Christ is Risen! May God’s great Alleluia resound deeply in your heart. May the power of God, which brought Christ forth from the tomb, overflow in your life. May the joy of the Resurrection claim you today and always.
Each gospel offers a different view on who comes to Jesus’s grave early Sunday morning. For John, Mary Magdalene travels alone, setting off while it is still dark. In Matthew, she is joined by another Mary, the mother of James. Mark’s gospel account adds to the two Marys a third traveler, Salome. Luke begins his resurrection witness with a simple “they” arrive at the tomb” as the deep shadows of night give way to the sun’s first rays. “They” are a group of women who have traveled with Jesus since his days in Galilee, providing companionship and financial support. Luke names three of them, but the group is likely larger; women who accompany Jesus to Jerusalem, who walk behind him as he carried his cross up Golgotha’s hill, who pray through their tears while watching him die, and now are tasked with preparing his body for burial.
Joanna is among the group of tomb-visitors. All we know about her is her husband’s name, Chuza, and his role, an officer in Herod’s court. Joanna has left her home in Galilee, trading the protection of kingly connection for itinerant life, swapping the security of her husband’s position for the risky love of God. I imagine Joanna as young, gusty, and independent. But maybe she is mature, weathered by the years, steadily ready for more truthful life. What we don’t know creates space in this group – between the Marys, Joanna, and unnamed ones – for us to go with them to the garden, seeking Jesus, whom they have cared for, for so long.
Graves are good places to go when you are grieving. They offer space to sit, think, and watch the wind whistle through the trees. They offer time to adjust to a new reality, to stare into the gaping hole where once a living, loving person accompanied you. Gravesites are good places to go when you need to cry, recount your memories, speak a word to one you have loved and lost. Friday night’s burial was a hasty one, a temporary wrapping intended only to contain the body until after the Sabbath. A final preparation of Jesus’s body with entombment spices fell to the women, entrusted with this tender task.
Except … He is not here. No body lays enfolded in the grave cloths. No stone secures the tomb. In his stead are angels, dazzling with brightness, asking why we are looking for the living among the dead. The first words of Resurrection come as this unsettling question: Why are you here? You are looking in the wrong place. While the gospels disagree about who comes to the grave on resurrection morn, they all agree the first witnesses are shocked by what they find. Jesus is not dead, defeated, or destroyed. You will not find the Lord lying lifeless in a sealed-off room. Do not look for him to be attached to a gravestone marker, titled “what might have been.” He is risen. He is not here.
And so to prove their message, the angels ask the women to remember. Remember. Remember the love that sang at Jesus’s birth, how the shepherds came, the animals quieted, and light eternal shone from a manger in the night. Remember him commanding the storm to stop and how the wind immediately ceased its howl. Remember the day on the hillside filled with hungry people, how loaves and fish multiplied from meager morsels into overflowing feast. Remember Jesus speaking about the high cost of his love; his willingness to pour out his life. In Luke’s gospel, to remember God is to move toward a saving act. Remember.
I imagine the women stood there, spices falling out of their hands, knees buckling to the ground, and faces kissing the dirt. And then they did remember – all the strange and glorious moments they shared with Christ. Not only the good, beautiful times when the love was so thick you could touch it, but also his terrible death, his agonizing breathing, the ways the crowds jeered, and the disciples fled, and the sun refused to shine. To remember before God is to transform the memory’s meaning, from God-forsaken to God-soaked; from certain defeat to undefeatable life. This too is Resurrection; when we survey the gravesides of our lives, remember faith’s promises, and see anew the imprints of God’s presence stamped across our days.
When the women tell the disciples Jesus has been raised, that group scoff at the idea. They cannot remember and the women are not to be believed. Resurrection is preposterous, unimaginable, the idiotic dream of the unrealistic. When Pilate hands down a death sentence, the end has come. When fear and power conspire, the dream will die. When the grave is sealed, there is no opening it. We wanted a better ending, they might have said, but we saw his body broken, his faltering breath. A different outcome is but an idle tale.
And yet. Peter sees the unused spices. He hears the hope in the women’s voices. He senses something has happened. So he journeys to the graveside, to see for himself. There he finds the tomb empty, the grave cloths folded, a whiff of new life in the air. Months later Peter will preach the Resurrection truth. “They put him to death on a tree,” he says, “but God raised him on the third day.”
But God is the sermon of Easter Sunday. The two words capture our Resurrection faith. The world continues in all its tragedy, terror and death and we would be captive to its forces, but God works for life. You thought you were defeated, strung out by dead-end choices, but God raised you up, powered you forward, set you upon a new path. You thought you had failed, squandered your last chance, but the God who called Jesus from the tomb made a way out of no way. We are living witnesses to his resurrection, to dwelling in the hope-filled, grace-overflowing space created by the power contained in two tiny words: “but God.” Without God all was lost. All is lost. But God acts.
Easter people, lean on this truth. Jesus has left the tomb. The world is alive with his presence and he is seeking out us, to raise us into his glorious life. Claim this option for life; the “but God” variable, a power always at work, ever available to you. Amen.