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Holy Saturday
O God, Creator of heaven and earth: Grant that, as the crucified body of thy dear Son was laid in the tomb and rested on this holy Sabbath, so we may await with him the coming of the third day, and rise with him to newness of life; who now liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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Holy Saturday
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Scripture citation(s): Mark 16:1-8
A Sermon by
Fr. Spurlock
on
Mark 16:1-8
✛
The Tomb is Empty
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I once had a professor who had a bad hip, and bad eyesight. His hip caused him to waddle a bit like a penguin, and his eyeglasses provided a great prop for something he did more often than he probably realized. This made him lovable, but also easily mimicked. “How you view the world,” he would say, “rather depends on what set of lenses you are looking through.”
Tonight, we are provided with the lens through which we might look at all things such that it has the power to change all things. And that lens is the empty tomb of Jesus of Nazareth.
There were a lot of parts to the life of Jesus of Nazareth, and much of it miraculous. But Jesus would have been the first to say that what we call miracles, were actually signs. They weren’t ends in themselves, but signposts to something bigger and better.
Jesus was born to a woman named Mary, who had been engaged to a man named Joseph. But before they were married, an angel approached Mary and asked if she would be willing to give birth to God’s own son. She agreed, and through the intervention of that same angel, Joseph did not cancel the wedding, but married her, becoming an adoptive father to the son of God.
The child was born in a town called Bethlehem, and his birth was attended by angels, visits from shepherds and wise men, but also accompanied by threats of violence, a hasty escape to Egypt, and a brief exile there. In time the holy family returned to their home town of Nazareth and Jesus grew up and grew in favor with man and God.
As a grown man, Jesus was baptized, and began to teach people. He gathered a kind of following and chose twelve men to be his particular companions, though there were many more who were just as close to Jesus, his own mother being one of them, family friends, even some priests and religious were close to him. Jesus began to perform signs, what we call miracles. People who were lame could suddenly walk, folks who were blind could see, the deaf could hear, the sick were made well, the dead could live, and the thing they all had in common was an encounter with Jesus.
Because of these signs, and still other times just for being himself, a lot of people loved Jesus, but for the same reasons others did not like him, hated him, and sought to have him put to death.
They were successful in this ambition, conspiring with one of those twelve special followers of his to hand him over to be arrested. These conspirators connived to have the Roman state publicly punish and execute Jesus. This crowd was so determined that this be done they threatened protests such that the Roman governor feared civic unrest more than he feared having an innocent man’s blood on his hands. So he sentenced Jesus to be flogged, and then taken outside the city gates and literally nailed to two beams of wood that were raised up. Jesus was left to hang on this beam until he died.
Out of all those followers that Jesus accumulated in his life, not many were to be found nearby as he suffered. His mother was there, a couple of other women who followed Jesus, and only one of those twelve, now just eleven, of his closest followers. The rest had all run away and were hiding. A couple of braver men came around after Jesus was dead and claimed his body for burial. One of them had a family tomb and he offered that as a burial place for Jesus. It was a kind of cave carved out of a rock, and when you put a body in the cave you rolled a large stone in front of the opening to keep the wild animals out and the stench in.
At the instigation of some priests, the Romans posted a guard over the entrance to the tomb because of rumors that Jesus was going to come back from the dead. Now the priests and the Romans didn’t believe that Jesus could come back from the dead, but they thought his followers might steal the body and claim that Jesus had come back from the dead.
Jesus died late in the afternoon on a Friday and was buried quickly before the end of that day. He laid in the tomb all the next day which was the celebration of Passover, in the morning on the third day, because there had been no time to do it on Friday, some women came with spices to better prepare his body for burial.
On their way they wondered who could move the large stone for them, but when they arrived, the stone was already moved. They went into the tomb where they met a young man sitting where Jesus’ body should have been. This scared the women, but this man told them to not be afraid, he knew why they were there, but Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified, is risen from the dead. And indicating the stone on which he sat, said see for yourself, he’s not here.
Now the empty slab is not proof in and of itself of what this man in white claimed, but that wasn’t all that he said, go find his disciples, you know the ones who are hiding in fear, and tell them that you will all see Jesus when he appears to you.
And don’t you know that all those cowards, all those deniers, doubters, the discouraged, the faithless, the frightened must have seen just what that angel said they would. On Thursday night they ran away as fast as they could. On Friday and Saturday they cowered behind locked doors. But on Sunday they saw something that changed how they saw every single thing in the whole wide world.
It’s as if they were finally given the right set of lenses through which to see their life, past, present, and future. And once they could see clearly, it was no time at all before these men and women were pushing off for the four corners of the earth taking a story with them that they staked their lives on, and very often paid with their lives, holding fast to the truth of what they saw on a Sunday. Not one of them wavered, not one of them shrank back even unto death.
And what did they, and what have many of you, and what have I, and what have these folks baptized here tonight all staked their lives on through faith? Only on the very best part. That Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified, is risen from the dead. And once you see the world and your own life through that lens, nothing can ever be the same again. Alleluia.
