Many of us have
experienced the death of a good friend or a family member; it is for sure a
time of deep pain and deep sadness; a time of grief, and a time of loss. Now
imagine that only days after that loved one had been buried you were going to
the gravesite to pay your respect to your love one. When you arrive at the
gravesite, you find the dirt piled up around the side, leaving the hole that
had been dug open. You look into hole and see the casket with its cover
removed, and find that the casket is empty. Think now about the emotions you
would be feeling at this moment. Confusion: what has happened, where is the
body, how long has it been missing? Anger: someone must have taken the body,
grave robbers, why would someone do something like this? And of course sadness:
I just lost one of my best friends in the world and now this happens! I can’t
even come to mourn my friend’s death, and now I have to deal with this! You see
one of the groundskeepers and you run up to him in pure desperation and ask
him, “Where have they taken my friend, the body is gone, if you know where it
is please just tell me!”
If we can wrap our minds and our hearts around these
emotions then we can begin to understand the emotions at play in our Easter
story for today. We so quickly jump to the good news of Easter, but we first
put ourselves in the shoes of Mary and the disciples as they visited the tomb
that morning. We must experience the pain with them; we must experience the
horror of the empty tomb. That is after
all how our story for this morning starts. It is early in the morning, we are
told in fact that it is still dark, and
Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb to visit Jesus and we are told in the other
gospels that they are coming to take care of some of the final burial procedures
as well. When Mary arrives she however finds that the stone had been removed
and that the tomb was empty. We can almost feel the panic set in, she runs back
to Peter and the other disciple and tells them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and
we do not know where they have laid him." The panic
continues as they all run back to the tomb, Peter and the other disciple look
into the tomb for themselves and see the linen that they had wrapped Jesus’
body in lying in the tomb, and the cloth that was wrapped around his head was
folded up in another location in the
tomb. We do not know much about the disciples reactions other that they saw and
believed, and then returned to their homes; however the story continues to stay
with Mary.
Mary is now outside of
tomb weeping, if we think back to the imagery at the beginning we can start to
understand why. For Mary this empty tomb was not a sign of hope, but a sign of
loss. That she had already lost her dear friend, teacher, and savior, and now
the missing body, the empty tomb further drives in that point, that Jesus is
gone, and not even his body can be visited. At this time she saw two angels in
the tomb who ask her, “Woman, why are you
weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do
not know where they have laid him." At that moment she may have
been literally talking about Jesus’ body but I can’t help but to think that she
was saying much more. It is almost as if her hope was gone, as God was gone.
They have taken away my Lord and I do not I do not know where them have laid
him.
It is at this point that a
man, whom Mary assumes is the gardener, comes up and asks her, “"Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking
for?" To which Mary replies,
“Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you
have laid him, and I will take him away." Mary does not recognize that this man is in
fact Jesus. It seems strange to us, how could Mary not recognize him. How could
she not recognize the man who saved her life, the man that she has been follow
for the past couple of years? How could she not notice the holes in his hands
and the piercing in his side? This is
not the only account in the Bible in which Jesus comes appears to his loved
ones and they don’t notice it. There is also the story of the walk to Emmaus in
which Jesus joins a couple of his followers in their walk as they even talk
about the events of Jesus’ death, and yet they too do not recognize Jesus. How
can this be? There have many theories
about it, some have argued that Jesus was hiding his appearance, or that he
came back in a different body. Some argue that he came back in his same body
but completely healed of his wounds. Yet
from other stories such as Thomas sticking his fingers into the side of Jesus,
we can conclude that it was Jesus in his own body, scars and all, and that
those close to him simply didn’t recognize them. They may have been so overcome
by grief, by pain and by loss that they could not recognize Jesus standing
there in front of them. That their hope had been shattered so much, that there
was no way the savior could be alive. It took Jesus calling her by name, Mary!
for her to realize who stood in front of her.
With the calling of her
name, her eyes were opened, she realized that Jesus Christ her Lord had risen.
She cries out, “Rabbouni!” which means teacher; a term of endearment yet
respect. With the calling of her name
her tears of pain and sorrow become tears of joy. The excruciating pain of loss
that she had felt on Good Friday and that that had been stirred up again this
day, had now been turned to overwhelming joy. The empty tomb which to her was
once a reminder of all that she had lost, was now a sign of great hope, because
that empty tomb was a sign that Jesus Christ has risen and conquered death. The
savior lives! All of the confusion of how the savior could have died, all of
the doubt that must have swirled around in her soul on that long dark Saturday,
all made sense now, because once again Jesus had done something greater than
anyone expected, even though he had told them all along. The empty tomb would be forever on a symbol
for Christ’s power, that even death could not conquer our Lord.
As we have explored the
emotions of this Easter story; as we have wept with Mary, looked in on the tomb
with her in complete and utter fear, I
imagine that we have found that we ourselves still feel many of the emotions
that Mary felt that day; confusion, fear, doubt, sorrow, hopelessness, and the
list goes on. In fact the more we dive into this story the more that we realize
that still today we are a lot like Mary was on that Easter morning. How often
do we fail to remember and recognize the good news of the empty tomb? In
Christianity today there is a growing theology of what we call deism, whether
we like to admit it or not. Deism is the believe that there is a God who
created the heavens and the Earth, who set everything in motion, and now sits
back and watches as we humans run our course on Earth. We may be thinking to
ourselves, I could never believe something like that; yet when many of us truly
think about our own beliefs we may find that they are not that different from
this view.
So often we think about
heaven and Earth; Earth is where we live and heaven is where God lives. We feel
like there is some great cosmic divide between here and there, that can only be
breached once we die. We feel as though God is there, and we are here and our
goal and our job on this Earth is to live a good life so that one day we may
finally be with God. We hear the stories about Jesus in the Bible, and we think
about what a man did for us over 2000 years ago. We know however that this
wasn’t just any man, but this man was God, so we come and we give thanks to God
for saving us so long ago. And yet so often
we approach the Bible, we approach church, we approach our faith with
the same sadness of Mary as she approached the empty tomb. I am thankful for what
Christ did for me then, but now he is gone, they have taken away my Lord. We
sit in despair waiting for when we might be able to reunite with Christ. We sit
waiting for the time in which God will come again to be with us. We sit holding
on for just a little more time with Christ.
We look at the empty tomb
and so often do we forget that this is truly good news. The empty tomb does not mean that Christ is
gone, it means that Christ has conquered death, that Christ has risen, that
Christ has not left us, but is always here with us. The empty tomb reminds us
that the salvation story did not end on the cross, no the empty tomb tells us
that this was just the beginning. That Christ is with us and that we are
constantly walking with Christ everyday of our lives.
When we feel as though
Christ is there, when we feel as though there is some great divide between us
and God, that is because we, like Mary, fail to recognize Jesus standing right
in front of us. After all, Jesus came up and spoke to Mary, and yet she did not
recognize him. In that dialogue there is something interesting that happens
that literally gets lost in translation. Jesus walks up to Mary and asks her
why she is weeping to which Mary replies, “Sir, if you
have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him
away." In her reply she calls Jesus sir, which is of course a
proper sign of respect to give to someone you do not know. What we lose in the
English however is this word sir, which in the greek is kurie, has multiple meanings.
Kurie can mean sir and is certainly what she is saying in this passage, but the
word also means Lord. In fact earlier when Mary says they have taken away my
lord, she is using a different form of this same word. Mary is addressing
Christ as Lord without even knowing it. How often have we acknowledged Christ
in our presence without even realizing it. Whether is in the way that someone
has helped you, sent you a card, prayed with you and for you. Whether its been
a moment here at church in which a song has touched you, a scripture has spoken
to you and your heart becomes glad though you are unsure of the reasons why.
How many times in your daily lives have you uttered the phrase “thank God”
after some good news you received, and you did not say it as a prayer but
simply as an everyday common phrase that you use. And yet in all of those
moments, when you felt that love in your heart and responded, when you cry
aloud than God, are we not like just like Mary, giving our praise and honor to
God without even realizing it.
It is something that God knows, God knows our
pains and our joys, just as Jesus knew why Mary was weeping. But the question
must be asked so that we may be able to recognize the good news of the empty,
the good news that Christ is risen, he is risen indeed. For Mary it still took Jesus calling her by
name to recognize the good news of salvation, of resurrection, the good news of
the empty tomb. This morning God calls each and every one of us by name. He is
calling us and telling us I am risen, I am with you. I pray this morning you
are able to hear him calling.
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