Running to the Tomb: An Easter Day sermon

First preached a sermon at Croydon Minster on Easter Day 2019 at the Principal Eucharist of the Day. Readings John 20.1-18

Alleluia. Christ is risen.

He is risen indeed. Alleluia.

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Mary ran. Peter and John were running. John outran Peter. There is a great deal of running on that first Easter morning!

Mary ran from something and Peter and John to something. It was of course the tomb in which Jesus’ dead, bloodied body had been laid.

I imagine that far from running to the tomb early on that first day of the week as it was still dark, May Magdalene perhaps walked slowly and ponderously, heavy of heart and heavy of feet.

Her Lord, the one from whom she had received healing and forgiveness, love and acceptance, was dead.

Why was she going to the tomb? She was doing what many bereaved people do. She went to that place just hoping that by proximity to her Beloved’s body, even if dead, she would somehow draw some inspiration, some sense of presence, some rekindling of a memory.

But the tomb was empty. All she knew for certain at this stage was that the tomb was empty. Now even the body of her Beloved was gone. The experience of relatives of those who have been ‘disappeared’ by tyrannical regimes, or those whose body is never found, bears out Mary’s shock and anguish. To grieve well we need a body.

A human being is body and spirit together; neither is more important than the other. That’s why the dignity of the human body matters to Christians; that’s why the wellbeing of the human spirit in each person matters. Jesus’ death would have had no redemptive power were it not for the fact that he had a body, was real flesh and blood and really died.

It’s contrary to the early heresy of Docetism, which suggested that Jesus was so divine that he only appeared human, but could not really have been. So his death appeared to be a death but was not. So, he could not possibly have died ‘for us and for our salvation’.

That denies the Resurrection. Jesus, fully God and fully human, died.

Dignity for the body in death is as significant as the dignity of the body in life; hence why Christian practice reverences the body in funeral practices; is not like an old pair of shoes discarded when the essence of someone carries on spiritually. This is at the heart of the Christian teaching of the Resurrection of the Body: as St Paul puts it we are given a new and glorious body.

Mary though arrived to find no body. Little wonder, then, that she ran to tell the disciples.

Mary ran away from the tomb, shocked, disorientated and bewildered. And they ran back there.

Perhaps, like men often do, they thought that this poor woman had got it wrong, or was willing him not to be dead, or was just plain confused. There is even a macho reference to one disciple, the author no doubt, who outran Peter, but let Peter, the rock of the apostles, look in first.

Mary was right. The tomb was empty. Peter inspected. There was order and purpose in this empty tomb. The linen wrappings were still there. The cloth that covered his dead face carefully rolled up. This was not the scene of a break-in or body snatchers. Yet the two men went home.

It was Mary who stayed, simply being present. Her running was not activism but a deep, contemplative yearning after Jesus Christ. St Paul speaks of this yearning in terms of running in his letter to the Philippians. He describes of what is lacking in his faith and in his life, and then says ‘but I am still running, trying to capture the prize that first captured me’ (Philippians 3.12).

Mary’s coming to the tomb is evocative of the lover in the Song of Songs searching for the Beloved around the city, asking strangers ‘have you seen him?’ The spiritual life is about yearning; an aching desire for the presence of Jesus Christ in our lives to bring us healing, forgiveness, peace, abundance of life and his presence.

Yet Mary stood weeping at an empty tomb: profound absence. No-body.

In St John’s gospel initially we don’t get more detail than that. It is the other gospels that tell us of the myrrh bearing women who went to wash and anoint Jesus’ dead body, as was the custom of the day. It is the other gospels that tell of an angelic presence describing what had taken place: that Jesus was risen. That comes later in St John.

St John gives us other beautiful details. The first day of the week; that’s code for the being the same day as the creation of the world, the day when God spoke out of the darkness the words, ‘Let there be light’. The dark night in which Mary had arrived in was giving way to the dawn, suggestive of a New Creation. As John refers to in the Prologue to his Gospel, ‘the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it’.

The Easter Proclamation is the proclamation of light overcoming the darkness: life overcoming death. Last night at the Easter Ceremonies, the light of our Paschal Candle was kindled and borne aloft into a dark church as we sang, ‘The Light of Christ: Thanks be to God’. The light was shining in the darkness, as in the beginning, and the darkness cannot overcome it.

At Baptism each newly baptized person is given a candle lit from the Paschal Candle and is told, ‘Shine as a light in the world, to the glory of God the Father’. Just as Charles was told after he was baptized last night.

Because of her patient, attentive, faithful presence: a faithful loitering at the tomb Mary met a stranger, and, through her tears, asks, ‘have you seen him?’

Christ is no stranger and names Mary into being. As God named the sun and moon, the sky and earth, the animals and even Adam – humanity - into existence, so now he names this woman into fullness of New Life: Mary.

Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden of Eden: Jesus and Mary Magdalene are in the garden of the New Creation.

We find ourselves in the Garden of the New Creation today, in this church.

It matters little if you ran here this morning, if you trudged here, or were dragged here: you are here! You are present and you are opening yourselves afresh to hear Christ speak your name, to call you into existence and fullness of life.

And you don’t come to an empty tomb with no-body around. You are with your brothers and sisters in Christ, the Church, the Body of Christ, and you will receive the very presence of our Incarnate, Crucified and Risen Lord as you feed on his Body in the Sacrament of the Altar, his offering of his life that you may live.

Alleluia. Christ is risen.

He is risen indeed. Alleluia.