St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Wesley Chapel, FL
Preacher: The Rev. Adrienne R. Hymes, Vicar
Easter Sunday/Year B: Mark 16:1-8
April 4, 2021
As the deadly coronavirus swept across the world last year, leaving sickness and death in its wake, people who would rarely, if at all, ponder their own mortality, were forced to confront the possibility of serious illness and/or death. While death of the body, due to the virus was, and remains, a very real threat to humankind, we must remember that death comes in many forms—physical death being only one manifestation. When the stay-at-home orders were issued, I know of many people who felt an overwhelming sense of darkness, suffocated by isolation and the anxiety caused by an overwhelming feeling of being out of control.
As I think about the darkness and solitude of the tomb in which Jesus’ body was laid, I suspect that for many, even those surrounded with family, that being restricted to the home with no end on the horizon, might have felt like being trapped in a tomb. The collective response to the physical, mental and spiritual peril, fills the darkness of the tomb with humanity’s cry, “Who will roll away the stone from this tomb so that we may live?”
In our gospel passage in Mark, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome, set out to anoint the body of Jesus in the tomb. As they went to the tomb early Sunday morning, they were occupied with the question, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” (v.3). They had no idea how they were going to access the body of Jesus with the heavy stone at the entrance of the tomb, yet they went anyway.
As the readers of this scripture, we know what the women did not know—the stone had already been removed, giving them full access to the tomb. What we know, also, is that when the women arrived, not only was the stone removed; Jesus’ body was also removed. But in Mark’s gospel, the was not empty. Sitting in the tomb was a young man, dressed in a white robe. It was he who informed the women that Jesus had been raised, and that they were to go and tell Jesus’ disciples to meet him in Galilee just as he had told them. Terrified and amazed, the women fled the tomb and said nothing to anyone.
As the body of Christ, the Church offers Jesus’ life, death, resurrection and ascension as the blueprint for hope and meaning-making when the tombs of everyday life, filled with loss, grief, despair, unforgiveness, shame and guilt, suffocate people as they cry out into the darkness, “Who will roll away the stone from the entrance of this tomb?”
Escaped slave, turned leading abolitionist before the Civil War, Harriet Tubman, was nicknamed “Moses” because she, like Moses of the Bible, led hundreds of slaves to freedom in the North through an elaborate secret network of safe houses, called the Underground Railroad, while risking her life and freedom. Tubman was believed to have said, “I freed a thousand slaves; I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.”
As followers of the risen Christ, we ask not “Who will roll away the stones from the entrances of life’s myriad tombs.” For we know, by faith, that God is always at work, and has already rolled away all stones from all tombs—those which are visible and those which are hidden in the depths of the human soul. But not everyone knows that. Those who do not know Christ, so desperately want to be saved from pain and suffering of life’s dark and suffocating tombs, seeking salvation in all the wrong people, places and things. If only they knew that they are not slaves, or the walking dead trapped in the tombs of this decaying world, but liberated heirs to God’s everlasting kingdom.
That’s where we come in. We, who are baptized into Jesus’ death and share his resurrection are empowered by the Holy Spirit to boldly proclaim God in Christ. At all times we are called to share and embody the life-saving gospel message, so that all people may know Christ, and that by his blood, the kingdom of heaven is theirs today.
Our very lives must be a testimony to the world, that we know the way to resurrection. With her permission, I share with you a resurrection story. On Good Friday, Dianne Jones, a three-time survivor of stage 3 cancer, testified to God’s people as she read scripture through her emotion and tears, the passage in Isaiah 52 about Jesus’ suffering and acquaintance with infirmity. Dianne read, “Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases…he was wounded for our transgressions…” That scripture became a source of strength for Dianne as she waited on the Lord to roll away the heavy stone of cancer in 2001, 2005 and 2013 so that today, her very life—and her presence in this world and in this congregation—testifies that she knows, in the depth of her being, the way to resurrection.
Do you know the way to resurrection? After walking with Jesus in his suffering on Passion Sunday; sitting with Jesus at the Passover meal while he lovingly washed the feet of his disciples on Maundy Thursday; and standing at the foot of the cross of the crucified Jesus on Good Friday; it should go without saying, and yet, it must be said, that walking the way of the cross is at once terrifying and amazing. But if, we, like the terrified and amazed women, say nothing to anyone “out there” about the hope that is in the risen Christ, we abandon our responsibility to actively participate in God’s universal plan for human salvation.
If we claim Christ in our hearts, we must necessarily proclaim Christ to the world, because the world needs to hear the good news that Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. He is the hope of humankind and the hope of this world. If only all of God’s people knew.
On this resurrection Sunday, we rejoice, even as the deadly global pandemic rages on. We rejoice, even as people remain oppressed by the insidious sin of racism woven into unjust systems. We rejoice, even when the dignity of every human being is far from being respected. As Easter people, we rejoice on this day because we do not claim the agony of this death-dealing world. We claim—and proclaim—as we will soon sing in our recessional hymn, “He is risen, he is risen! He has burst his three days’ prison; let the whole wide earth rejoice: death is conquered, we are free, Christ has won the victory.”
Amen.
