The Most They Hope for is a Body, Prostrate and Cold. . .
Preached at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
Brunswick, ME
Easter Vigil 2024
Mark 16:1-8
Walking gravelly paths, three women make their way, weighted with grief and jars of spiced oil. In the cool morning air, they are likely wrapped in scarves, woven by womens’ labor, their own or their mothers’ or their sisters’.
What draws them out so early? Certainly their love for Jesus, whom they’ve followed through his ministry, his passion, and now his death. And certainly duty, to annoint the body now that the sabbath is over.
They support one another in this solemn task. The most they hope for is to reach Jesus’ body, prostrate and cold, undisturbed behind the stone.
The women express their anxiety to one another, who will roll away the stone, how will we get to Jesus? Will they be able to do the last thing they CAN do for him? Relationship compels them––their relationship to Jesus, to the Law and its burial rituals, and to one another.
They have awoken early, dressed, prepared spices for travel, walked a distance, worrying as they walk and when they arrive, the stone has been rolled back. Jesus is not there.
Scripture reads, “they were alarmed.” Other translations read, “they were shocked with astonishment” (Orthodox Jewish Bible).
Or “They were affrighted” (KJV). Not so affrighted, mind you, as the other disciples, who sit locked in a room in fear. No. These three are present, prepared––they thought– to attend to death’s sad ministrations.
When I try to identify with this feeling, the empty tomb feeling, I remember when I was raising young kids. If you have cared for children, you know the feeling when, in public, you glance up to where the child should be and the child is not there. Cold, hollow fear.
The one I love is not there. Jesus is not there. Instead, they see a stranger, a messenger clothed in white.
St. Paul tells us in Corinthians, “...If Christ has NOT been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith” (I Cor 15:14, NIV).
Jesus was not a community organizer who pled a logical case for embracing the marginalized. Jesus is God cracking open creation so that eternity might enter in, God transgressing, disrupting, tearing open, inverting power.Hierarchy is inverted because he rises bodily.
Anglican theologian N.T. Wright states, “No tyrant is threatened by Jesus going to heaven, leaving his body in a tomb. No governments face the authentic Christian challenge when the church's social preaching tries to base itself in Jesus' teaching, detached from the central and energizing fact of his resurrection . . . (The Resurrection of the Son of God).
Conquering death thwarts the murderousness of empire. But the inbreaking of God came not only to bring down the mighty form their thrones, but for all us. Jesus came to love us so that we might love like God.
Jesus instructs us, If someone wants to take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile (Mt 5: 40, 41).
And, “[Love] does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.” (I Cor 13:5)
And “Love your enemies. Pray for those who hurt you” (Mt 5:44).
This is love that asks much of us. This is love that costs. Like the LOVE cost Jesus everything. God who is LOVE from the source of all LOVE is crucified.
The greatest weapon of evil people is torture and death. And so crystalline pure, eternal LOVE succumbs to the worst humanity has to offer. And still love has the final word.
John Updike says it thus:
Make no mistake: if He rose at all it was as His body; if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino acids rekindle, the Church will fall. . . (“Seven Stanzas at Easter”)
Here is the crux: the death of the infinitely GOOD is avenged not by revenge or violence but with LIFE. He rises in GLORY.
As a trinity of mourning women approach the tomb, the stone has been rolled away.
Again, John Updike:
Let us not mock God with metaphor, Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence, Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded Credulity of earlier ages: Let us walk through the door…
The women, bereft, cobbling together some agency with spices and oil on an early morning, are astonished, amazed, affrighted,
Then an angel in bright white standing within the chill dark of the tomb tells them, and when he tells them, he instructs them to preach to the other disciples.
The angel tells them, and so do I TELL YOU and I BELIEVE IT TO BE TRUE:
Jesus is risen from the dead! Alleluia!