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Hespeler, April 05, 2026 © Scott McAndless – Easter Day
Jeremiah 31:1-6, Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24, Colossians 3:1-4, John 20:1-18

The Gospel of John tells a slightly different story of Easter morning from the other gospels. The other Gospels tell us about several women coming out to the tomb as the third day after the crucifixion dawns. They may be sad and confused, but at least they are together, and they walk in the early morning light.

But John starts the story like this: “Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb.” John invites us to imagine Mary all alone and stumbling in the dark at one of the hardest moments in her life.

When John tells us this, I do not think that he is trying to contradict or correct the accounts in the other Gospels. He may be aware that there were other women who were there.

Symbolic

This adjustment to the story is more symbolic than literal. Throughout this Gospel, the image of people walking alone in the darkness comes up a few times. It always means that someone is lost, confused and doesn’t understand what Jesus is talking about. That is what John is telling us about Mary at this point in the story. He is also warning us that we might have the same problem this Easter morning.

And Mary’s failure to understand what Jesus is about is put directly on display. She arrives at the tomb and sees one thing and immediately jumps to the wrong conclusion. She sees that the protective stone has been removed from the tomb, and she doesn’t even bother to investigate. She doesn’t even look inside (perhaps because it is still so dark), and just jumps to a conclusion: “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”

The Story Mary Tells

We know what that missing stone means, don’t we? It means that Jesus is no longer dead. It means that he is risen and that death has no dominion over him and that because he lives, we may live also.

But what story does Mary tell herself? She tells a story of theft, “They have taken the Lord.” She tells a story of doubt, “We don’t know.” Most of all, she tells a story of a mysterious “them,” a seemingly all-powerful enemy who is intent on destroying whatever hope or comfort she might find in this deeply troubling world.

The story that Mary tells is a false narrative, but maybe we could forgive her for it. She has stumbled upon a confusing situation in the dark. Who wouldn’t jump to the worst conclusion? But, once established, her belief proves remarkably resilient.

After she tells her false story to the male disciples, she returns to the tomb with Peter and another disciple. It is now full morning and, in the light of day, the disciples turn up more evidence for what has happened. They turn up linen wrappings that had been on Jesus’ body, and the cloth that had been on his head rolled up separately.

Evidence of the Grave Clothes

This new evidence goes against Mary’s story. What kind of evil grave robber “them” is going to take the trouble to carefully unwrap and fold the linens? This new evidence apparently convinces one of the disciples to believe something different, though we’re not told what.

But Mary, what does she do with this new information? Is she willing to revise her story? Not for one minute! She has a narrative, and she is going to stick with it.

The two men leave to mull things over, but she remains firmly committed to her story. She remains alone and weeping at the cave, still firmly believing that the insidious “they” have done something cruel.

Heavenly Visitors

The next test of her commitment to her tale comes in the form of a heavenly apparition. She looks into the tomb to see two angels sitting there. Note that John doesn’t say men dressed in white like some of the other Gospels. He doesn’t say that they looked kind of like angels. It was apparently obvious that they were angels.

This is the clearest indication yet that Mary’s story is wrong. Why would angels show up at the scene of a random grave robbery? But is Mary at all willing to revise her interpretation of the events? Not for a moment. Indeed, she repeats the exact same story to the angels: “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”

Why, Nothing Less than the Appearance of Jesus Himself!

By this point, it is clear that Mary is so committed to her story that nothing will shake her from it. I mean, sure, if the risen Jesus himself were to come and stand right in front of her then she would have to admit that her story is wrong, but anything short of…

Wait, what? Are you telling me that that is exactly what happened next, and she still wouldn’t let go of her narrative? She was so lost in her story that she didn’t even recognize the man that she had followed for years. She assumed he was a landscaper and actually accused him of working with “them” in their horrible crime? This I’ve got to see.

Well, what do you know! I guess Mary Magdalene was really that committed to her story.

A Warning About False Narratives

What is John trying to say by telling us the story in this way? As I have already said, I do not think that this is coming out of a concern to relate exactly what happened as it happened. No, he points us to a deeper meaning here. He is warning you, me and all of us that we too are stuck in false narratives.

We come here on this day to celebrate the resurrection. We claim to believe that, on that Easter many years ago, the stone had been rolled away and the tomb was empty. But sometimes we, like Mary, get stuck in our narratives about what these things mean.

Our narratives are not necessarily false. We tell ourselves that this event proves to us who Jesus is – that he is the one who has revealed God to us. And we tell ourselves that, because he rose from the dead, we too may hope to live again after we die. Those are good and comforting truths.

Stories About “Them”

But are we still stumbling around in the dark, failing to appreciate all that it means that the stone has been removed from the tomb? For example, one of the false narratives that Mary embraces in the dark is that some mysterious “them” is still in charge of the story. “They” are stealing and creating doubt.

Who, I wonder, are our mysterious “them”? Who are the ones that we think are taking the incredible victory of Easter and turning it into theft and doubt?

Using the Power of the Resurrection for Control

Some of “them” may be Christians, or at least claim to be. “They” are those kinds of Christians who steal the power of Jesus’ resurrection and use it to control others. “They” say that unless you live out the Christian life exactly as they tell you to and believe what they say you must believe, you cannot be saved.

That is a false narrative. The victory that Jesus won over the grave is a victory won for all. He did not release you from the chains of death only in order to imprison you to someone who claims to speak in his name. The victory that Jesus offers, you can receive on your own terms by simply trusting in him and what he has done.

Those Who Use the Message to Victimize

Or perhaps “they” are those who steal the message of Jesus and use it for things contrary to what Jesus stood for. “They” may hate or exclude the stranger in the name of Jesus. “They” may victimize the poor, the minority or the marginalized and claim that it is only what Jesus tells them to do.

Did Jesus bust out of the tomb so that such things could be done in his name? Of course not! But how many Christians are caught up in thinking that this is what the Christian faith is all about?

Breaking Out of False Narratives

And what will it take to break some people out of such false narratives? You can show them the evidence, the folded grave clothes. You can give them Jesus’ clear teachings about loving your neighbours even when they are hated Samaritans. You can repeat the Beatitudes until you are blue in the face, and they will only accuse you of being too woke.

Why, even if you sent angelic visitors to tell them what the message of the resurrection is, they would still be stuck.

And if Jesus himself were to appear to them in the form of a migrant landscape worker, or someone living rough, or suffering from a mental health crisis, would that convince them? You would hope so, but it doesn’t seem to be happening.

Jesus Appears

Jesus appears in this world all the time. We see that in the famous Parable of the Sheep and the Goats in the Gospel of Matthew. There, Jesus speaks to both groups and tells them that they have seen him. “I was hungry and you gave me food,” he says to the sheep, “I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”

So Jesus does appear to people who hold onto this false narrative all the time. But when he appears, for example, in the form of a migrant farm worker, hard working, but possibly inadequately documented, do they see the risen Christ? No, they only see a gardener and probably a gardener who is dangerous and scary, a gardener no doubt working for the dreaded “they” who are trying to destroy our way of life.

Don’t Be Like Mary

Do not be too hard on Mary. She may have come to the risen Jesus in the dark and, as a result, she embraced a false story of what had happened. And it was a story that she had a hard time letting go of.

We do the same thing. We fail to embrace the full meaning of the resurrection too. We, too, become attached to the false stories that we create. And they are stories of powerlessness, victimization and fear.

Jesus Changes Her Narrative with One Word

But I have good news on this Easter Sunday. Mary is just like us. She came to the resurrection in the dark like us. She clung to her false stories about what had happened, just like we do. But she did not leave that tomb in the dark. And when she left, she left her falsehoods behind.

How did that happen? What made the difference? Only one thing, but it was everything. Jesus said one word to her; he called her name. And suddenly the darkness lifted, and all the truth about what Jesus had accomplished for her came crashing in on her. She knew she had seen the Lord and joyfully shared that good news with the others.

I know that you may be struggling in the darkness today. I know that, as you look around at the disturbing events surrounding us, you have been telling yourselves stories about a dangerous and all-powerful “them.” You have stories of fear, anxiety and powerlessness that haunt the corners of your mind.

Jesus is Calling

But the risen Jesus is calling out to you today. And he is calling you by your name because he has known you from before the foundations of the earth. The only question is, will you hear him calling? Will you drop all of the falseness you’ve been clinging to and cry out “Rabbouni” with Mary? Will you let his death and his resurrection teach you better?

The stone has been rolled away from the entrance of the tomb for you. Embrace the whole truth of what that means for you today.

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Hespeler, March 29, 2026 © Scott McAndless – Palm Sunday
Isaiah 50:4-9a, Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29, Matthew 21:1-11, Philippians 2:5-11

Christian tradition decided a long time ago that the first Gospel in the New Testament was written by a man named Matthew. This has made the Gospel particularly important to the church because it assumed that this was the same Matthew who was counted as one of the twelve disciples.

That meant that this Gospel was written by an eyewitness – someone who was there and saw almost all of it for himself. It certainly made it much more important than the Gospels of Mark or Luke, which were seen more as second-hand accounts.

