Easter

Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulcher.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Friday evening we walked the Way of the Cross, visiting each of the 14 stations around the perimeter of this room. That liturgy is based on the Way of Sorrows–the Via Dolorosa–in the city of Jerusalem, a pilgrimage route that begins near the Lion’s Gate with the site of the trial of our Lord by Pontius Pilate. As you walk through the city you trace Jesus’ encounters on the way to His crucifixion, pausing at each location where He fell, and you wind up at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the traditional site of the Tomb of Jesus. The site, if you will, of the resurrection.

As you approach the Church of the Holy Sepulchre from the south and stand in its courtyard, your eyes are drawn upward to a second story ledge. There rests a simple wooden ladder against a windowsill, left, it seems, by a workman. Perhaps a painter or carpenter.

Every photograph ever taken of the south elevation of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher shows this ladder. That’s because the ladder has been there since before the invention of photography. No one knows who left it there, or why.

It has been there since at least 1728. It is subject to a decree by sultan Osman III of the Ottoman Empire, called the decree of the status quo, which declares that no changes be made to any Christian site without the consent of all six Christian communities which have some claim to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Representatives of those communities have never been able to agree to move the ladder.

The Ottoman Empire no longer exists, having been dismantled at the end of the first world war, and it obviously no longer controls the City of Jerusalem. And the immovable ladder remains.

It is made of Lebanon cedar wood. It might as well be made of stone. A mute testimony to our unwillingness to get along, and to our aversion to changing the status quo–the way things have always been. It testifies to our absolute aversion to radical change.

About two thousand years ago, early on a Sunday morning, three women approached that site, very possibly by the same route, unaware that they were mere minutes from discovering the world had radically changed.

The women who went to care for the body of their dead rabbi were occupied that morning with practical matters. The body had been minimally prepared for burial and hastily placed in a borrowed tomb on Good Friday–of course they didn’t call it that then. There had been only about a three hour window before sundown and the start of the sabbath, during which the bodies of the dead may not be handled.

The three women had invested considerable money in the spices they brought to complete the sorrowful job–aloes and of course myrrh–which would be shaken into the folds of the linen winding sheet in which Jesus would rest.

Their main concern, as they walked and talked, was the stone sealing the tomb. It was roughly circular, maybe five feet in diameter, and weighed about half a ton. Moving that would be quite a job for a group of men, let alone three women. And all of the men had fled. Even Peter had disappeared after he denied knowing Jesus. Only the women remained. The women. And what a heartbreaking end to a hopeful and exciting time in those women’s lives.

Saint Matthew tells us the tomb was sealed and guarded by soldiers. Maybe, the women thought, maybe we can convince some of the soldiers to move the stone and let us do our work.

But as they approached closer to the tomb, they noticed something’s not right. The soldiers had gone. The stone about which they were so worried had already been moved. The stone was there to keep people out. Their thoughts initially turned to grave robbers. Clearly the grave robbers had already been there. Jesus had made a lot of enemies. Would they have desecrated the tomb? Had they profaned His body? Maybe stolen It?

They peeked in. And saw a miracle. An angel who proclaimed the entire Gospel in seven words: He is risen; He is not here.

We call it the empty tomb but according to Saint Mark it was pretty crowded that first Easter. The two Maries and Salome, and this angel of God who invited them to see for themselves: behold the place where they laid him, and then he sent the women–the women–to track down the men and tell them the Good News.

Imagine that. Talk about radical change. Women have become the first ministers of the Gospel. Before any of the evangelists wrote a word. Even before the great Saint Paul became a Christian, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome were sent by an angel of God to spread the Word. The same Good News we celebrate today. “He’s alive and we’re going to see Him again.”