The Gardner, The Thief, and the Empty Tomb

The Thief

That first Easter morning, Mary Magdalene went to Jesus’ tomb to finish taking care of His body. She was expecting to go to the grave of her friend, her mentor, and her teacher and do what was necessary for final preparations for burial. As she walked from the city to the tomb, I imagine that she is preoccupied with grief. The world almost seems to blur around her as she is drawn into her thoughts of loss and sadness, she might even be crying as she makes her way to where they laid Jesus’ body. As she gets closer, maybe she is distracted from her grief for a moment when she considers that the tomb had been sealed by a stone - a stone much too heavy for her to move by herself. Those thoughts evaporate once she arrives; however, because the stone has already been rolled away and the tomb is empty. Her immediate assumption? Someone came and stole His body away. Her grief turns into righteous anger, “why couldn’t they just let Him be, they already killed Him - what more could they want, could they not even let us have some closure and peace by laying Him to rest.” She rushes to the disciples to tell them about this crime, not stopping to consider that no one took the body, that Jesus was risen from the dead.

Now, I don’t know why Mary didn’t consider Jesus’ resurrection a possibility. Maybe it was just so far removed from what she thought was possible that the thought didn’t cross her mind at all. Maybe she didn’t want to give herself any hope, because if that hope was crushed it would be like losing Him a second time. Or maybe, maybe she thought it would be too good to be true. It’s like those offers you might get in the mail sometimes, the ones where the front of the envelope says in giant letters “Get 500$ just for signing up,” and then you open the letter and see the three pages of conditions that make getting the $500 actually impossible. Maybe she thought it was too good to be true that Jesus, who had died, rose from the dead, too good to be true that everything He had said was proven true, too good to be true that the sins of the world were forgiven and mankind was right with God.

Sometimes I think we can treat the Resurrection, treat Jesus’ promises for us like that. The idea that we get to have eternal life in a perfect world and spend it with God, without suffering or pain or loss. That can seem too good to be true and we try and find some other explanation, we try and look for the agenda, we assume something else is going on because it can’t possibly be that incredible. But brothers and sisters in Christ, He is Risen, He has paid our debt, He has forgiven our sins - it is too good and it is true.

The Gardner

The disciples are understandably concerned with Mary’s statement so Peter and John rush to the tomb to try and figure out what has happened. After they come and go, Mary runs into someone else by the tomb - someone she assumes to be the gardener. And this incident reminds me of something that happened to me growing up. Important background about me - I have a mild bleeding disorder so growing up I went to Emory research hospital in Atlanta once or twice a year for tests and also I hate having my blood drawn. So anyway, one day my parents pile me and my four younger brothers in the van and we start driving - but they won’t tell us where we’re going. We hop on the highway (not the freeway), driving down 75 (not the 75) and we can all read the signs by the road so we know we’re headed to Atlanta. Somewhere along the way, Mom or one of my brothers or my Dad suggest that we might be going to Emory . . . needless to say I was not excited about that idea. We get to Atlanta and take the exit with the sign for Emory University - still not a fan, blood pressure probably rising at this point. We keep turning in line with all of the signs for Emory University - I’m almost panicking at this point because I don’t want to have my blood drawn. You guys want to know what follows almost the same directions as Emory University? The World of Coke - one of the most magical places on Earth. But on all of those signs for directions, I never saw The World of Coke, I only saw Emory University. I only saw the negative that I was expecting to see and that made me miss out on seeing the awesome thing that was in front of me.

Mary wasn’t expecting to see Jesus, she has already established in her mind that someone stole Jesus’ body. So when Jesus is standing right in front of her she doesn’t recognize Him, she sees a gardener instead. This is true for a lot of things, if you expect to see something then that’s probably what you’re going to see. If you are expecting something positive to happen, you’re probably going to interpret what happens in a positive light. If you’re expecting bad things to happen, no matter what happens you can find the negative in it. If you expect someone to be nice or mean to you - you can probably interpret their words or actions in a way that confirms it.

Sometimes I think we can treat the Resurrection, treat Jesus’ promises for us like that. If all you expect out of church is a sermon on Sunday, that’s probably all you’re going to get. If you expect for church to be a place full of judgmental people, that’s what you’ll find. If you expect churches to have an agenda, that’s what you’ll see. But if you believe Jesus is risen from the dead, that His promises for you are incredible, and that the people gathered around Him are saints just like you - that’s what you’ll see. We know to look for Jesus and we know what to expect - our Savior, our King, and our God.

The Empty Tomb

But Mary isn’t the only one who witnesses this, Peter and John are there as well. And John goes into the tomb and our texts says “he saw and believed” but it also says “for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that He must rise from the dead.” And that can sometime give us a little bit of pause - how could John believe if He didn’t understand. Sometimes I think we can think the Resurrection and Jesus’ promises for us like that - that we have to understand them before we can receive them. But that isn’t how gifts work, you can receive a gift without knowing everything about it. I mean, we all use phones but I suspect no one in the room knows how all of the technology, the code, and the networks work that go into making smartphones do what they can do. John saw the empty tomb, He believed that Jesus was risen - just like He promised, even though He didn’t understand it.

This Easter, we celebrate the empty tomb. Sometimes we can get distracted by the incredible magnitude of Jesus’ promises for us, sometimes we can let our preconceptions and expectations get in the way, but this morning we can cut all of that away and rest in the belief that Jesus who was crucified was raised from the dead, the belief that He has paid the price for all of our sins, and the certainty that He is our Savior, our King, and our God. We don’t see theives, we don’t see a gardener, we see an empty tomb and believe in our Savior. Amen.