Colossians 3:1-4
John 20:1-18
First Service of Easter (
The Empty Tomb; The Empty Grave
What was Mary Magdalene
expecting to find in the garden? Was she expecting to find a tomb? Well, she did. Did she expect to find the body of her dead
friend and teacher? I'm sure she did,
but that's not what she ultimately found.
It's funny, when she saw that the stone had been rolled back, her
initial response was that someone had taken Jesus' body. It wasn't the good news of the resurrection;
it was the bad news of grave robbers.
Simon Peter and the other disciple too jumped to the conclusion that
Jesus' body had been stolen instead of understanding that Jesus had been resurrected.
I wonder
why they jumped to the conclusion that Jesus' body was stolen instead of
remembering the prophesies of resurrection?
As we read scripture today, we readily recognize the significance of
most of the prophesies concerning the resurrection. We recognize those from the Old Testament as
well as the prophesies Jesus himself told the disciples. We recognize these prophesies yet we weren't
physically there like Simon Peter, Mary Magdalene, and the other disciple. Why did they miss the significance of the
empty tomb when we seem to get it?
Many of us
grew up with being told the significance.
I'm sure that has something to do with it. Yet I wonder just how different we are from
these saints of the Church? I don't so
much wonder if we would react any different from them if we were in their shoes
2,000 years ago. Instead, I wonder if we
react with the same focus on the world today as they did then.
It seems
easier to believe in the resurrection of Christ when we're so distanced from
it. We can talk of this miracle as myth
and legend while still feeling confident that we'd be considered sane by the
today's world standards today. But what
would happen if we claimed that this same miracle still happens today? What if we walkout to that graveyard and
claim that all the graves are empty and that people hadn't stolen the bodies,
but that they are resurrected? What if
we actually found those graves empty?
Wouldn't we be tempted to claim theft just as Peter, Mary, and the other
disciple did in order to keep from ridicule?
Nonetheless, I tell you, the graves of the saints are as good as empty,
for a saint dies in Christ and so is resurrected with Christ. The graves out there in the graveyard are
essentially empty, because the tomb is empty.
This
concept of the empty tomb meaning that the graves are empty is a hard concept
for us to wrap our minds around. We're
human, we're carnal beings, we live in a physical material world. We think in terms of the physical and the
material. And when the physical and
material is no more, we try our hardest to hold on to any part of the physical
material object that we can. Mary,
Peter, and the other disciple are much like us.
They wanted to hold unto the physical and material. They wanted to see Jesus' dead body and
panicked when they couldn't. Mary wanted
to hold onto her understanding of physical reality that she didn't even
recognize Jesus when he was physically in front of her!
Mary,
Peter, and the other disciple knew the rules of creation that stated death is
final and eternal. They physically saw
Jesus die. What they didn't take into
consideration was the ruler of creation who says that life is eternal. This kind of situation is what the author of
Colossians was talking about when we're told to set our minds on things that
are above and not on things that are on earth.
When we look at the graveyard, what do we see? Do we see as the world sees; land full of
graves, a resting place for the dead? Or
do we see as Christ would have us see; the empty tomb? With our minds set with things that are above
we do not see a resting place of the dead, but instead we see the empty tomb.
The
resurrection of Jesus Christ is the good news we as the Church proclaim. And that good news finds expression in all
aspects of our life; even in how we view a graveyard. Those graves are empty because the tomb was
empty. I encourage you to walk through
that graveyard and look at the tombstones.
As you do so, remember that as Christians, we do not remember the saints
because they died; we remember them because they continue to live. That is what this story from Saint John's
Gospel means for us; that's the good news we are to proclaim - death has no
power, Christ's resurrection is our resurrection, the tomb is empty, ALELUIA!
SDG