Easter Sunrise Year B

Sunrise Service

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed…Hallelujah!)

The tomb is empty. Kind of an odd thing that an empty container is a good thing, isn’t it? Normally when we go to look for something, we don’t WANT to see the container empty. We want there to be cookies in the cookie jar. We want there to be plenty of eggs in the egg carton. We don’t want to open it up and find that it’s empty.

But Jesus’ tomb *is* empty. And we can be thankful for that. But what does that mean for us?

Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of Mary Magdalene as she approaches the tomb. She’s on her way to visit the burial site of her teacher. She knows that he’s dead. She was at the foot of the cross when he gave up his spirit. She witnessed it herself. And now that Sabbath is over, she is up early in the morning on the first day of the new week. John’s gospel account doesn’t tell us exactly what she’s doing, but it could be any number of reasons. She could be going to check on the spices and herbs that the body was wrapped in to make sure everything still smelled pleasant. She could have been going to check that the site hadn’t been robbed…which was a common occurrence in those times. Or should could have simply been going just to mourn the loss of her teacher. Whatever the reason, it was certainly out of love for Jesus that Mary Magdalene was there that morning, even though she clearly believed that he was dead.

It’s important to note here that Mary doesn’t actually look inside the tomb at first, so she doesn’t truly know what’s happened when she goes to tell the disciples what has happened. All that she knows is that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. If she was by herself, I don’t blame her. That could have meant that the robbers were still there. It also could have meant that the Roman soldiers who had mocked Jesus might have been desecrating his burial place. Either one of those two possibilities would have been a bad place for a woman to be, especially if she was alone.

So she tells Peter and John (he doesn’t like to name himself as he writes this account), who then rush to the tomb to see what’s happened. Now we get two different reactions; John merely looks inside, but doesn’t go in. Peter goes straight in and finds all the linens lying on the slab empty - no corpse. And the really strange thing: the face cloth folded and placed somewhere else. No grave robber would take the time to fold a face cloth. I can just see Peter saying “what the heck is going on here?” Then John comes in, sees all this, and HE believes. Peter, apparently, hasn’t quite got it yet, as verse 9 tells us. And so apparently they just decided there was nothing they could do, so they just…go home.

Does that strike you as odd? Peter, the Rock, and John, “the disciple whom Jesus loved” have just discovered that the body of their teacher and friend…and LORD…who was executed just on Friday…they have found that his body is missing. And so they decide to just go home? So much for their faith, huh?

After they depart, Mary is just weeping. It’s bad enough that Jesus is dead. Now his body is missing too. Can this morning get any worse for her? As John describes this scene, it doesn’t appear that Peter and John spoke to her at the tomb…they just left. So of course Mary has to look and see for herself, but she see’s something the men did not - she is greeted by two angels in white, who ask her why she’s crying.

I can’t imagine that she appreciated the question very much, especially when they didn’t even respond to her. Then she turns around and someone else is standing there asking her the same question again. It’s quite obvious that Mary didn’t expect to see Jesus standing there, and she certainly didn’t expect to have a conversation with him. So it’s completely reasonable that she wouldn’t recognize him. And I don’t blame her at all for thinking that he was the grave robber.

But what made all the difference is when he spoke her name. “Mary.” And instantly she realized who he was. There he was, her Lord and teacher, standing in front of her, when she had seen him die. She KNEW he was dead. But now he was alive. And it was her wonderful task to deliver that good news to the disciples. Jesus didn’t appear to them; he appeared to HER.

What does this empty tomb mean to her? At first, it was a reason for despair, but that’s because she didn’t understand and she didn’t believe what Jesus had taught her (as he did the rest of the disciples). Peter and John didn’t do any better, did they? Well, maybe John. They didn’t believe anything other than someone had taken Jesus’ body from the tomb and moved it. Why didn’t they immediately remember that he promised to rise again on the 3rd day? Why didn’t they believe that he could achieve victory over death?

There are so many things in the gospel story that the disciples didn’t believe before this. Last week, we saw their refusal to believe that he would be arrested, and their refusal to believe that he had to die. So when he finally *did* die, they lost hope. They lost their teacher. Their journey had come to an end…or so they thought.

The tomb is empty. Their minds immediately jumped to the worst conclusion. They felt like this terrible thing that had happened to them was just made even worse…as if that was even possible. They didn’t remember what Jesus had taught them. They didn’t remember what Jesus had promised them. They didn’t understand, and so they didn’t believe.

And that might be the lesson for all of us. No matter how much we study the Bible, we think that by understanding, it will improve our faith…it will help us believe. Brothers and sisters, we have it exactly backwards. St. Augustine told us 1,000 years before Martin Luther: “Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore, do not seek to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.” In other words, faith comes first. This goes counter to everything our culture teaches us. But this is what Jesus tells us.

Much of the way God operates in Scripture and in our world today involves a great deal that we don’t understand. Some of it we don’t have to. The understanding is not important. At least, it’s not as important as believing. We believe that the tomb is empty because Jesus rose from the dead. We believe that the tomb is empty because Jesus defeated death. In the greatness of his majesty, he has overthrown his adversaries. And now, because Jesus took on flesh and died, and then rose again, he has shown us the plan that he has for us all. Death is not the end - not for him, and not for any of us. This empty tomb is just one of many signs that God makes good on His promises, and He has promised that one day we shall all be raised. One day we will all have resurrected bodies. One day, we will all be together with all of our loved ones and all of God’s children. That is what it means when we find a tomb that is empty.

The tomb *is* empty. And we are forever grateful that it is.

Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed - hallelujah!)