They have taken the Lord from the tomb and
we don’t know where they put him.
John 20:9
Obviously, none of Jesus friends expected him to rise
from the dead. In fact, they all assumed the gave had been robbed and the body
had been snatched. Once the news gets out that the body was missing,
everybody runs around like chickens with
their heads cut off! The word “ran” is used three times in this story.
Mary Magdalen got there first, not because she
expected Jesus to rise and wanted to be there when it happened, but because she
wanted to do what everybody else did after the funeral of a loved one. It was
customary to visit the tomb of loved ones for three days after the body had
been laid to rest. It was believed that for three days the spirit of the dead
person hovered around the tomb, but then it departed because the body had
become unrecognizable through decay in that hot climate.
Jesus had died on Friday. By religious law, Mary
Magdalen would not have been allowed to travel on Saturday, the Sabbath. That
meant she had to wait till Sunday before she could make her first visit. She
couldn’t wait till the sun came up, she got there before dawn. When she got
there she was shocked to find the stone rolled back and the body gone! She
concluded that the grave had been robbed. She ran back to town and got
Peter and John out of bed. All three ran back to the tomb. John, being
younger, outran Peter and got there first, with Peter soon following. Before Mary Magdalen could catch up with
them, they passed her on their way back to town to tell the others.
One by one, they began to believe that Jesus had
indeed been raised from the dead, beginning with John and ending with Thomas.
From their mouths to others’ ears, from their mouths to others’ ears, from
their mouths to others’ ears, this story has been passed down to us some 2,000
years later.
This is the Easter story, but what does it mean and
what does it have to do with us?
The point of Easter is not simply that life is
sometimes troubling and difficult but that, by its very design, it needs to be
troubling and difficult. This is because it is not ease but affliction that
enables us to develop our very best. Those who grow the most are simply the
ones who have weathered the most, endured the most, and struggled the most. And
because such trial has been borne in the right spirit they have been
strengthened, enriched, and deepened the most by it. Think about any of the heroes
and heroines of the faith, and one will always identify persons for whom
hardship, sacrifice, and pain are no strangers.
All breakthroughs are proceeded by breakdowns. No pain, no gain.
In short, we must not view death and resurrection as
just an historical event from the past but as a life-giving way of living. We
are not here today to celebrate death and resurrection as an event that just
happened in history, but death and resurrection as a way of living one’s life.
People in recovery programs understand death and
resurrection as a way of life. People who have unilaterally forgiven their
enemies understand death and resurrection. Parents who have had to let go of
their children understand death and resurrection. Anybody who has lost a job,
only to find a better one understand death and resurrection. Anyone who has lost a spouse, only to find another chance at love, understand death and resurrection.
This Easter is special to me personally. Several times in the last 48 years of priesthood, I have gone from one of the worst years of priesthood to one of the best. The year I retired, three years ago at
this time, I was in the pits. I knew I was in the pits, but I also knew that,
if I would just hang in there, things would get better – and they did, in
spades!
I always remember that engineer in Switzerland who
designed a great tunnel between Switzerland and Austria. He proposed they did
from both ends and meet in the middle, a risky method. When the day came when
they were supposed to meet, but didn’t, he killed himself thinking that he had
made a great mistake. On the very day of his funeral, the workers broke through
and the connection was perfect! He gave up one day too early. An “Easter faith”
means that you never give up, no matter how hopeless things seem.
So, in a nutshell, we are here to
celebrate a way-of-living! By embracing difficulty, we can overcome it. And
after a lifetime of embracing difficulties and overcoming them, we can even
embrace our own deaths knowing that there is eternal life on the other side of
even that! Just as Jesus was raised, we
who believe in him will also be raised.
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