Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into
Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with
him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by
the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we
will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our
old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and
we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But
if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We
know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no
longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all;
but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves
dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Mark 16:1-8
When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the
mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint
him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they
went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the
stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” When they looked up, they saw that
the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered
the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right
side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are
looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not
here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and
Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as
he told you.” So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement
had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
This is the Word of the Lord.
What if all we had to go on – what if all the information we
had about the Resurrection of Jesus Christ – was this passage from the Gospel
of Mark? What if, as many scholars and historians believe, this Gospel ended
right here… and what if no other Gospel had ever been written?
We may, then, begin to understand the reaction of the women
that morning.
After all, they had been there. They had sat at the foot of
the cross, weeping, as Jesus breathed his agonized last breath. They’d watched
as Joseph of Arimethea and Nicodemus had Jesus’ body taken down, and fairly
whisked him away to a garden tomb before night fell.
There had been no time to treat Jesus’ body properly. No
washing, anointing, nothing. The stone was rolled in place with moments to
spare before the Sabbath began.
They went back to the Upper Room, of course. Where else was
there to go? There were the men, wide-eyed in fear, numb with grief, jumping
with every sound, sure the Roman legionnaires or the temple guards were going to
burst in at any moment and drag them away to nail them to crosses of their own.
As Resurrection People, living on this side of the
resurrection, whenever we bother to think of that Saturday, “Holy Saturday” it’s
called, I guess for lack of a better name, we often think of it as a day of
waiting. Waiting for Sunday, waiting for everything to be OK again because
Jesus was back, waiting for Easter sunrise.
But there was none of that. Death was death, after all. The
stone was in place, as permanent a symbol of the end of life, of hope, of the
future as the moment we see the casket sealed, lowered into the ground, and the
dirt thrown in on top of the vault. Tomorrow is irrelevant. It’s over.
For those disciples, for the women, aside from the
occasional whispered conversation, isolated sobs and sniffles, the bodies
crowded into that dark, stuffy Upper Room are alone in the silence, remembering
what had been, trying to comprehend how it could all be over.
Perhaps there, in the darkness imposed first by the night,
then the tightly closed windows, and then the night yet again, they’d
remembered the things Jesus had said. Perhaps they recounted how he’d nearly
been killed that first time he’d preached in a synagogue, and how he’d cast the
demon out in Capernaum. Peter might have talked about Jesus healing his
mother-in-law, while over in another corner, John talked about Jesus turning
water into wine.
As the night wore on, Peter would have gotten some gentle
ribbing over how he started to sink when he walked on the water toward Jesus,
and they would all laugh a little sadly at themselves over how terrified they
were when they saw Jesus walking on the water in the first place. Peter would
have ended up getting a pat on the back, I bet, for being the one brave enough
to try it himself. It wouldn’t help ease the knot he felt in his gut, though,
the terrible knowledge that Jesus had been right about him all along… he’d
betrayed Jesus, right there where Jesus could hear him do it!
Still, the stories would thread along for hours: healing the
lepers, bringing sight to the blind (remember Bartimaeus? Yelling and
screaming, he wasn’t gonna take ‘no’ for an answer!), and that time Jesus had
healed the Temple ruler’s favorite servant without even going to his house.
After awhile, the stories tapered off. It sunk in that this
was all they had, memories. Jesus was dead, gone, and the adventures, the
discoveries, the preaching and the miracles were over.
So horribly, bloodily, painfully, permanently over.
I wonder if it was Mary Magdalene who first thought about
going and completing the preparation of the body?
We don’t know a lot about Mary Magdalene, except that at
some point in the past, Jesus had cast seven demons out of her. Lots of legends
and suppositions and wild fabrications fly around about her, and I will not go
into them here. All we know is that
she traveled with the disciples, and was there at the end, and she figures
heavily in the Resurrection accounts.
I can imagine her sitting in the corner of that room,
listening to the stories, getting tired of it all, knowing that none of them
understood what Jesus had done for her. For s many years she had been
tormented, tortured, listening constantly to all those voices in her head, running
about madly doing all the vile things the voices had made her do, and Jesus had
made them go away, forever!
She had followed Jesus everywhere not because she thought he
was going to be King of Israel, not because she wanted to overthrow Rome, not
because she thought she’d get a sweet gig in the coming Kingdom of God. She
followed Jesus because Jesus had set her free!
