On Easter Sunday, Valley Christian Church holds a special outdoor Easter worship at 8:30 am prior to the traditional 10:30 am Sunday worship. For this Easter, instead of a homily or full-blown additional sermon, I chose to do something a bit different, and I composed and delivered this guided prayer on the sights, sounds, and scents of the morning. I hope you find it meaningful. My full Easter sermon will be posted here on Wednesday, April 20.
Something I frequently teach about Holy Week is that we have the benefit of knowing how the story ends. Jesus told the Twelve beforehand about His eventual resurrection, but not all of them believed Him immediately, and there is no indication in the Gospels that Jesus told the rest of His followers. They had to experience Passiontide in real time, in each agonizing second, all the way up to today, when the tomb is discovered empty and the words “He is risen” are finally uttered.
To try to plant ourselves there, if only for a moment, I want to guide you in a prayer rooted in the supplies that Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus first bring on the evening of Good Friday, and which Mary Magdalene, Salome, and the other female followers of Jesus bring on the morning of Easter Sunday: the perfumes, ointments, and spices with which to honor the body of Christ.
Because of the impending sundown signaling the beginning of the Sabbath, the work of Joseph and Nicodemus was almost surely done in haste, necessitating the work of the women at sunup on the first day of the week after the Sabbath. The women come bearing these lotions and perfumes, and I think of the soaps and lotions and scents I use every day myself because one of the ways in which we respect our bodies is that—and I know this may sound basic or obvious—we do not put on our bodies things that we do not like, whose smells are not pleasing to us. We want to present ourselves well, to one another and to God for the sake of our personal pride and dignity.
So I want to begin this guided prayer by inviting you to imagine—close your eyes if you like, if that would help—the scent of your own favorite perfume, or cologne, or lotion, or whatever it may be that you apply to your body as a sign of your respect and regard for your own body. Begin with that scent. Imagine bringing it, as the female disciples of Jesus did, as a reverential offering for our Lord.
Try to hear the crunching of gravel or dirt beneath their feet as they walk to His tomb. Their sandals, without our modern technology, are almost certainly not as comfortable, forgiving, or supportive. They probably felt every bump in the road—not only physically, but spiritually.
Now try to feel the body’s response to its nerves, the nervousness of going to the tomb to pay respects to your fallen Savior and anoint His body one last time before the body begins to decompensate. Are there goosebumps, rushing heart rates, a quickening pace? Or are you drawing your steps out, one after the other, in anticipation of what might await you at the tomb?
What does honor and pride mean to you? How do you take pride in your appearance, and how do you give honor not only to your body but to those around you? For whom is that honor intended? In the scents you choose, the colors you array on yourself, as part of that same Body of Christ.
Mary, Salome, and the female disciples come to the tomb prepared to dress and anoint the body of the Lord, to honor Him by finishing the task to which Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus had set themselves. The honoring of the Body of Christ was a work in progress, incomplete and unfulfilled.
So it is with us today. We as the Body of Christ remain a work in progress, incomplete and unfulfilled, but today, on Easter Sunday, the Resurrection of the Lord, we can choose to honor God and one another with our offerings of presence, care, and attention, as Mary, Salome, and the others did. As the male disciples would go on to as well. In affirming the humanity of the Risen Christ, may we affirm one another’s humanity, made in the image of the one true God, buried in the likeness of His death at our baptism, and lifted from the waters of rebirth in the likeness of His resurrection.
For
Christ the Lord is indeed risen today. Amen.