“After
the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the
other Mary went to see the tomb.” What a
lot is packed into that one, terse statement.
What a lot of sorrow, what a lot of pain, what a lot of good, old-fashioned
chutzpah. . . Here they were, Mary
and Mary, two women, status barely
above slave, heading to the tomb of an executed criminal. You didn't see Peter doing that, or James or John or Andrew . . . They
were hiding out, shaking like rabbits in some dark hole or another. But the Marys go, even though they know what
they'll find, because hadn't they been there, huddled across from the tomb when
Joseph of Arimathea placed the body in it?
Hadn't they been there when he rolled a big old rock in front of its entrance?
Why did
they feel the need to see the tomb? It surely didn't look any different than it
did two days before, on that Friday Christians would eventually call “good.”
The
Marys wouldn't have called it that, of course; they doubtless would have
thought it pretty perverse . . . Of course, that morning, they were on the
other side of the resurrection, so they wouldn't have seen the good in it, just
the suffering, just the pain as the nails were pounded in, just the gasping
like a beached fish as he drowned in his own fluids. And can I tell you a secret? I've always thought calling that Friday
“good” to be a little perverse myself . . .
Anyway. The women were afraid, of course they were,
but they went anyway, and was it just the grief of loved ones, not able to stay
away? Is it the desire common to the
bereaved, then as well as now, to simply be
where their loved ones are? They had to
know it was dangerous, they had to know it was guarded . . . They had to know
that they might be branded as insurrectionists, guilty by association . . . That
was why Peter and company were hiding out so courageously.
And
as they crept out of their home, tendrils of mist wrapped around their legs,
and they pulled their cloaks tighter at the chill. The shops and houses
around them were dim and indistinct, shadows looming in the silence. A dog barked nearby, a half-hearted yip, just
doing its job, you understand, just going through the motions before slinking
back to its master’s bedside. Nobody wanted to be up on this morning after
Sabbath, this first day of the week, not even the dogs.
Nobody
except the Marys, who slipped along like wraiths in the dawning, not speaking but
communicating nevertheless: by attitude and gesture and the unspoken intuition of
long association and love. As they got
closer to the tomb, the light brightened and a stone settled in their stomachs,
a heavy, leaden feeling of hopelessness, and once again they wondered what they
were doing, why they were reliving the anguish . . . what possible good could it
do to look at the tomb one last time?
They
rounded a corner, and there it was, cut into the hillside like a wound, and
they have a split-second image of the stone and the half-asleep guards then
behold! the earth began to shake and ripple like water and they were knocked to
the ground. When it was over, they picked
themselves up and saw that the guards—the big, tough Roman guards—had fainted dead
away, and the stone had been rolled back.
But
that wasn't the most amazing thing, for there, perched on the stone was an
angel, crackling like lightening yet white as snow. His movements were quick and birdlike, and he
looked pretty self-satisfied, just sitting on top of that rock, flicking his
wings to get the feathers just so. He cocked
his head at the Marys, fixed the them with a beady eye, and said “Do not be
afraid” and the women thought “Yeah, right, that
ship has already sailed,” but as if he divined their thoughts, the angel said
“No, really . . . Do not fear. I know who you're looking for, I know
you're looking for Jesus the crucified one.” And sure enough, the women’s fears
abated, just a little—after all, if this creature knew their beloved, why maybe
it wasn't going to eat them just yet.
“I
know who you're looking for,” the angel said “but he is not here. For he has been raised, as he told you.” And at the word “raised” the Marys’ hearts skipped
a beat, and the air was sucked from their lungs and they bent over to
recover. The angel smirked a little as
he saw the effect of his words. Well,
they were told, he thought . . . It
shouldn't have come as that much of a
surprise . . .
“Come,”
he said, jerking his head toward the mouth of the tomb, “come see where he lay.” And as the women peered into the darkened maw
and saw that indeed he wasn’t there, the angel gave them the rest of his
message: “go quickly and tell his disciples ‘he has been raised from the dead,
and he is going ahead of you, into Galilee.
