THE EMPTY TOMB

April 21st, 2019: Easter, Year C.  John 20:1-9.

AIM:  To show the significance of the empty tomb: for the first witnesses, and for us.

What is the greatest Christian festival? If we were to put that question to a non-Christian from a country like China or India, we might well get the answer:  AChristmas.@ What other Christian festival starts being celebrated two months in advance? We who live in the Church, however, and who are the Church, know that our greatest festival is not Christmas but Easter. Today we celebrate with joy the event which gives meaning to every other festival, Christmas included: Jesus’ resurrection. No one has said it better than St. Paul: AIf Christ was not raised, then our gospel is null and void, and so is your faith. ... You are still in your old state of sin.@ (1 Cor. 15:14 & 17) Without Easter the story of Jesus= life would not be good news. We could not speak of a gospel. For without Easter the final act in Jesus= life would have been his crucifixion. And without Easter the crucifixion would not be good news, but horribly bad news: the defeat of goodness and the triumph of evil.

Astonishingly, we have no account of this greatest event in the Christian story. Scripture nowhere describes Jesus= resurrection for the simple reason that it cannot be described. The resurrection is not an event within history. Jesus= resurrection belongs not to this world of time and space which we perceive with our senses. Though it took place at a certain time and in a certain place, the resurrection belongs to the unseen, spiritual world of God, which we can perceive only by faith.

The final event of Jesus= earthly life, his crucifixion, could be perceived. The gospels record what the witnesses saw and heard at the time. With his death on Calvary, Jesus departed from this world just as truly as we shall depart when we die. At Easter Jesus did not resume his former life. Easter celebrates Jesus= passage from worldly life to a new and higher life, beyond death.        

Though the gospels nowhere describe the resurrection itself, they do recount a number of appearances of the risen Lord to his initially skeptical and frightened friends. Where was Jesus before or after these appearances? The gospels do not tell us. They could not do so, for after his resurrection Jesus had no earthly abode. The resurrection was Jesus= exaltation to heaven.

Contrast with this what John=s gospel tells us about the raising of Jesus= dead friend Lazarus. He emerged from the tomb, John tells us, Abound hand and foot with graveclothes@ (11:44). Lazarus had returned to earthly life. He would need his burial garments again. Jesus, our gospel reading for today tells us, left his burial garments behind. He would never need them again.   

The gospel picture of the empty tomb, with Jesus= burial garments lying where they had been when they shrouded his body, but now empty, as if in leaving them Jesus had somehow passed through them, is for us the most powerful symbol of the resurrection. For his friends at the time, however, the discovery early Easter morning that the tomb was empty was a source not of joy, but of consternation. Mary Magdalen spoke for all but one of Jesus= friends when she cried out in grief: AThe Lord has been taken from the tomb, and we don=t know where they have put him.@ The empty tomb seemed to deepen the tragedy of Good Friday. Even in death, it seemed, the Lord was not to be left in peace. Our gospel reading says that Peter himself failed to believe in the resurrection, even after inspecting the empty tomb with its abandoned burial wrappings.

The only friend of Jesus who did not share the grief of Mary Magdalene and Peter at the discovery of the empty tomb was the unnamed Adisciple whom Jesus loved@ as he is called in this gospel according to John. He had sat next to the Lord at the Last Supper and leaned on Jesus= breast. Alone of all Jesus= male friends he stood the next day with Jesus= mother Mary and some of his other female followers, more faithful than the men, and more courageous. 

The description of this one faithful male friend as Athe disciple whom Jesus loved@ goes to the heart of the gospel message. He is not Athe one who loved Jesus most,@ who Asacrificed most,@ or who Aworked hardest.@ Those are human achievements, and God does not need our achievements. God loves us not for what we do but for who we are. We are saved not by our achievements, but by accepting the love which God offers us as a free gift before we have done anything to deserve such a gift.

Accepting God=s love sounds simple. Most people find it difficult. It offends our pride, for one thing. Most of us don=t like accepting something we have not earned. It=s like being on welfare. We don=t like that. We prefer to be independent, to make our own way in life. With God, however, we are always on welfare B dependent all our lives long on God=s freely given love, the love that (as Paul tells us) Abears all things, hopes all things, endures all things@ (1 Cor. 13:7); the love that will never let us go.

God=s love could not let his Son go. It was love that raised Jesus from the tomb. Easter is our greatest festival, and a time for joy, because it tells us that we are objects of that same love. The New Testament calls Jesus Athe firstborn from the dead@ (Col. 1:18; Rev. 1:5). The love that raised Jesus will also raise us. Indeed, God=s love can raise us, even now, from boredom, loneliness, and discouragement at the seeming meaninglessness of life.  His love can raise us from whatever pain, injustice, suffering, or sickness life may bring. And one day God=s love will raise us from physical death, as his love raised Jesus our elder brother and our best friend on the first Easter day.

That and nothing less than that is the gospel. That is the good news. And the best news of all is that the love which God offers us is ours for the taking.