The Way of Life
Easter Sunday, Apr 24, 2011
Intro:
Who would ever have dreamt that the place to find life was at a tomb? A tomb is not a place of life, it is a place of death. A place where people we loved and who have died are buried. I’ve stood at many gravesides, and they are solemn, sad places. Places of endings. Places where goodbyes are spoken, where tears flow, where hugs and other small condolences are offered.
But they are not places of hopelessness. At least not anymore…
Mary:
I imagine her waking up, early, she probably hadn’t slept much. People in the immediate shock of the death of a loved one often don’t. As she comes awake, she first feels that heaviness in her gut, her mind one short step behind reminds her of the truth: he is dead. The dream has ended. The incredible love she had felt from Him, and for Him, could be no more. He is gone.
She cries for a few moments, but they are surface tears. A little steam out the top of the emotional kettle, that is all, the rest will have to wait. Her heart and her mind and her spirit will protect her from being overwhelmed all at once; besides, today there is work to do.
She gets up, dresses, splashes a bit of water on her face and wipes it with a towel. A chunk of bread she doesn’t even taste is washed down with a little more water, and then it is time. The burial spices she, Mary, and Salome had purchased last night after the Sabbath ended at sundown wait in the basket by the door.
She pauses for a moment, as if to marshal some additional strength for today. She knows what must be done – the Messiah’s body was hurriedly placed in the tomb because the Sabbath was about to begin, now they must finish the job. She has a glimpse of a thought – could she continue to think of Him as “Messiah”, now that He is dead?; maybe He wasn’t who she had believed. But as quickly as the thought had appeared it withdrew; something to figure out later. Today there is work to do.
She knows what that work will entail, so she gathers up the things she will need. The oil with which to wash the body, some cloths with which to wipe, and the burial spices. Those were a splurge, reserved for the bodies of those who had been especially important, and perhaps in some small way might restore a bit of dignity after the way He had died.
She shudders as she remembers Friday. Her skin tenses and her jaw sets, a few more tears escape and are quickly wiped away – there will be time for that later, today there is work to do. She places the bag over her shoulder, and sets her face toward the tomb.
The road looked the same as it had at dusk Friday, when they followed Joseph of Arimathea as he took Jesus’ body from the cross, wrapped it in linen, and then laid it in a tomb. She walks in silence, determined but not hurried, until one of them stops. She lifts her head from her empty stare at the road, wondering why her companion stopped, and she hears her say, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” (Mark 16:3). They have no answer. The soldiers? Ha, not likely. The disciples? None of them but John even made it as far as the cross, there’s not much chance they’ll be at the tomb, they’re still scared for themselves. She doesn’t have an answer, but she also doesn’t know what else to do, so they keep walking.
They round the last bend and arrive, and she looks up. She does not see what she is expecting… the stone has already been moved, the tomb is open. Something is not right about this, she starts to feel alarmed, what is happening now? Is this some further indignity to Jesus, can His dead body not even be treated with respect, will she be denied even the opportunity to perform one final act of love for Him?
She drops her basket and steps into the tomb, blinks several times as her eyes adjust to the light in the cave, and looks around. Nothing. The body is gone. How could it be? They saw Joseph bring the body here, and then seal the tomb. Then it was the Sabbath, now it is first light, what happened on the Sabbath, or during the night, where have they taken Jesus’ body?
Suddenly the dim tomb is filled with blazing light, two men appear in dazzling robes standing before them. She is filled with terror, her arms fly up to cover her eyes and then she falls to the ground and bows low. Every sense is on high alert, and she hears the words, “Why are you looking among the dead for someone who is alive? 6 He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead! Remember what he told you back in Galilee, 7 that the Son of Man must be betrayed into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and that he would rise again on the third day.” (Luke 24:5-7). Jesus’ words come back to her then, though in her shock she still doesn’t understand them, and so she and the others scurry quickly out of the tomb and into the early dawn light, glance quickly at one another and decide to run. They’ll find Peter and John, and the others, and report what they have just seen and heard.
It is later now. The men had dismissed their report as nonsense (Lk 24:11), though Peter and John had found the courage to go to the tomb. She could see they weren’t here, now, though. She had found herself back at the tomb, not sure where else to go. It was simply too much, all she wanted to do was properly anoint the body for burial, but once again chaos and confusion reigned. This seemed always the way. The rollercoaster of the last week overwhelms her, even the work she had planned for today has been taken from her, and she is left with nothing.
She stands outside the tomb, the tears flowing freely now, what else is there? Jesus died, now He is gone, some angels held out some faint hope that “He is risen from the dead”, but how can that be, and if so, where is He now? It can’t be. They must have taken the body. That must be it, what else could it be?
She stoops and looks into the tomb again, and they’re back, the two angels, sitting one at the head and the other at the foot of the place where Jesus had been laid. She hears them ask, “Dear woman, why are you crying?” (Jn 20:13). And out it comes, the confusion, the emotion, the uncertainty trying to make sense of everything, and she replies, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they have put him.” (Jn 20:14).
It is too much, she turns to leave, to run again, to try to find space to think, and through her tears and her haste she sees a man standing there. A rush of panic – is it a guard (no, no uniform or sword); is it one of the enemies (no, they wouldn’t come alone) – ah, it must be the gardener, someone who takes care of the graveyard, and before she can speak she hears Him speak first, “Dear woman, why are you crying? Who are you looking for?” (Jn 20:15).
Maybe he knows, maybe he can help, so she quickly asks, “Sir, if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and get him.” (Jn 20:15).