Through the shuttered windows, she could see the twilight
before dawn. She gathered Salome and the other Mary, James’ mom, and they left,
waking up some merchants to buy spices on the way to that garden tomb. Preparing
the body was the right thing to do for Jesus, after all, an act of honor for a
man who had meant so much to them all.
As they neared the last hill before the garden, Salome
stopped short. “The stone! How are we gonna move that big ol’ thing?” The other
Mary slowed, concern creasing her brow, but Mary Magdalene never broke stride. “We’ll
figure it out,” she said over her shoulder.
What they saw as they walked into the garden made them all
stop short. They didn’t have to worry about moving the stone – it had been
rolled away.
Rushing into the tomb, they were more or less successful
stifling screams of shock: in the place they expected to see the hastily-draped
body of their Lord… there was some guy. It made no sense.
“Don’t be scared,” he said, and no one pointed out how silly
a statement that was. “You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was
crucified.” Well, yeah…
Then he said something astounding. Breathtaking. Impossible.
“He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him.”
A long moment, the women staring at the man, then at the
cold, stone slab where the graveclothes lay empty. Then he spoke again: “Go,
tell his disciples – and especially Peter – that he is going ahead of you to
Galilee. That’s where you’ll see him, just like he told you.”
I’ll ask again: What if that was all the information you had
to go on? What if you leave the Resurrection narrative there, with the women
running in terror – arguably holy terror – from the tomb, and that’s all you’ve
got?
Is it enough? Can we, on this alone, be Resurrection People?
Absolutely.
The women walked toward a tomb they thought was sealed. They
needed the stone rolled away. Mind you, the resurrected Christ, in other places
in the Gospel accounts, appears to disciples behind locked doors. He didn’t
need the stone rolled away, apparently he could walk right through that kind of
stuff.
The women needed
the stone rolled away.
They needed the obstacle removed so that they could see.
They needed to see
the empty slab with the tangled and bloody graveclothes.
They needed to see so that they could hear the message, the glorious, impossible, wonderful message that
Jesus Christ had risen from the dead!
They may have run away in terror, yes, but they ran to tell that Good News! Good News that
would bring those fearful, confused, forlorn disciples into the joy of the
Resurrection!
You and I have the benefit of other Gospel accounts, of
course. We know that others, Peter and John, specifically, saw the empty tomb.
We know that Jesus physically appeared to the women, to the disciples, to the travelers
on their way to Emmaus, to five hundred people at once, and on and on. We know
that there were witnesses as Jesus ascended to heaven.
Most of all, because the stone was rolled away, we Resurrection
People know that the tomb wasn’t the end. It was the beginning.
Richard Rohr observed that “most of human life is Holy
Saturday,” and it makes sense – for us, the caskets still lower into the
ground, and the dirt still gets piled on, and that is that. Whatever the plans
for tomorrow, whatever the hopes for the future, all of that gets sealed in
when the casket’s lid is closed.
And so much of the world lives like that’s all there is.
Greed, hatred, oppression, bullying, class warfare, racism, sexism, all the
endless consumerism and power grabs – men and women struggling to get all they
can in the here and now, because there is nothing else.
So much of the world struggles for enough to eat, for clean
water to drink, for a safe place for their children to sleep, without fear of
being kidnapped and forced to fight in a rebel army, or sold as slaves, every
one of them the victim of someone else’s greed or hatred or lust for power,
someone else living like that’s all there is.
But we know, you and I, we know differently, don’t we? We
know that the stone has been rolled away. We have heard the message. We are
Resurrection People.
And because of this, we have a mission.
The first message to the women and the disciples following the
Resurrection was “go.” But with that command is a promise, did you hear it? “But
go, tell his disciples and Peter that he
is going ahead of you to Galilee…”
Jesus’ last word to his disciples, and by extension to us, was
“Go.”
Go.
Go and carry the message of the cross, go and carry the
glorious Good News of the Resurrection, with the knowledge that, wherever we
go, whoever we meet with that Good News: when we clothe the naked, feed the
hungry, give shelter to the homeless, visit the sick and imprisoned; whenever
we speak the truth to power about oppression and marginalization; whenever we
confront the evils of racism and class warfare and the status quo which crush
the spirits and lives of the poor; whenever we do these things, Jesus has gone
ahead of us.
The stone has been rolled away.
He is not here, for he has risen.
Go!
No comments:
Post a Comment