For Christians, the empty tomb is a strange image for Easter — we struggle with what God is actually giving us: the need to wrestle with Jesus’s absence before we can find him present.
Mary confronts death before seeing new life
Easter | John 20:1-18
There is more to say than “Christ is Risen!” Not because the phrase itself is insufficient, but because our powers of ignoring the gospel are so strong.
Many of you heard that on Good Friday. That yes, the story preaches, but often it’s our ears to hear which are the problem.
According to Douglas John Hall,
“It is the propensity of religion to avoid, precisely, suffering: to have light without darkness, vision without trust and risk, hope without an ongoing dialog with despair—in short, Easter without Good Friday.”
To say Christ is Risen! we must first face that Christ died. And then, more importantly, face the fact that he remained dead for a day. That his followers denied him, fled, left him alone in the tomb.
And even more than that, his rising goes against everything we should expect. Skipping over Good Friday undermines our very ability to appreciate Easter!
This is why Easter is not just the resurrection. It is no more only the resurrection of Jesus than Good Friday is just a story of a man who died on a cross.
We have to face this moment and why it’s hard to deal with.
First, Jesus Isn’t There.
So all the content of the story is kind of weird. We’d expect Jesus to walk out of the tomb, arms wide
“I’m back! April Fool’s!”
That he doesn’t is unnerving. But even more than we expect, because what does happen is so far from that.
Mary comes to the tomb, to find the rock has moved. This alone scares her. She can’t face it alone. So she goes to get help.
And some help they are! Two disciples race each other to the tomb. Not working together; still competing. Still trying to prove which one is the best, the most loved. And what do they see? The empty burial clothes.
Easter has happened, and they still don’t see it.
Second, we expect presence, not absence.
We get for our Easter story, not the vision of Jesus coming to life, but the tomb, the boulder, the wrappings, all the things which can’t contain him.
We see, not the proof of life, but the disproof of death.
This is why we can’t just say Christ is Risen! and be done because we have to deal with death.
Avoiding the Passion can’t get you to Easter any sooner than avoiding music will make you a singer. It’s not going to work if you don’t crank it up and sing along!
This is what they see — the absence of death. And the disciples run away! They don’t see it! They don’t help Mary. She’s there at the beginning and stays there through it.
That’s another reality men have been avoiding for 2000 years. Not only did women make better disciples, but this one stuck it out and preached the first Easter sermon! Dudes, get it together!
Third, we’re blinded by our junk.
But before Mary can proclaim the really good news, she has to deal with her junk. She has to deal with what she experienced and what this new information is revealing.
It doesn’t yet lead to the resurrection. She has to connect all the dots first.
That’s why Mary’s weeping outside of the tomb is, to me, the true Easter image. She’s sad and confused and no doubt frustrated. Because she thinks something has happened to Jesus’s body! We know, but she doesn’t!
She is wrestling with the death and can’t even fathom that the question isn’t death, but life. Mary is looking for Jesus among the dead, not the living.
Her tears are real. But they will become the pathway. How she can see Jesus more clearly. Easter can only bring tears of joy through the tears of sadness.
Fourth, we’re looking at it wrong.
It is quite something that we gather to hear this story. To hear that Christ is Risen, not by his presence, but his absence! This isn’t anything close to what we would expect. Or anything close to what that affirmative declaration would describe.
But the miracle is the absence of Jesus in the tomb. It is that the tomb is empty.
And that’s why it’s such a fitting beginning to the Easter story.
Mary can’t see it until Jesus makes her aware of his presence with her. He calls her by name. And now she knows. She can see past the presence of death and the absence of the body — to that new reality. Only through his absence can his presence be known.
Like the veil has fallen, her tears have washed the dirt of death away and now she can see clearly.
Christ is risen.
This is how she can declare the truth, tell the story, inspire the other disciples. The disciples who are huddled together, by the way, afraid. Doing the thing Jesus told them not to: when he said over and over “don’t be afraid.” They’re shivering in the upper room.
To See Christ is Risen
She will go ahead and proclaim the Good News. Like we will throughout this Easter season. We’ll declare Christ is Risen! and share our joy with happy voices.
We will eat and hunt for eggs and share and revel in the risen Christ after a long Lenten season.
But we do so all the more fully when we confront the frailty of life and the allure of the thinking which leaves the tomb closed and a magic man appearing without problems.
When we confront the many mistakes of the disciples and yet — the incredible truth that we are here today in spite of them.
That we can come after yet another full Holy Week, plumbing the depths of sin and death to find at the end of the week that once again, the tomb is empty. Once again, Christ is risen!
Once again we are called into this new world, transformed, new, and emboldened by hope. Our eyes, flushed by baptism, blink to see him once again.