The Easter Feast
Noel K. Anderson
First Presbyterian Church of Upland
Intro: Holy Saturday
We held two, meaningful services on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. Both were on the dark—nearly dismal—side, for they are full of Jesus’ downward trajectory and a world that fails to recognize Jesus for who he is. We rarely mention Holy Saturday—that time between Jesus’ death and resurrection, but I think it is worth a look before we read the Easter text.
Can we imagine how happy the Scribes, Sadducees, and Pharisees must have been? The populist Jesus movement which threatened their precarious balancing act with Rome was now put to rest. Yes, they may have thought, it was an unfortunate bit of business, but we’ve kept the Roman monsters happy for another year, and it means yet another year of peace. And look at this lovely table! Come on, let’s eat!
But the Romans didn’t want Jesus killed—turns out they barely cared at all.
The people—the parade-goers, the onlookers, the Zealots—all knew this was a terrible thing that happened. This Jesus, they would have thought, was a good man murdered by those sellout Temple Elites. Who knows what they’ll try next. Anyway, let’s not let it ruin our Passover. As to Messiahs—well, maybe next year.
Holy Saturday is our world—a world which by and large disbelieves the whole Jesus story. The so-called faith of many is simply waiting to find out. We live between the first and second coming of Christ. Many people are just kind of going along to wait and see. Is Jesus coming again? If so, then when? I guess we’ll just have to wait and find out.
Many people—even many claiming the Christian faith—practice a Holy Saturday Christianity. Not really sure, but biding our time until more revelation occurs. This kind of Christianity is indistinguishable from run-of-the-mill American agnosticism. We want to believe, but we don’t really know, do we? So we live this life like it’s Holy Saturday.
Our text necessarily blows this mindset out of the water and rules it out completely.
Text: John 20: 1-18 New Revised Standard Version
1 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. 2 So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” 3 Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. 4 The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, 7 and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. 8 Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9 for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10 Then the disciples returned to their homes. 11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; 12 and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. 13 They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” 14 When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). 17 Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” 18 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and she told them that he had said these things to her. †
Genesis II
Genesis 1:1 reads:
In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep.
With the creation, we have three time signatures: In the beginning, on creation day, when all was dark—Day One of creation. Our text begins in the same way, with three time signatures: early, Sunday morning, while still dark. This is significant because John is indicating that we’ve entered into a new time, a new era, even a new kind of time. This is Day one of the New Creation, Day One of Redemption, and the Kingdom of God.
It is still dark not only because it is morning, but because Mary Magdalene, the Disciples, and the world are still “in the dark” over what had happened; they still have no idea that Jesus has risen and a new age has begun.
The entire episode is something of a comedy of errors. Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb where Jesus was placed. Sabbath is over; this is her first chance to see him since sundown on Friday night. She sees the tomb with the stone rolled away, and runs off in a kind of panic to tell Peter, who apparently served as captain of the Disciple Team.
She finds Peter, along with “the Disciple whom Jesus loved” which is perhaps a humble way for John to refer to himself, rather than saying “me” in the narrative.
The Disciple Jesus Loves
How would you like this designation: the Disciple whom Jesus Loved—not at all a bad nickname. Perhaps John, in wondering exactly how to refer to himself, could find no better way to express his relationship to Jesus and his role in the whole drama than this.
And it is wonderful, isn’t it? John is nothing in and of himself but is defined by what Christ has done for him. He doesn’t say, “I, John,” but names his significance as a passive reality. I am the disciple whom Jesus loved. Not, of course, that Jesus didn’t love them all, but this is his self-awareness of who he is in relationship to Jesus.
Interviewed by the CNN, John doesn’t indulge himself. He doesn’t refer to himself as “Disciple #3 of 12,” “Great Follower of Christ,” or any other self-honoring title. He says none of those things because he sees that everything he is—is entirely a matter of Jesus’ love.