Tradition and Text

But I want to stress that tradition is not the same thing as biblical text. The Gospel in the original manuscript was written anonymously, and the title, “According to Matthew,” was only added later.

Today, those who study the gospels generally agree that this Gospel was not written by somebody who was there. It is generally dated to about 90 AD, after the original Matthew would have died. It also never claims to be an eyewitness account and shows many indications that it was not written by someone who was there.

Copied from a Source

The most important indicator is that Matthew (and I am going to continue to call him Matthew because it’s the only name we have) copied many of his stories from one of his sources, which was the Gospel of Mark. Whole long passages are word-for-word the same. That can only be explained by somebody copying somebody else’s work. And why would you copy the story if you were there yourself?

Why, even the story of how Jesus called Levi to be his disciple is copied straight out of the Gospel of Mark with only one significant change: Matthew changes the name of the disciple from Matthew to Levi. According to tradition, this is supposed to be the author’s own story! So why wouldn’t he tell it in his own words?

So, the scholarly conclusion is that Matthew, whoever he was, wasn’t there. That doesn’t take anything away from the magnificence of this Gospel. Matthew did not need to have been there to do an amazing job of pulling together his sources and knowledge to write one of the most amazing pieces of literature in the ancient world.

The Desire to Be There

But man, you can tell from the way he wrote that he would have liked to have been there. He is always drawing from his sources to give extra details and pack them with as much meaning as possible. And I get that, don’t you? Wouldn’t you have loved to be there too?

Take the events that we celebrate this Sunday. Who among us wouldn’t want to have been in the throngs that turned out to welcome Jesus into Jerusalem? That’s why we still re-enact it year after year, to find all of the depths of what it was like to be there.

Matthew tried to do that too. As he wrote, he did his best to immerse himself in the scene. I think it must have gone something like this.

Mark’s Palm Sunday Story

Matthew looked down at the scroll of what would someday come to be called the Gospel of Mark. It was unwound on the table before him. He had drawn from it again and again as he wrote his gospel up until this point. But now, the book was building up to the great climax of its story as Jesus arrived in Jerusalem before Passover.

As Matthew read through the account, he was captivated by the description of how Jesus had obtained a colt and rode it into town to the wild acclaim of the people.

Now, Matthew knew that the choice of a ride was not an accident. The particular beast had been chosen quite intentionally. Mark, the gospel writer, had gone out of his way to include that detail because he knew that it meant something. Jesus himself had likely made the choice because he too knew that a colt would make an important symbolic statement.

Making the Reference Clear

But Matthew was worried. He was afraid that his readers might not be as smart as he was. (This is, of course, an irrational fear that many writers suffer from.) His readers might not pick up right away that the colt was a reference to a particular scripture – a prophecy in the Book of Zechariah.

And so, Matthew decided, as he had done so many times before in his writing, that he needed to include the quote. This was not as easily done as you might think. He could not just Google the Book of Zechariah and then copy and paste. He could not even reach for a bound copy of what we would call the “Old Testament” on his shelf.

Finding a Copy

Any scroll was rare and expensive. Matthew had already blown most of his budget for this Gospel by commissioning someone to painstakingly copy out the Gospel of Mark by hand. So he could hardly afford a scroll of Zechariah. There were no public libraries. Even in synagogues, scrolls of the minor prophets were rare.

Matthew headed out to visit all of his wealthy and learned friends until he found one who had a precious copy of the Greek translation of the Book of Zechariah. Then he had to scroll through it (and this was in the days when scrolling was not just done with fingertips!) until he finally found the right passage.

He took out his tablet and carefully scratched the verses into the wax with a stylus: “Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

A Problem

As he returned home, he kept mulling those words over in his mind. Matthew was certain – as many early Christians were certain – that just about everything that Jesus did, he did to fulfill the scriptures. That meant that the words of Zechariah predicted that, one day, Jesus would come and ride into Jerusalem just as Zechariah had said. So, if Matthew wanted to know exactly what it was like to be there, he could just read the description of the prophet.

But, as he looked down at the words he had scratched into the tablet, there was a problem. The prophet had said that Messiah would come riding, “humble and mounted on a donkey, / and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” How could that be, he wondered.

Hebrew Poetry

Ancient Prophets gave their oracles in poetry. And in Hebrew poetry, the lines don’t end in rhyming sounds. It was more like rhyming meanings. In one line, you would say something one way, and then in the next, you would say the same thing just using different words.

