“Dawn of the First Easter Sunday” – Edward Armitage (1872)
All they expected to see was a tomb.
According to Matthew’s gospel, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb of Jesus.
Maybe they were just wishing for some quiet near the tomb so that they could collect themselves after the catastrophic events of the day before– Jesus dying on a cross in a deathly darkness, while the earth shook, and tombs burst open—a dramatic last chapter for a man whose life had held such promise.
But the women saw much more than they had expected to see that morning when they left home to go to the tomb.
Matthew’s account tells us that when the women arrived, suddenly the earth shook again, that an angel of the Lord with the appearance of lightening descended, rolled back the stone and then sat on that stone. The guards passed out in terror.
And the angel spoke to them and told them not to be afraid.
“Jesus has been raised,” the angel said. “Look—this tomb is empty.”
“And your job is to go and to tell the disciples that Jesus is going ahead to Galilee, and there they will see him.”
And so the women, their grief so quickly turned into joy, ran to tell the disciples.
And then, on their way, they met Jesus himself, alive in his body—the absolute last thing that they had expected to see.
Jesus, so alive and so in his body that these two women threw themselves at his feet, and wrapped their arms around his legs, and worshiped him. In Matthew’s account, not only do they see him, but they grab him and hold on to him.
Jesus is not some spirit, or figment of their fevered imaginations, but the living, breathing human being that they thought they had lost forever.
Now they understood the angel’s words– “Jesus has been raised as he said.”
Jesus was alive.
This realization is so far beyond their original expectations for this day that they had planned to spend sitting and looking at a tomb.
Jesus is alive.
We Christians know that our God, who raised Jesus from the dead, is the same God that has always filled God’s people with expectation. Scripture is full of the expectations of God’s people.
Today’s Old Testament reading is from the Prophet Jeremiah, who is sometimes known as the weeping prophet, because of all the terrible things he experienced as a prophet who brought the unpopular message of downfall and destruction to Judah.
But not only was Jeremiah a weeping prophet, but he was also an expectant and hopeful prophet.
Jeremiah, knowing the heart of God, even as he wept, could not help but to live in expectation that God would act. Jeremiah knew that God loved the people of Judah, and that God loves us with an everlasting love, because God is faithful.
In the midst of the Babylonian exile, Jeremiah’s expectant words ring out to the people, “Again I will build you, and you shall be built! Again you shall take your tambourines and dance! Again you shall plant vineyards! Again you will be able to go to Zion and worship God!”
We human beings are no different than any other human beings on this earth. We all have troubles and tombs in our lives. Our tombs are whatever brings death and separation into our lives. Our tombs are the things in our lives that bring us sorrow and sadness.
The tomb might be the tomb of someone we’ve loved and will miss forever. The tomb might be a broken relationship that is beyond repair, or a relationship that brings more death than life. The tomb might be financial trouble. The tomb might be an addiction. The tomb might be an awful job or no job at all. The tomb might be the process of aging and the physical hardships that aging brings. The tomb might be a terminal diagnosis which will lead to death. The tomb might be depression, or anxiety or dementia. The tomb might be yet another day of isolation from the people we love. The tomb might be an expectation that will never be fulfilled in the way we had hoped.
And we all must visit our tombs. The tombs in our lives are ultimately unavoidable.
I have a friend whose daughter was murdered in her early twenties. This mother grieved bitterly, and for several years, she went to see the tomb of her daughter every day. She would go to that tomb, and sit and talk to her daughter.
As the years passed, this woman’s visits to her daughter’s tomb became less frequent, but she never stopped going to the tomb.
But one day, my friend showed up at St Peter’s. I hadn’t seen her for a while. She caught me up on her life. She had moved away. She had met and married a wonderful man.
And she had stopped at St Peter’s to see me because Port Royal was on the way to Fredericksburg, and she was on the way to see her daughter’s tomb.
After our visit, I walked out to her car with her. She opened the trunk, which was full of piles and piles of daffodil bulbs. She was on the way to plant all those bulbs on her daughter’s grave. She said that she wanted to make sure that when people saw that grave every spring, that they would see life rather than death. She was going with the expectation that if she planted these bulbs they would come up and bloom and dance in the spring winds every year and being joy to all who saw them.
As my friend reminded me, and as Jeremiah reminded the people in exile, and as the angel like lightening reminded the women who had set out to see nothing but the tomb, God loves us with an everlasting love. God is faithful.
God has raised Jesus, just as Jesus said he would.
So when the time comes and you must go to see your tomb, whatever it is, go with expectation. Jesus will be there to greet you. He will tell you not to be afraid, because he is going ahead of you. And he will lead you from death into life, and from sorrow into joy.
And that’s news worth sharing.