Obviously, none of Jesus friends expected him to rise from
the dead. In fact, they all assumed the grave 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 now. 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 in the present.
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 51 years of priesthood, I have gone from one of the worst years of
priesthood to one of the best. The year I retired, five 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 appear to be at the moment.
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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