Looking in…
I think I get Mary Magdalene. When I try to step into her shoes, try to imagine all she went through and what she might have been thinking and feeling, and read the Gospel accounts of her actions, I have nothing but respect for her. I don’t fault her for seeing a man standing outside Jesus’ empty tomb and thinking he was a gardener, instead I love her bias towards action. She is ready to go get the body of Jesus, she will do whatever it takes, she just needs that one piece of information: where did he put the body. She is smack in the middle of shock and grief, having witnessed a horrific death, two blazing angels speaking words that don’t quite make sense, and still she is committed to doing anything she can to honor Jesus. She is still there, at the tomb – Peter and John came, looked around, and though Jn 20:8 tells us that John the disciple believed, he and Peter took off again, probably out of fear of getting caught by the Jewish leaders (at least that is how they felt that evening, hiding behind locked doors, so it seems logical to conclude that they didn’t hang around at the tomb out of that same fear). But not Mary Magdalene. She is still there, still trying to make sense of it, still trying to find out what happened to Jesus so she can honor him.
I admire the risk she took. I admire her courage to stand at the cross, her courage to come and anoint the body first thing Sunday morning, and her courage to come back to the tomb after making her report to the other disciples even though they called it “nonsense”.
She is rewarded. She is the first person to see the resurrected Jesus, to recognize Him, and to respond to Him. Mary is the first to worship the resurrected Jesus, the first witness to His defeat of death, and the first to be able to say, “I have seen the Lord!” (Jn 20:18).
But she is certainly not the last. We know Jesus appeared many more times, and revealed Himself as the resurrected Lord to many people, and we who follow Jesus today count ourselves among those to whom the resurrected Lord Jesus has revealed Himself. Our testimony, as Christians, is that we too have gone to the cross and seen our sin crucified with Christ, we too have spoken the words heard on the lips of the soldiers, “Surely, this is the Son of God” (Mk 15:39), and we too have come, like Mary, to the place of death – the tomb – and found it empty, and then we too have turned around and found a man, alive, standing there. And He speaks.
What do you see?
As we re-tell the story this weekend, what do you see? What do you hear? Jesus still lives, Jesus still speaks, so why then don’t more people see Him and hear Him? Why, maybe, have you not seen Him or heard Him speak to you – either for a long time or possibly ever?
There are lots of possible answers to that, but let me make it really simple: either you haven’t gone looking – like Mary did when she returned to the tomb; or the other voices around you are drowning out the voice of Jesus – like the other disciples who heard the fear and so ran back to the safety of the familiar upper room with a lock on the door. So here is what I want to challenge each and every one of us to this Resurrection Sunday: look, listen, and believe.
Look into the empty tomb. And now I’m not talking about the original empty tomb of Jesus, but rather the empty tomb that makes up most of our lives. You know the emptiness of which I speak – it is the existence of many people in our world who have nothing really to live for, and certainly nothing worth dying for. It is the empty tomb that says a new car or new clothes or big house are what will make you happy. It is the empty tomb that withdraws from relationships the minute they get challenging or don’t meet “my needs”. It is the empty tomb that says we aren’t really significant, we don’t really matter, no one really knows us. See, Mary went to the tomb, she looked into the tomb, but she didn’t meet Jesus in the empty tomb. He was outside, in the light, in the garden. So I’m challenging us all to look at our own lives today and ask what we really see – are we living in the sunlight, with Jesus, or are we still stuck in a place of death?
Listen for the voice of Jesus. In a moment I’m going to finish the story, but here’s a little hint: Mary hears Jesus’ voice. And when she does, everything changes. All the fear, all the grief, all the death, all the horror, all the uncertainty, all the questioning and wondering and crying are gone. Mary is transformed when she hears Jesus speak. The same is true for us. Every time we hear Jesus speak, it transforms us and makes us more alive. I heard Him speak to me on Friday, and yesterday, and I trust I will tomorrow and the next day as well. Because I want to live, with purpose and significance and power, with hope and comfort and strength, and I want you to hear Jesus speak to you and bring you life also. It can be hard to hear – there is a huge battle for our attention, all kinds of voices screaming at us and demanding we look at them, making all kids of promises to us and then ultimately destroying us. But there is One voice, that sounds above them all. It is a voice of love, and a voice of life, calling to you, inviting you to step out of the grave and into the light, and to follow Jesus.
After everything Jesus has done for us, He asks one thing in return: that we give Him our lives. This is what it means to believe. We give Him everything, and we exchange death for life, make Jesus Lord and Saviour, and live the incredible life that the resurrected Lord Jesus offers to us.
Conclusion:
As I tell the final part of Mary’s story, I wonder if you might close your eyes and use your imagination to place yourself in the garden. Try to immerse yourself in the story, imagine you were there, and open the eyes of your heart and the ears of your spirit to witness the incredible miracle of the resurrection of Jesus.
Mary is standing now outside the tomb, through her tears she sees a man and thinks he is the gardener. She quickly asks, “Sir, if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and get him.”
And then the voice speaks. It is the same voice that asked “why are you crying”, but different now, there is a depth to it, a power to it, and with one word the depth of her spirit comes to life: “Mary.”
Prayer:
Resurrected Lord Jesus,
speak my name too.
I choose to step out of death
into life
and like Mary I want to be with you.
It doesn’t all make sense to me,
but I know that I no longer want to live an empty life.
I want to live for you, and with you.
Call my name too.
Speak it above the voices around me,
show me who those voices really are and what they really want,
and set me free from their power over me.
Let me see Jesus
Let me hear Jesus
Amen.
