Easter Sunday Rochestown 2017

Encountering the Empty Tomb...

As we listen to this morning’s Gospel we can be pretty sure that the disciples day didn’t go as expected. They scattered at the crucifixion, taking cover and fearing for their own lives. Mary of Magdala, who had faithfully remained at the foot of the cross rose early to go to the tomb where they had laid Jesus.

We can often sanitise what this must have been like for her. She was a real person who had witnessed someone she loved and followed, her master, as he was tortured and publically executed. She must have been physically, emotionally and spiritually exhausted. If we listen careful we can hear that exhaustion as she tells the others ‘the tomb is empty…and we don’t know where they’ve put him’.

That morning three of Jesus’ disciples, Mary, Peter and John, we to encounter something that was to begin to shake them from their self-focused slumber and change the course of their lives, and ours. You see, without the resurrection we probably would never have heard of Jesus. He would have just one of many preachers, healers and prophets in the area at the time. The majority of his disciples had already vanished even before he had died.  The whole thing must have seemed like an incredibly embarrassing failure.  They must have felt empty inside.

However, their own emptiness was to encounter another form of emptiness; the emptiness of the tomb. It made no sense. Nothing was making any sense. Where was he? Who had taken his body? Where had they put him? He was gone from them for a second time in three days.

Each of the three disciples react in a different way to the emptiness of the tomb. Mary, returns to tell the others and so is the first one to bring the good news of the resurrection. They can’t believe what she is telling them and run to see for themselves. John, reaches the tomb first but doesn’t go in. He contemplates the situation, trying to make so sense of it all. Peter, known for his firey nature, rushes into the tomb and see the burial cloths. John then entered the tomb and believes. Peter, though he rushed in, didn’t believe straight away. It would take another encounter with Jesus before the penny dropped.

What they all encountered was an emptiness that they hadn’t expected. An emptiness that they had to encounter and process before they could begin to fathom the enormity of what this all meant. It wasn’t easy for them and it’s still not easy for us. One commentator writes that ‘in many ways Jesus disciples needed to begin to detach themselves from his physical presence before they could begin to recognise him as he truly is; Risen, transformed and glorified. He goes on to say that at the tomb‘ the disciples began a process of discovery that lasted their whole lives; a process of trying to recognise Christ in the midst of their reality’.

The same holds true for us to this day. Where is he? Why can’t I find him? What does this emptiness mean? The answer to these questions and many more lies in the response of John the disciple who ran in search of the lord, who waited and contemplated and entered the tomb just to confirm what he had always believed: The Lord has truly Risen, just as he said he would.