Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:1-2,14-24; 1 Cor 15:1-11; John 20:1-18
He lives! He lives. He lives.
In November of 2007 my wife’s dad died. We knew it was coming. We knew his cancer was terminal for a few months. We watched him fade. We knew it was only a matter of time. But when that time came it just didn’t seem real, like it had actually happened. How can someone who loved you for so long, and who you loved for so long, be dead? Even as I stood there hugging his dead body… it just didn’t seem real, that it could have actually happened.
Moving through Holy Week, and especially Good Friday, thinking about the devastation brought by the death of Joann’s dad, I’ve thought very deeply about what that first Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday would have been like. I’ve tried to picture those days through the eyes of the disciples, through the eyes of Jesus’ mother Mary, through the eyes of the Romans and the Jewish leaders, through the eyes of Judas the betrayer and Peter the denier, even through the eyes of Jesus himself. So much fear, so much heartache, so much devastating loss, so much unimaginable violence.
I tried to imagine what the disciples felt hearing about the crucifixion from someone else. To sit with them as they spent Friday and Saturday wondering how they had so misunderstood Jesus’ ministry. To understand what it must have been like to go from the top of the world to the rock bottom pit in just one short week. To look at their future in complete fear and dread now that their Lord was gone. How could this have happened?
I tried to imagine what it was like for Mary to watch her beloved brutalized and killed so publicly. To be a woman in an age where you had so little status that it wasn’t dangerous to be near the site of a crucifixion. To walk up to that tomb on the third day, ready to prepare your beloved’s beaten and bruised body for the decay that accompanies death. How could this be real?
It was a couple of months later that I started having dreams about Joann’s dad. The strangest thing was, in my dreams he was still alive. In my dreams his death was unreal. I would see him in my dreams and be so relived. I’d try to figure out why I had thought he was dead, how he had somehow been saved from his cancer. I never figured it out but I didn’t care, because in that world he was still alive.
Even stranger was when I would wake from one of those dreams. In this reality he was dead, still dead. It was such a letdown, to say the least. For a while it was jarring moving from a reality of death to a dream of life and back to a reality of death again.
And so on the third day, the day to prepare Jesus’ dead body, Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb before dawn and finds the latest atrocity: the tomb is empty and Jesus’ body is missing. Not only has her Lord been taken from her in violent death, but now even his body has been taken in one final insult.
Mary runs back to tell the disciples, Peter and the one Jesus loved, that the body is missing from the tomb. Peter and the other disciple race each other back to the tomb and witness the lack of a body. All they find is the burial garments that Jesus’ wore when he was laid in the tomb. Peter and the other disciple think nothing more of it and head back, the words Jesus spoke about his rising again not clicking in their minds somehow. In this reality Jesus is dead, the Teacher is gone, end of story.
But Mary stays behind weeping, because the reality of Jesus’ death on Friday is only magnified by the disappearance of his body. Mary doesn’t even have his corpse to hang onto now in her grief, and so she weeps in utter despair.
But as Mary weeps and keeps vigil outside the deep darkness of the tomb, as if in response to her tears and her prayers, two figures appear in the lifeless cave, two angels sitting where Jesus’ body had been placed. And as though they are completely oblivious to Mary’s pain they ask the question, “Why are you weeping?”
As I continued to have dreams about him, I began to notice that there was something different about Joann’s dad as he was alive in my dreams. It was him, but something about him was different. Something about him was new. It looked like him, it sounded like him, but he had something there in my dreams that eluded him in this life: peace. He was always peaceful in my dreams, just happy to be there. He was no longer tortured by the things that disturbed him in his life, no longer anxious or heartbroken, no longer haunted by the traumas of his childhood, he was just… beautiful him.
As Mary explains the source of her despair to the figures in the tomb, a new voice calls to her from outside the tomb, outside in the beautiful, sunlit garden. “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?”
Mary turns to the man, still filled with expectations of death that blind her to the new life that stands before her. “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”
Jesus must be chuckling to himself, but also filled with excitement as he calls his friend’s name.
“Mary!”
I can’t even imagine what’s going on in Mary’s mind as she finally sees the man in front of her for who he really is.
“Rabbi! Teacher!”
From my dreams I can only partially imagine the emotion going through Mary’s heart as her beloved once again stands before her. Jesus stands in front of her, no longer dead but resurrected, what once was dead but now still lives.
Today the promise becomes real. Today the price paid by Jesus for us on the hard wood of the cross pays full dividends. Jesus paid for us the cost of our trespasses, our debts, our sins, he swallowed them up in his death, and by his resurrection he paved the way for us to the Father.
And not just the way to the Father, but also to all those we thought we had lost. We are all mortal, and one day each and every one of us will leave this world to become a part of what comes next. But because of what Jesus Christ did for us on Friday, we too will one day hear voices that we thought we would never hear again, and feel the warm embrace of all those loved ones who have passed on before us, now asking us, “Why are you weeping?”
The Good News today is that because of what Jesus Christ did for us on Friday we too will one day emerge from the darkness of our tomb and enter into a great garden. And in that garden we will once again recognize the faces of those we thought we’d lost for all time – fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, wives and husbands, friends and lovers. And as we stand in disbelief looking into those familiar faces, now somehow the same but somehow different as their faces radiate with the glow of resurrected life, we too will know that the promise that Jesus made for us on the cross is true – eternal life together.
The Good News is that, on that day we arrive in that garden, the one who suffered death for us, the one who has always prayed for us and waited for us, the one who knows us and loves us as no other can, our loving Lord Jesus Christ greets us in that same heavenly garden. He has waited patiently, He has waited excitedly, He has waited faithfully to put his arm around us and to walk with us in that garden, and to say, “Welcome home beloved. Welcome home good and faithful servant. Welcome home.” And on that day we will make our song, “Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!”