Dawn was still a ways off when the women set out . . . Luke doesn’t tell us who they are, until the end . . . In Matthew, it’s Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, in Mark it’s Mary and Mary and Salome, and over in John, it’s Mary Magdalene alone. Here in Luke, it’s Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and “the other women with them,” women who had been witnesses to the crucifixion, who’d stayed with Jesus and seen the tomb and how his body had been laid. Note the conspicuous lack of male disciples in the mix . . .
After the women had seen and done all that, after they’d faithfully follow Jesus to the end, they’d gone out and bought and prepared the spices required to anoint the dead. It’s not something they wanted to do, they were still grieving the loss of their beloved, and wanted nothing more than to hole up with their sorrow. In addition, the whole purpose was to disguise the stench of decay, but by Sunday morning—they couldn’t do it on the Sabbath, which began at sundown—by Sunday morning, that ship would have sailed, so it wouldn’t be a pleasant thing to do. And because it was Mary Magdalene, among others, who did the job, it helped fuel centuries of speculation about the relationship of Jesus and Mary Magdalen because, you see, normally it was the task of the wife to anoint the dead.
Be that as it may, sometime before dawn on the first day of the week, the women creep through the Jerusalem streets . . . they’d left as soon as they could see to walk, as soon as they could make out shapes in the gloom. Occasionally, they pass houses flickering with light and movement, as shopkeepers and artisans prepare for their day’s work . . . dogs yip out their morning greetings and warnings as they pass, cocks crow in anticipation of the sun, and a fine mist swirls around their feet. It isn’t far to Joseph of Arimathea’s garden tomb, where they’d laid him, but the women take it slowly, gliding through town, in no hurry to do their distasteful deed.
And as they go, they wonder how they’re going to move the huge stone disk away from the tomb’s mouth. Will there be grave-tenders about this early, or would they be forced to wait till later in the day to attend to their task? The dawn is breaking as they reach the tomb, the sun’s already beginning to heat up the air. Imagine the relief when they see the stone already rolled away, relief and confusion that this should be so, confusion that only increases when they see that the tomb is empty . . . And they stand around worrying . . . did bandits carry off the body of their beloved? Worse, had it been it a pack of the feral dogsthat haunt the countryside? Not once do they consider a third explanation, that he’d been risen from the dead . . . as good Jewish women, the thought doesn’t even cross their minds.
Tears spring up in their eyes, and they turn to go, when behold! Two young men in dazzling white are there before them, and the women throw themselves trembling on the floor of the tomb . . . and are these the same guys who would appear at Jesus’ ascension? When he returns to the side of God? Hard to know for sure, but they dosay something similar: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” And they remind them of what they already should know: that he’d told them he must be arrested, crucified and raised again.
But the way it’s phrased is more than a reminder. For one thing, it’s not a question,it’s not “Remember what he said to you?” It’s “Rememberwhat he saidto you.” In other words, they’re toldto remember, commandedto do it. And another thing and the Greek word we translate here as “remember” implies more than just the retrieval of a memory. It implies bringing past actions to bear on the present, resulting in new power and insight. The same word appears in Mary’s Magnificat with reference to God helping Israel “in remembrance of God’s mercy,” and in the crucified thief’s plea, “Jesus, remember me.” It’s a tangible, consequential form of remembrance, a kind of remembering that is also a kind of action. The women at the tomb are told to bring to recollection what Jesus had told them, and then let that combineor interactwith what they are witnessing. It carries the force of both an epiphany anda commission: they remember his words, they take stock of them and, in light of what they experience at the tomb, they return from there and tell all this to the eleven and to the rest. The past recollection colors what they experience, and together they form what they do in the future.
That’skindof how it’s supposed to work for everyone, isn’t it? What we’ve been told in the past impingesupon the present, it informsour view of what’s going on, and then interactswith our present experience to determine a course of action. Like the women, we’re to remember what we’ve been told, especially with regards to how we are supposed to live as children of God. And what we’ve been toldcomes from a variety of sources, doesn’t it? It comes from Scripture, from the combined wisdom of fellow believers who were on the ground floor, so to speak, who were thereor close tothe seminal events of our faith. And there are other sources . . . there are the accumulated teaching of the church. The written wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers. The livedwisdom of ordinary Christians, distilled and passed down in written and oral form. All of this is what Christians have been told.
But as the Greek word implies, there is anothercrucial ingredient: our own, lived experience. We can’t take any of these sources in isolation, including scripture, despite Luther’s famous dictum sola scriptura.Even thatwas a remembrance, in this passage’s sense: Luther took what he’d been told, the holy scripture, and let it inform what he’d experienced as excesses of the church, and voilá:ninety-five theses, nailed to a church door. We Presbyterians have even codified the command as “Reformed and always being reformed by the Word of God.” In practice, this has meant that the church is always to be reformed by what it has been told—aka the Word of God in all its forms. Including, of course, the Word as expressed in science, history, the arts . . . all influenced by the church’s present experience, what it sees and feels in the world.
Well. The women remember Christ’s words to them, there on that first Easter morn, they experiencethe empty tomb, and they are driven to action: they return from the tomb and tell the eleven—cowering somewhere in fear of the authorities—about what they had experienced. And they scoffed and laughed at them, and refused to believe them, because were they not women? And were not women subject to hysteria, to anxious thoughts and deed? And besides, even though all of them had heardJesus’ words—that he’d be handed over to be crucified, and on the third day rise again—none of them had experiencedthem. None of them had seen the empty tomb, none of them had talk to the shining men.
But now Peter—who embodies both the best and the worst in the apostles, both you-are-the-Messiah faith and deny-three-times doubt—Peter gets up and runs—runs!—to the tomb, sees the grave-clothes by themselves, and goes home amazed. And does he also believe? I think so. I think that like the women earlier, he has remembered what Jesus had said: he’s recalled the words and experienced the reality of the empty tomb, and it has sent him flying home in amazement.
Brothers and sisters, we are Peter . . . Peter who expresses doubt and who also expresses great faith. And like Peter, we do not really believe, do we not really knowuntil we’ve experienced the empty tomb. I know, I know . . . despite what the song says, we were notthere at the empty tomb, any more than we were physicallythere when they crucified my Lord. And yet, just as we crucify him by our doubt, by our stubborn refusal to give our lives as totally as he gave his, we experience the empty tomb, we experience the resurrection, every day of our lives? Is it not there in the Spring, as life arises anew after the barrenness of winter? Is it not there as despair is turned into fragile, unlooked for hope? Is it not there as sorrow is resurrected into joy?
Friends, resurrection is all around us, in the overwhelming good that’s in our world, in the life that is everyday snatched from death’s bony grip. That’s what the resurrection represents, isn’t it? It’s what we, like the women at the tomb, are commanded to remember. The ultimate banishment of darkness, the ultimate realization of Pau’s cry: Death, where is thy sting, grave where is thy victory. And it’s all summed up by one phrase: He is risen; he is risen indeed. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment