When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him.
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Throughout the scriptures are laid, as
it were, trails of crumbs for us to follow, and which point us to mysteries yet
to be revealed and to be fulfilled. The trail takes us to an open tomb, from
which life emanates.
So our trail tonight is the
resurrection.
We see the pointers to resurrection in
the Exodus and also in the prophets: for
instance, in Hosea ‘after two days he will revive us; on the third day he will
raise us up that we may live before him’ (Hosea 6.2); in Jonah ‘But the Lord
provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the
fish for three days and three nights.’ (Jonah 1.17).
In the New Testament, the account of the
Raising of Lazarus in John 11, who has been in the tomb four days, is a trailer
for Jesus’ resurrection power, as Jesus said to Martha, ‘I am the resurrection
and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and
everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’
(John 11.25, 26)
And tonight, we have a resurrection
trailer in the Book of the Prophet Daniel. Daniel’s plight is familiar to all
who seek to practice their faith in authoritarian settings. Daniel the Jewish
exile in Babylon is forbidden with his fellow exiles to pray freely and, by
sneaky means, Daniel’s enemies trick the king into issuing an edict that traps
Daniel.
And as the story goes the king, with a
heavy heart, throws Daniel to the lions. There is a foreshadowing of the
Christians, the murdered martyrs, who the Romans threw to the lions as a public
spectacle in the Colosseum in Rome, Carthage and around the Empire.
Tyrants do not like people who pray;
secular and atheistic cultures do not like people who look beyond to things
eternal (that’s true of the Romans, Stalinism, Nazism).
In scripture, as in much great
literature, lions symbolise power. To describe Samson’s great strength one of
the stories about him is that he wrestled and killed a lion ( Judges 14:5-6).
From that incident comes something sweet. As an aside, the lion is the emblem
of St Mark the Evangelist, the author of the gospel reading this evening: through
his words he speaks of the power of
the resurrection. It’s little wonder C.S. Lewis represents the messianic figure
of Aslan as a lion.
The thread that weaves together the
account of Daniel, the raising of Lazarus already referred to, and the arrival
of the myrrh bearing women, in Sy Mark’s gospel, is the moment of arrival and
wonder and the revelation of life.
The first moment of arrival and wonder
is in the book of Daniel when we read, ‘Then, at break of day, king Darius got
up and hurried to the den of lions’ (Daniel 6.19).
He went hoping, but not really expecting,
that Daniel’s God, the God of Israel, the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus
Christ, had spared him from the lions: ‘When he came near the den where Daniel
was, he cried out anxiously to Daniel, ‘O Daniel, servant of the living God,
has your God whom you faithfully serve been able to deliver you from the
lions?’ (Daniel 6.20). (There’s a twist in the narrative, the powerful king,
who threw Daniel to the lions’ den for praying to God, not himself pleads for
God to save Daniel). At the threshold of the lions’ den Darius sees the power
of Daniel’s God – our God – who has preserved him from death.
The second moment of arrival and wonder
in the raising of Lazarus:
Then
Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone
was lying against it. Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of
the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, already there is a stench because he has been
dead for four days.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you
believed, you would see the glory of God?’ So they took away the stone. And
Jesus looked upwards and said, ‘Father, I thank you for having heard me. (John
11.38-42)
Jesus went to Lazarus’ tomb knowing and
expecting that a great work of power would be revealed to the sceptical world.
At the threshold of Lazarus’ tomb he who was dead now lives, although as a
mortal he will die again.
The third moment of arrival and wonder
as the three myrrh bearing women – holy Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of
James, and Salome:
When
the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome
bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the
first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had
been saying to one another, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the
entrance to the tomb?’ When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was
very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a
young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were
alarmed. But he said to them, ‘Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of
Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is
the place they laid him. (Mark 16.1-6).
The women came to the tomb not knowing
what to expect, not saying anything, but simply to anoint the body that was
dead, only to find an empty place from which flowed life and power that now
filled the whole world.
In all places where we arrive, may we
always be alert to the wonder of the signs of resurrection life.
For we stand at the threshold of life in
all its abundance.
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