There you will see him.’ That's
my message to you.” And the angel began
to preen again, shaking his feathers, no longer acknowledging the women’s
presence.
Which
didn't hurt their feelings any, because they were so excited at the thought of
seeing Jesus again, being bathed in his presence again, that they were shaking. When they finally got their wits about them
it was fully daylight, and they began to run back to town, heedless of the
still-groggy guards, heedless of any religious authorities that might be prowling
around, heedless even of the rough ground they had to traverse.
Well. By some miracle, neither of them fell in
their headlong flight, neither of them took a header, but they were brought up short one more time, for
Behold! Jesus himself appeared before
them, big as day and said “Greetings!” as if he'd never been gone, as if they
hadn't seen him nailed to a cross, as if they hadn't seen that big old stone
rolled in front of that tomb.
“Greetings,” he said, and they fell down on the ground at his feet in
love and gratitude, then he, like the
angel, told them not to be afraid, and again
they were taken aback, this time
because how could they be scared? How
could they be afraid of their beloved?
But
Jesus said “Do not fear, go and tell my
brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” And those last words hung in the air like a
brilliant flare, “see me.” See me! And
suddenly the women understood, as do we, why they'd stumbled out of their warm
beds on this first day of the week, why they'd given up their restless mourning
for action, why they had braved the authorities and their own renewed pain to
be there on that first morning of the new creation: to see.
And
we should have known, we should have known . . . The scene is full of seeing,
it's wrapped in it . . . It's in the first verse and the last, and in ten
verses it appears in some form or another no less than eight times (including
four times that it's hidden in our translation … though it doesn't read as
sight to us, it would have to Matthew’s congregation). The Marys went to see the tomb, to behold it
in sorrow, and they saw it all right, but it wasn't what they expected . . .
They expected to see the tomb unmolested, they expected to see it sealed . . . They
expected the body of their beloved to be safely inside, where they could always
come to see him, or at least where he lay . . .
And
that’s sad. That’s heartbreaking, but it's also safe, it’s expected, they know what to make of it. They’d come and see the tomb—often at first,
but with decreasing frequency—and they'd put flowers on it or little flags, and
they could compartmentalize their memories of him, keep them in a little box,
away from their everyday life . . . “We knew this guy once named Jesus, and we
thought he would change the world, but he died instead . . . Funny, we try to
conjure up what he looked like, but can’t . . .”
They’d
come to see a memory, something already in the past, something they could enshrine
in their hearts, maybe embellish a little—that Jesus . . . What a kidder. They'd come to see a memory, but what they saw was anything but. What they saw was God’s new thing, a living,
breathing embodiment of Paul's exclamation:
“See? A new creation!” Right there before them, in front of their
very eyes, they saw.
Sisters
and brothers: on this beautiful Easter
morning, what have you come to see? Have
you come to see the choir sing? Have you
come to see the strings play, or my stumbling efforts at a sermon? Maybe you've come to see the lilies, they're
gorgeous, aren't they? And the strings
were fabulous and the choir was glorious, and it sure wouldn’t be a worship
service without them.
And
. . . If you've come to see the living Christ, you've come to the right
place. If you've come to see God's new
thing, welcome to the party. If you've
come to see all things made new, Christ through and through, infusing everyone,
inhabiting everything, if you've come to relish and experience and encounter Jesus of Nazareth, have I got
a deal for you.
But
this isn't the only location, it's not the only place. The angel told us that Jesus goes before us,
to Galilee, to the place where dwelt his earthly mission, and so he does
today. He goes ahead of us, into all of
creation, into mean streets and palaces, markets and residences, bars and
bar-mitzvahs. He goes before us into the
world, where the ministry is, and spreads his arms, and do you know what he
says? Come see.
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