C Cycle – Easter Sunday 25

John 20:1-9

Mary Magdaline had witnessed His crucifixion and death.  She was a disciple, someone who had been totally changed by His love and by the transforming power of forgiveness.  What she was witnessing was confusing and why He did not use His power to overcome them left her wondering.  She had heard Him tell the thief that he would be with Him in paradise that day.  She had heard Him forgive everyone involved in His arrest, His hazing and flogging, His rejection, and His crucifixion. 

Forgiveness was not what she would have offered them.  She watched as He cried out to God seemingly momentarily separated from God.  Could that have been the moment when our sins were placed on Him?  We know from the scriptures how sin separates us from God and how sin becomes a barrier between us and God.  She watched as His side was pierced and a mixture of water and blood erupted from His side.  She watched Him being taken down and was among the women who prepared His body for burial.  She would have been at the tomb when the stone was rolled across the front of the tomb. 

Now, before daybreak, she and other women go to the tomb only to find the stone rolled away from the entrance of the tomb. As a disciple, she would have been at Bethany when Lazarus was raised from the dead.  She may have remembered the words of Jesus when He ordered the stone to be removed. “Roll away the stone and you will see the glory of God!”   But her words indicate she did not believe He was alive but that someone had come during the night and taken His body.  Why would anyone take the body of Christ?  She needs help to understand, so she runs to the disciples and tells them about the empty tomb. 

At that moment no one understood but John says “they believed’ even though they did not yet understand what being raised from the dead meant.  His burial cloth covering His head rolled up neatly while the body cloth was lying there.  Lazarus’s cloth had to be removed from him by others and would have been lying on the ground outside the tomb. The way the burial cloths were lying from those of Lazarus indicates Jesus just sat up and took off those burial cloths. Then the stone was removed by something other because Jesus could not remove it from the inside. Could Jesus be alive instead of His body being stolen?  But where was He and what do they do about it?  The scriptures tell us one thing for certain – Jesus was not there, and they believed although they did not understand.

Perhaps we can ask ourselves the same question. We do believe the death of Jesus and His resurrection was for the forgiveness of our sins.  We do believe His death removed the barrier of sin between us and God and God does not look at our sin the same way we look at our sin. The one thing we need to understand in this twenty first century is our need to trust in the promised of God.  Because with all our learning, all the centuries filled with the writings of the great minds of the Church Fathers we do believe Jesus rose from the dead.

We do believe that act was for our salvation and redemption and through the death of Jesus God did remove the guilt of our sin. The real question we need on this day of Christ’s resurrection is why we still feel guilty for our past sins.  Why can we act on what we profess to believe and boldly stand in front of Jesus as Mary Magdalene did and allow Him to speak to our hearts.  Allow Him to come to us in ways we would never expect and hear Him call us by name.  Why do we come before Jesus in the Eucharist and not allow our Lord and Savior to speak to our hearts. 

We need to learn the lessons the disciples learned between the death of Jesus and the outpouring of the Spirit on Pentecost.  Christ will come to us and reveal Himself to us and we like them will still not understand and fail to respond by acting on what we know as truth. Jesus died for our sin and so that we would become bold witnesses and like the disciples tap into the power of God to help others embrace the salvation won for them by Jesus. 

Yes, today we celebrate His resurrection, He is risen indeed! But that proclamation needs to become more than a statement.  It needs to become the meaning and purpose of our day. Whose unbelief can we help? Whose hurt can help heal? Whose doubts can we change into a certainty?  It is now about what do we do because of Christ’s death and resurrection.