Witness of the Women
Luke 23:54-24:12
Almost
every Pastor I know loves to stand up in the pulpit on Easter Sunday and see
the church filled and overflowing. We
anticipate a big crowd and so spend the week in a flurry of preparation. Easter
lilies adorn the sanctuary and we set up extra chairs. We add brass to our
choir to lift up our hymns. In fact, the
entire Lenten season is spent preparing for that moment when our call to
worship proclaims: “Christ is
risen! He is risen indeed!”
All this
stands in stark contrast to the backdrop we see in the first Easter
Sunday. Then there was no anticipation
and no expectation that Jesus would be found anywhere, but lying dead in a
grave. The only preparations made were
the spices mixed to anoint a corpse.
Resurrection
took everyone by surprise. It shouted to
the world that God remains in control of life and death and everything in
between. Before we peer in the empty
tomb, let us pray:
We’ve colored the eggs and hid them in baskets. The ham is in the oven and our little ones
wear their Easter finest. We’ve prepared
for this celebration in every way we can imagine. Forgive us if we have not prepared the heart
to receive you the risen Lord. Help us
in this time and place so that we may recognize Christ in the lives of others
and in our own. Roll away the stone that
guards closed hearts and come forth.
Amen.
“It was the
day of Preparation, and the Sabbath was beginning. The women who had come with him from Galilee
followed.”[1] Who did they follow? They followed Joseph of Arimathea as he
carried the body of Jesus to the grave.
Now Joseph was a member of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council and the
Bible describes as a “good and righteous man”.
He alone stood up and spoke up and asked Pilate for the body of
Jesus.
This was no
small thing. There was some risk
involved. That’s why Peter didn’t do it
and neither did James and John. None of
the Apostles come forward to give Jesus a proper burial. Why not?
They were afraid. They were
hiding. They thought they might be next;
that Roman soldiers might haul them off and do to them what they did to
Jesus. They had seen what men of power
could do when they are riled up so they got out of their way. But, Joseph could
not bear to see the soldiers cast Jesus body over the cliff onto the town trash
heap, which was the custom, so he took the risk and stepped up.
One
preacher observed, “Dante says that the hottest places in hell are reserved for
those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality.” They remain silent. Robert Kennedy said as
much, “Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the
censure of their colleagues, or the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than
bravery in battle or great intelligence, yet it is the one essential, vital
quality for those who seek to change the world, which yields most painfully to
change.”[2]
Joseph
demonstrated that kind of courage when he carried the body of Jesus to the
tomb. The women did as well when they followed, but it was getting dark and the
Sabbath would begin so they saw the tomb and marked it in their memory so they
might know where to return for the final preparations for the body and so they
could hold a “decent burial”.
These small
details, the witness of these women, Mary Magdalene, and Joanna and Mary the
mother of James and the others, speak to all who have been disappointed and
discouraged and to all who have faced great loss.
Note – in
their darkest hour and deepest grief they remain faithful. They do what needs to be done. They don’t cower in fear or collapse in
self-pity. They leave that to the men.
The women, even in grief demonstrate faithfulness to God and fidelity to
the spiritual practice that provides structure in the midst of a chaotic world.
Funerals
are perhaps the most ancient of religious ceremonies. From earliest times,
every culture and every people have followed some kind of customary form and
practice. Rituals are followed both in
the disposal of the body and the words that are spoken over the grave, because
they provide some structure when everything else has been turned upside down or
lost altogether. There is some small
comfort in that.
That’s why
these women prepared the spices and ointments and then rested on the Sabbath
according to the commandment. Now, more
than ever they needed familiar customs they could follow almost without
thinking because the memory of their loss was too painful to consider. This practice was an expression of faith in
God who will still stand by them
Though the
loss of a loved one often challenges faith, faith is the only thing that can
get you through your grief. For many
though, faith falters and fades or outright collapses over an open grave. There are more questions than answers and
more sorrow than solace. People ask,
“Why?” and “Where was God?” Doubts begin
to prick the soul. I think that’s what
happened to Peter and the rest because they were nowhere to be found.
“But, on
the first day of the week, at early dawn, Mary Magdalene, and Susanna, and the
rest of the women, went to the tome, taking the spices which they had
prepared.”[3]
There are
two significant details in this verse remarkable to anyone hearing this story
in the first century. The first is the
women and the second is their purpose for being there.
Today we
rush right over this verse to get to the part about the empty tomb, but most in
that first century audience would have raised a hand and protested, “Wait a
minute! You mean the primary witnesses to this event were women?”
This would
have been puzzling because women, in that time and culture, were not allowed to
vote or even to testify in court. If a
woman saw an accident between two chariots at an intersection, even if she were
the only witness, she would not be allowed to describe what she saw, because
the chariot drivers and the judge would have believed her incapable of
rendering an objective description. We
even see that rather sexist attitude among the Apostles later in this story,
for when Mary Magdalene and the rest tell them what they saw, they discount it
as an “idle tale” – women’s gossip.[4]
But, this
detail is repeated in all four of the gospels.