Matthew was a very smart man, but he probably didn’t speak Hebrew. And nobody had ever explained to him how ancient Hebrew poetry worked. So, when he read that verse, he didn’t realize that Zechariah had been writing in poetry and talking about the same donkey in both lines.

So, as far as Matthew could see, the prophecy said that the Messiah had to ride in on the backs of two beasts. And Matthew knew that the Old Testament was a reliable source for the events of the life of Jesus.

Fixing the Contradiction

There seemed to be a contradiction in his sources! Mark had clearly described Jesus riding in on the back of one donkey, but Matthew had just learned that there must have been two.

So what did Matthew do? Well, actually, it was the easiest problem to fix. Just because Mark had only mentioned one animal didn’t mean that there couldn’t have been more. So, when he sat down again to continue his Gospel, he just “corrected” Mark’s little omission.

He expanded Jesus’ instructions to the disciples when he sent them to get his ride. Surely Jesus must have actually said, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me.” And so that is what he wrote in his papyrus scroll.

Corrected Version

And then, when the disciples return, Matthew corrected Mark’s story to say, “The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them.”

And, in between the instructions and the result, just so no one would miss the point he was making, Matthew wrote in these words: “This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet: ‘Tell the daughter of Zion, / Look, your king is coming to you, / humble and mounted on a donkey, / and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’”

Did Matthew realize how much trouble he would cause for readers with his little correction? Did he anticipate that people would find the image of Jesus riding on the backs of two beasts at once so ridiculous that their imaginations refused to picture it altogether?

Not Seeing Matthew’s Picture

The triumphal entry into Jerusalem is one of those stock images in Christian art. People have been painting and drawing it for centuries. But if you go through that history, you will not find images that depict Jesus riding on two animals.

What are we supposed to do with the fact that the Gospel of Matthew insists that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the back of two donkeys? The reaction of the church over the years has been to ignore it or pretend that the detail is not there.

Some English translations have even obscured what the Gospel says, like, for example, the King James Version that translates the verse like this, “And brought the ass, and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they set him thereon.” That kind of obscures the fact that the original text says that Jesus was sitting on both animals.

Respecting the Writer

But I respect the writer of the gospel too much to pretend that he didn’t write what I know he wrote. If you are going to accept the whole of Scripture as being inspired by God, then you have to accept all of it, even the parts that seem to be based on a mistake, right?

It was a misunderstanding of the Old Testament text that led Matthew to tell it the way that he did. But if so, and if it was inspired, that simply means that it was God’s will for Matthew to make this mistake and so tell the story this way. God, after all, can inspire scripture in any way that God wants!

Finding the Message

And that means that there is a message waiting for us in this odd detail in Matthew’s story. What then are we supposed to learn by imagining Jesus straddling his legs over the backs of two beasts like a circus performer?

The message, to be sure, is that Jesus’ coming is a fulfilment of scripture. Matthew makes that explicit. But there is surely more to it than that.

Young and Old Together

I think it means something that Matthew insists that Jesus didn’t just ride the parent, but also the child. Surely there is a message for the church in that.

Sometimes we think that it should be enough to take care of the traditions of our foremothers and forefathers. Riding in on the back of our longstanding Presbyterian traditions alone should be enough to get people to turn out in droves and cheer us on in our mission.

But Matthew here reminds us that there has to be a role for a new generation, a younger donkey. We must be open to new ways of being. And that younger generation must not merely be there to spectate and cheer us on, but be allowed to carry this enterprise in new directions – maybe even down a few Jerusalem side streets. We need to respect the baby donkey enough to let it carry Jesus into the world in its own way.

Personal Message

And what personal message might there be for you in this odd part of the gospel story? Well, let me ask you. Which beast are you riding on your spiritual journey? Are you riding on the back of the steady, reliable forms of your faith that you have always counted on? Or are you perhaps always jumping on the back of the young donkey and riding after every new and trending idea and practice?

Most people tend to go in one direction or the other. Many of us believe that tradition should triumph over all, while others will get so lost chasing after the latest thing that they forget where they came from.

But what does Jesus, interpreted for us by Matthew, have to say to that? What if he is saying that the best way to proceed is to stretch your legs over both the donkey and her colt? What if that includes respecting the spiritual journeys of others and being willing to learn from them too?

Following Jesus

We enter into Jerusalem today with Jesus, “humble and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” The road that lies before us will not be all palm branches and cheers. Following in the way of Jesus will include rejection, betrayal and taking up your cross to follow him.

But we will follow. We will gratefully climb onto the back of both beasts because we know what lies beyond the cross and the grave. But, for that, you’ll have to stay tuned, as we continue the story next week.

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