Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, amen. The text for the sermon is the Gospel which was earlier.
It does not matter how many times you encounter it, it never feels natural, never feels right. Death always feels wrong. Something inside does not accept that we will not hear that voice, see that face, touch that hand, experience that laughter ever again. The grief counselors can talk until they are blue in the face about how death is simply a part of life and how we must accept it as inevitable and natural. But we never do.
Mary did not accept death. She had no doubt that her Lord, her Teacher, was dead. She had witnessed the horror of it. Standing beside His mother, she had seen the light die in His eyes as He hung gruesomely upon the cross. She had seen them take His limp body from the wood, heard the horrid sound as they pulled nails. He was dead. She had no doubt of that.
But it was not right. She knew it was not right. And she simply had to touch Him again. It was imperative to her that she see that body again. But the body was gone. She had run to tell Peter and John – big help they were. They checked it out and told her she was right: the body was gone. Then they left her, but she remained. She did not know what to do, where to go, to whom to turn to. So she stood there and started to cry.
The tears she cried were not the easy, gentle tears of the merely sad, but Mary wept the gut-wrenching, full-voiced sobs of the grieving. This was the tears of someone who was suffering from watching a person die. It wounds not only those it takes from us, but it also wounds those who are left. And sometimes it wounds us so badly we think it will kill us then and there. Mary knew something of that as she sobbed and looked into the tomb.
But something was different now. The tomb was not empty after all. There were angels there, clothed in white. One was sitting where the Lord’s head had been, one where His feet had been. And though Mary’s sorrow could never shake or destroy their joy, they are concerned for her. They ask, “Woman, why are you weeping?”
Jesus’ death was such a given that she did not say, “Because my Lord is dead.” Instead, she replies, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” Not knowing about the location of the body was tearing her up. Death was horrible enough, but not to be able to find the body? Not to be able to tend it and give it her last services? She had to know where Jesus was, to touch His body once more. How else could she face tomorrow? How else could she face the rest of her life?
Mary’s grief is of such a magnitude that a conversation with angels does not faze her. So she straightens up and turns and almost runs into the One who had never been far from her, the One who stood right beside her in her grief – though she didn’t know it. He gently asks, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?”
Hope rises in Mary’s heart. Is it the gardener? Perhaps he is the one who moved her Master’s body. She cries out, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”
Was it her tears that blinded Mary’s eyes that morning? Was it the grief of her heart that made all the world seem to move in slow motion, in an unreal and phantomlike manner? It all changed when He said one word. He called her name: “Mary.”
Jesus says, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” Although she had not recognized Him before, at the sound of her name, Mary’s heart pounded. “Rabboni!” She lunged for Jesus and held His feet. Beyond hope, beyond her wildest dreams, He stood there. Not a ghost. Not a spirit. Not an illusion or some wishful thinking. He Jesus – flesh and blood, the wounds still visible, but transfigured, shining in glory. This was her Jesus.
The tears begin again, but this time, they are tears of another sort. These were not the sobs of despair, but the tears that brim from a cup that runs over with joy. It was a tender moment, but the joys were only beginning. Jesus had work for Mary to do. He sent her first to His apostles to give them the message that He lives and that He is preparing to ascend to His Father and their Father, to His God and their God. Death was not the end of Him, and so it will not be the end of Mary or of the disciples.
Nor will death be the end of you. Jesus has changed forever how we live, how we grieve, and how we die. We still feel in our bones how wrong death is, how unnatural it is, and we hate it with a passion. But Jesus has made it something we never have to fear – not ever again. For by His death and resurrection, Jesus has wounded death itself, dealt it a mortal blow from which it will never recover. He came out it alive again, never to die again, and His promise to Mary, to His apostles, and to all His baptized children is that He will bring each and every one of us through the hole He punched in death into the home He has prepared for us with His Father.
To strengthen your faith in His resurrection victory, Jesus continues to put into your dying bodies His body that was on the tree, atoning for all your sin; that was in the tomb, sanctifying your grave; and that Mary held in the garden that first Easter Day. He covers you with His blood that He shed to wipe out the sin of the world, to give to you His righteousness. Death could not hold Jesus and it will not you either. As we are baptized into His undying life, so He will bring us out of death to life, so that we will never die again. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!