The women are the primary witnesses and that speaks against those who
believe the Apostles made up this story because they so wanted to believe it
themselves, or because they thought it might persuade others to their cause. If
you were making up a story like this in the first century, women, especially a
woman like Mary Magdalene, would be the last one you’d call to testify. Yet there she is, first on the witness
list. Why would that be, if for no other
reason than it is true and the way it really happened.
The second
detail mentioned is their purpose for being there. They came with the spices and ointments
needed to give Jesus a proper burial.
They did not come to take a picture of an empty tomb or sell tickets to
the tourists. They did not come to see
the resurrected Lord. No one did.
It was kind
of like that old preacher’s story about the country Pastor who called a prayer
meeting to ask God to end a long crippling drought. All the farmers showed up because they needed
the rain, but before the prayer service began the preacher immediately cancelled
it and told them all to go home. They
protested and asked him why? He looked
around the congregation and said, “Just look at yourselves, not one of you
brought an umbrella.”
Jesus had
told them, told all of them on more than once occasion that he “would suffer
many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the
scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”[5] But, not one of them brought an
umbrella. No one came with a basket of
colored eggs and chocolate bunnies to celebrate this joyful day. No one, not one, came expecting to see an
empty tomb or the risen Lord.
I’ve heard
people say the women and the Apostles just saw what they wanted to see, because
sometimes believing is seeing, so this was some kind of mass hypnosis. The problem with that argument, and on this
scripture is completely clear and unambiguous, is that no one expected the
resurrection. No one anticipated the
empty tomb. This was not a case of
wishful thinking because no one was thinking about this at all.
The women came to anoint a dead
body. The Apostles cowered in the
shadows, because as far as they were concerned the cross was a period and not a
comma. They didn’t talk each other into believing it because they didn’t
believe it possible. They were as skeptical as any agnostic today. Thomas spoke for a lot of them and us when he
said, “Unless I see in his hands the print of his nails, place my finger in the
wound on his side, I will not believe.”[6]
For Thomas seeing is believing. It’s not
the other way around.
In fact, the only ones who even
mention Jesus’ prophecy about his resurrection were the chief priests and the
Pharisees. They didn’t believe it, but
they were aware of it, and that’s why they asked Pilate to place a Roman guard
at the grave.[7]
“Now, when the women arrived they
found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not
find the body.”[8] While the women wondered what had happened,
two in dazzling clothes stood beside them and asked, “Why do you look for the
living among the dead?”[9]
That’s a good question. To put it another way, “How often do we spend
Easter looking for Jesus in the wrong places?”
Many come to a place like this, and as I said at the beginning of this
message, I’m glad of it. But, next
Sunday we those who come won’t find it
so hard to park. That can only mean some
you won’t find him today.
I don’t think it is because he’s
not here, because he promised that when two or three are gathered in his name
he will be there, and we have a lot more than that right now.[10] No, I believe people fail to find Jesus
because they don’t really look for him to transform lives, but rather see this
Sunday morning experience as only another egg to put in a basket to make the
day complete.
Throughout his ministry Jesus spoke
against the tendency we all have to do that, to make of God’s blessing an idol
we control and so find comfort on our own terms, but then wonder why the power
of God is absent. He criticized those who made the spiritual rest of the
Sabbath into an onerous custom of dread. He turned over the tables of those who
tarnished worship with trade. Every time
anyone took a law given by God to build people up and use it to tear them down,
Jesus stood up and said stop! This
refusal to compromise life lived holy in the sight of God and compassionate
toward others led him to the cross, but it was the price he was willing to pay
so that we might experience God’s forgiveness for our sin and his power to live
more loving lives.
If you saw “The Passion of Christ”
with all of its stark violence and suffering, with agony painted with blood; I
want to make sure that you don’t for a minute see Jesus as a victim to the
power of politic or sword. Jesus did not
die because he was betrayed by Judas. He
did not face the lash because his friends faded into the shadows and let him
down. He did not lie down on crossed
beams because he miscalculated the will of Caiaphas or the political weakness
of Pilate. The responsibility for his
death does not fall upon Jew or Roman.
It rests upon us all and pushes us all toward the grave.
That’s why he willingly gave his
life to forgive sin and to forge faith so strong it can face all eternity. This
was God’s plan and purpose. Easter morning confirmed this for all who are
willing to look into the empty tomb and into their own hearts. That’s the place
we go to find Jesus this Easter morning or any morning.
Resurrection then does not just
follow death. In a way it precedes
it. One Catholic monk put it this way:
Every departing missionary is an
act of faith in the resurrection.
When you forgive
your enemy,
When you feed the
hungry
Whey you defend
the weak
you announce your faith in the
resurrection.
When you wake at peace in the
morning,
when you sing to
the rising sun,
when
you go to work with joy,
you announce your faith in the
resurrection.[11]
Christ is risen! He is risen in the hearts and minds and lives
of all who follow him to the cross and back again.
Lord, you have said, “I am standing
at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in
to you any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in…”[12]
Come Lord Jesus into each life that stands before the empty tomb in
wonder. Come into each one who has come
here today hoping to find you. Come,
Lord Jesus, come. Amen.
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