostility
Learns to fight
A child who lives with ridicule
Learns to be shy
A child who lives with shame
Learns to feel guilty
A child who lives with tolerance
Learns to be patient
A child who lives with encouragement
Learns confidence
A child who lives with praise
Learns to appreciate
A child who lives with fairness
Learns justice
A child who lives with security
Learns faith
A child who lives with approval
Learns to like herself
A child who lives with acceptance & friendship
Learns to find love in the world




God of Easter
Light at the end of any tunnel
We’re looking back at our own tunnels
The ones that got us this far – to here and now
Show us again where we’ve come from –
How’d we do so far – and with whom?
Help us now to catch a glimpse of where we are at now
Help us now to recognize some of who’s here with us.
Remind us again who we are, and whose we are
Reorient us again, in the light of a new day
God, you know us all – so show us, now, and give us eyes to see

Some of us are regular visitors: regular, not frequent.
We’re spiritual, civil – not religious, or fanatic.
We visit this dead end to make sure the stone’s still there
The church we remember, the religion of our own nostalgia
The hopeless tragedy confirmed, sadly sentimental –
This whole meaning & purpose thing just the way we left it
When we decided we were above it all, and beyond it all…
God, you know it all – so show us again, now, and give us eyes to see

Some of us have been running hard to get this far
In ruts so deep they have become tunnels
God bless our busyness, that dares not pause lest we look and see
We don’t notice our frantic pace till we slow it down, and look around
That the paths we once chose freely are becoming traps
We are making great progress, fine time – but to what ends, in what directions?
We will race off from here and now to the next place or thing
As if we knew exactly what we were doing – why – how…
Unswerving & driven, in our politics, business or religion
God, you know it all – so slow us, and show us now, and give us eyes to see

Some of us feel a bit in the dark – here and elsewhere
As if other people were insiders in a conspiracy
As if we were left out, shut out, left stupidly disoriented
If there were some light at the end of the tunnel, we’d try not to see it
Fearing that we might freeze like deer in the headlights –
Feeling panic that the light might be a train coming to run us over
We could use a bit of light to our darkness – open truths, not dark secrets
God, you see it all – so show us, now, and open our hearts to see

God of Easter
Light at the end of any tunnel
As we return to your Easter promises
May we see the face of Christ in everyone we meet
And may everyone we meet see the face of Christ in us.
Amen