He doesn’t say he deserves that love, nor that he earned it. He says that love is given by Jesus, and that’s the end of it. The cameras have their red lights on and the microphone is stuck at John’s chin. “You’re one of Jesus’ closest disciples! What have you got to say about Him?” John replies, “Jesus loves me; that’s all that matters, that’s everything I am.”
Jesus loves me—if you and I can say that, what more do we need to say about ourselves? It all flows from there: Jesus loves me; that makes me infinitely more than I could ever do or be otherwise.
What the Disciples See
So, Peter and John run to the tomb, but the other disciple, who was younger and more fit than Peter, outran him and reached the tomb first. Although John gets to the tomb first, he doesn’t go in. John was clearly not prepared to see what he raced toward: an empty tomb. Tombs are generally every bit as bad as you might expect. For Jews of the day, death was fiercely unclean—not only touching a corpse but smelling death—made one unclean. John gets there first, but he doesn’t go in.
So Peter arrives, huffing and puffing because he hasn’t been working out enough, but he’s the man; he walks right in.
What he finds are the grave clothes and a head-cloth neatly folded up and placed to the side. Now just a word of reason: if someone or some group had decided to steal the body, doesn’t it make sense that they would have taken him out wrapped? And if not wrapped, and they were doing something both immoral and illegal, what would be the point of neatly folding up the head-cloth and setting it aside?
On the other hand, if Jesus were transformed from death to life—his body completely healed and restored—it’s not unthinkable that he would sit up, lift off the covering like a bedsheet, take off the head-cloth, fold it, and gently set it aside.
The Disciples do not see Jesus; they just see the linen wrappings. The text says that the Disciple whom Jesus loved “saw and believed.” Here is another first from this Disciple. He outruns Peter, gets to the tomb first, and now he believes, apparently before the others.
The key here is that “he believed.” Until now, they didn’t get it; they ran around in ignorant wonder trying to put together what on earth had happened.
EVERYTHING Changed
What a marvelous moment it must have been. John who was afraid of the tomb waits for Peter and when they enter, John watches Peter examine the shroud. He picks up the head-cloth, and it strikes him in a Eureka moment: This was supposed to happen! Jesus told us about this, but we had no clue what he was talking about. It is just like he said.
Everything changed. Not just John’s life. Not just the life of Jesus, his friends, and followers; but everything with a capital E. This was the new Genesis of a new world because that day death failed to be final. It was Day One of a new creation, a new cosmos within which death is not the final word.
God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. —Acts 2: 24
If death is no longer final or permanent, what is?
At the center of Christianity is a belief that is identical to John’s belief. It says that this horrid thing that happened to Jesus was supposed to happen. Jesus wasn’t killed by the Jews or the Romans but laid down his life willingly as a sacrifice. It was all part of a plan to reverse the effects of sin and death.
Like the Big Bang, it is a singularity—a one-off to transform the cosmos. Not only Jesus was changed, but Nature—and the nature of Nature—in a new creation of which John gives us the new Genesis: early Sunday morning still dark.
Easter celebrates the singularity of the death of death.
Biologically, death is still the greatest power in the universe. Everything and everyone dies—even the cosmos itself spreads and cools into extremely vast darkness and cold. It is the one permanent that everyone has been able to agree upon. Until now.
Recognition
Mary’s encounter with Jesus is also a bit of a comedy. She has gone back to the tomb to cry. Two angels ask her a question but she thinks they—and Jesus himself—are just gardeners.
“Woman, why are you crying?”
“They have taken away my Lord.”
Then, when Jesus calls her by name, “Mary!” she recognizes him: “Rabbouni!”
Jesus tells her to go back to the other disciples and tell them that he is going back to his father “and YOUR Father.” Day One of the New Creation is initiated by a restored relationship with God. What sin and death broke are now restored by Christ.
For any here who may not believe in the resurrection:
There was no body in that tomb. The body that had been beaten, bled, pierced and drained of life was put into the grave by Friday afternoon, but on Easter morning that body—renewed, transformed, physical and metaphysical at once—sat up from death, folded up the head-cloth and stepped out into a transformed cosmos, a New World, that is our life and witness.
He is risen! †