Easter Sunday 2021
The stone is gone.
We arrived at His tomb wondering how we would remove the stone in order to finish the burial that Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus had begun Friday last, before sundown intervened.
But the stone was gone. In its place was someone I had never seen before, telling me that my Messiah would not be found there, that we need not look for the living among the dead, and that He has gone ahead of us to Galilee.
Why? The stone is gone.
Of course He can go ahead of us to Galilee, now that the stone is gone. Of course He can just get up and go, like He has said to so many of the people He has healed. Of course He can live in the eternal life He kept talking to us about.
Except he was dead. I saw him die! I watched them bury him!
But the stone is gone, along with the body.
The fear starts setting in—so many possible scenarios. Who is this man, and how does he know where my Messiah is? What if the body is not here because it was stolen? What will the Romans think when they hear the body of their latest execution victim can no longer be accounted for?
I don’t know how to answer all those questions. I don’t know what to say to them.
But I hope I will someday. Someday, my truth will be shared.
Then, at long last, I hope the stone is gone.
Each Sunday through the six weeks of Lent, all the way up to today, my message began in the first-person, through the eyes of someone who would have experienced Holy Week, just as we did with our well-received Advent devotional booklet, and just as we did with its sequel, this year’s Holy Week devotional booklet. I hope that the first-person voices from both me and Valley members have added to your Lenten and Holy Week spiritual practices this past month and a half.
We kicked off this series five weeks ago with Lazarus, the man whom Jesus raised from the dead earlier in John 11, and since then we have visited the stories—and possible words—of Caiaphas the high priest by continuing verse-by-verse through John 11 before hopping over to Mark 15. There, we heard from Simon of Cyrene before arriving at two different eyewitnesses to the crucifixion: the centurion responsible for the crucifixion who then recognizes Christ’s divine status, and one of the female disciples of Jesus from Galilee, Mary the mother of James and Joses. Last week, we briefly returned to John’s Gospel to hear from the men who buried Jesus: Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. And today, Easter Sunday, we are once again in Mark’s Gospel to hear from the female disciples of Jesus who were there at the cross and are there now at the empty tomb, including Joanna and Salome.
The Gospels are unanimous in their accounting of Mary Magdalene as one of the discoverers of the empty tomb, and Matthew, Mark, and Luke all place Mary, the mother of James and Joses, there as well. Mary Magdalene appeared in our devotional series and Mary, the mother of James and Joses, was the inspiration for the sermon two weeks’ ago. So for Easter, let us consider two other women—Salome, whose presence Mark documents, and Joanna, whose presence Luke vouches for.
We do know just a tiny bit more about each woman: Mark includes Salome on the list of female disciples of Jesus who were eyewitnesses to the crucifixion, and Luke notes that Joanna, who is married to a servant of Herod named Chuza, is one of the financial backers of Jesus’s ministry. That is it. The first eyewitnesses to one of the most momentous religious moments in human history, and that is all we know about the women who unlock the story of the Resurrection of the Lord for us.
The miracle of today is compounded when you consider that initially, at least, they did not—they were understandably terrified, and in Mark’s Gospel, are documented as not telling anyone at first. It was deemed so unsatisfactory an ending to Mark's Gospel that subsequent Jesus followers appended two different endings--a brief one and a longer one--to Mark's Gospel, almost as a Biblical sort of fan fiction--so that Mark's Gospel has three endings in all: the original one we just read, the additional shorter one, and the additional longer one. And before you judge the women for their initial fear and silence, consider that in Luke’s Gospel, they are depicted as telling the male apostles (the same ones who turned tail and ran when the empire came for their Messiah), and the male disciples dismiss the account of the female disciples as nonsense.
So in Mark’s version of events, the women have plenty of justification to be afraid—of what they had seen, of whom they had seen, of whether or not they would even be believed. The story of Easter, then, is about the victory of eternal life over the grave, but it is also about the continued victory of courage, bravery, and composure over fear—the very same virtues we saw from the female disciples of Jesus as they witnessed the crucifixion three days prior. Their presence then, and their presence now, creates this common thread of continuity throughout these three days. Their presence ensures that we are not alone, even when Christ is dead and awaiting resurrection.
And that is a powerful gift to be able to give. A simple one, yes, but complexity does not always equate to powerfulness. In moments of extremity, our most acute needs are often the simplest ones. Only afterwards, when we have had time to begin processing the experience, do our more complex needs begin to again come to the fore.
I think that simplicity can be enough for us, on this Easter. I was given a profound teaching moment my first Easter as an ordained pastor, when I preached it while suffering from the norovirus. The unfortunate tendency I had picked up in seminary was to try to cram everything I knew about a Bible passage into one sermon, and that habit tends to be most fed on important holidays like Easter, where we pastors might try to compile an entire sermon series’ worth of material into one overfull message. But I could not manage it on that Easter. I had to go simple. That lesson stuck.
So I am trying not to do that today. I want to simply be here with you, with the female disciples, and with our risen Lord. The roads to Emmaus and back to Galilee begin here, at the empty tomb, and it feels right to begin that journey by taking a moment together and consider what has just happened.
Otherwise, we risk losing out on the gravity of the moment by moving too quickly. Gravity roots us down, it gives weight and surety. Even Jesus waits forty more days before escaping it by ascending.
I experienced this when I got my first dose of the covid-19 vaccine. You have to wait for fifteen minutes, just to make sure you do not have an anaphylactic reaction to the shot, and I found myself in a deeply, profoundly spiritual place of reflection and prayer as I sat on the UAB campus. After having spent months focusing only on going, moving, pushing on, I had to stop, to stop, to be held still and reined in. And it gave me time to experience God’s provision in the heart of my new home.
For now, having come so far as new pastor to new congregation, in a time when so much has been asked of us for the sake of saving one another’s lives, maybe it is right for us to stop, to be with the women and experience God’s provision. That way, we know that will continue to experience God’s provision as we embark together, as one congregation, on the roads to Galilee and to Emmaus.
A final word about the genesis of this message, and this sermon series: my enthusiasm for its first-person theme was kindled not only by our excellent Advent devotional booklet, but by a book that has been one of my most treasured for several years now, one of those books that really did change my life: Khalil Gibran’s Jesus the Son of Man, his compilation of first-person recollections of Jesus of Nazareth by the people who met Him. I am not a systematic theologian, and so the works of the big names of the European Reformation, the Calvins and the Zwinglis, never appealed to me as much as the experiential poetry of Gibran. To me, for me, that is where God’s voice can be found.
It is with Gibran’s words, in the voice of Mary Magdalene, that I end this sermon and this series:
Once again I say that with death Jesus conquered death, and rose from the grave a spirit and a power. And He walked in our solitude and visited the gardens of our passions.
He lies not there in that cleft rock behind the stone.
We who love Him beheld Him with these our eyes which He made to see; and we touched Him with these our hands which He taught to reach forth…
It is passing strange that the earth gives not to the unbelievers…the wings wherewith to fly high and drink, and be filled with the dews of her space.
But I know what I know, and it is enough.
By the grace of the Risen Lord, may it be so. Amen.
Rev. Dr. Eric Atcheson
Birmingham, Alabama
April 4, 2021