John 20:1-18
April 12, 2020
Standing here in a
relatively empty sanctuary on Easter Sunday feels like something that every
pastor fears – not just fears, but has active, cold sweat nightmares about. It
is Easter Sunday, and no one comes to the church. Even in the smallest and
quietest of churches, you can generally expect to have somewhat of a crowd on
Easter. So standing in this relatively empty sanctuary on this Easter Sunday –
well throw in some snakes, a math class that apparently I signed up for but
never attended and a final exam I didn’t know about, and this could be a
customized Amy anxiety dream.
Except for it’s not. Outside of
myself, Teresa, Charlotte, and my husband, Brent, this is it. The rest of you
are home and hunkered down and waiting. What we are waiting for, normalcy,
leaving our homes, going to work, going to church, to school, to playgrounds
and parks, to Target or Walmart, unmasked and unafraid, well none of us knows
when that time will return. We don’t have an end date. We can’t predict the
future or how things might turn out. So we are waiting.
More than one commentator and
biblical scholar has made the point in the last weeks that we are experiencing
an Easter much more like the first Easter than we ever have before. Our Easter
services before this year, this Easter, tended to be filled with pomp and
pageantry, wonderful music, flowers, bonnets, bright raiment, joyful singing
and so on. Don’t get me wrong, when we can back to that, I will be leading the
way in pomp, pageantry, etc. But the first Easter – the followers of Jesus did
not even know it was Easter.
Rolf Jacobsen of WorkingPreacher.org
made the point that what so many of us do these days is wake up and look to see
what Death has done during the night. Mary did the same thing. She went to the
tomb, looking to see what Death had done in the darkness of the tomb to her
beloved Teacher.
But instead of seeing the
consequences of Death, she saw the action of the Divine. She found the tomb empty.
She found the tomb empty. The stone
had been rolled away. She did not understand what she was seeing at first. She
responded how any of us might have – she thought someone had come and taken
away his body. Her grief at his execution must have been compounded by the
grief she felt at finding him gone.
So she ran. Maybe she ran blindly,
tears stinging her eyes, stumbling as she went. She ran to find Simon Peter and
the other disciples and told them what she had seen, what she thought she had
seen. She must have been breathless and crying and scared and grieving when she
reached them. Her words must have come out like a plea, like a command, like
the anguished cry of a woman who has lost everything.
“They have taken the Lord out of the
tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”
Peter and the other disciple ran
then. They ran together, but the other disciple reached the tomb first. He
looked into the tomb and saw the linen that had wrapped his Teacher, but he did
not go in. Peter came up behind him. He did not stop with just looking. He went
inside. He also the linens, rolled up and left. The other disciple followed
Peter in. He saw what Peter saw. The gospel says that he believed, but neither
one of them understood.
How did Mary make her way back to
the tomb? Did she run after the two men? Or did she walk behind, slower,
weeping harder now. What was the point in running? He was gone. She could not
make him ready for a proper burial. He was just gone.
She was weeping when she reached the
tomb for the second time. She was weeping when the two male disciples inspected
the emptiness. She was weeping when they left her there. She was weeping when
she also bent down and looked inside. Maybe the angels in white were not there
when Peter and the other disciple went inside; maybe they just couldn’t see
them. But Mary saw them plainly. One sat where Jesus’ head had rested. The
other sat where his feet lay.
“Woman, why are you weeping?”
Mary cried out once again,
“They have taken away my Lord, and I do
not know where they have laid him.”
With these words, she turned around and
saw Jesus. She didn’t know he was Jesus. He was just a man standing behind her.
He must not have looked like Jesus did, or else her grief kept her from truly
seeing him. But Mary thought he was the gardener, the caretaker. And she cried
out to him to tell her where her Lord had been taken. Please.
Jesus had only to call her name, Mary, and
she knew. Her eyes were opened. Her heart was opened. Her mind was opened. She
knew him. She saw him. He was alive! He was risen!
The tomb might have been empty, but the
world was now full.
One of my Old Testament professors from
seminary, William Brown, wrote a piece about lifting up the empty this day,
this particular Easter day. The tomb where Jesus was laid was empty not because
of what Death had done, but because of what God had done. The empty tomb
launched resurrection into the world. The empty tomb launched new life into the
world. The empty tomb was not really empty, and I am not talking about the
angels who were there or the linen wrappings. The empty tomb was not really
empty because God was there. It was empty only to those who could not see. The
empty tomb was filled with the Holy and the power and mystery of our God. The
empty tomb was filled with Life.
Our church is not empty this day. God is
here. God is with you in your homes. God is in the world. And though the world
still seems stuck in the darkness of Good Friday, and Death still seeks to do
its worst, the grave does not win.
The. Grave. Does. Not. Win.
Christ is risen!
Christ is risen!
CHRIST IS RISEN!
What was empty is now full. Thanks be to
God!
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Amen.
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