The Rev. Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor

© 2023, Dr. Tamilio

I always know when spring has arrived.  It isn’t because we change the clocks — we spring ahead and watch the days get longer.  It isn’t because the weather seems a bit more mild — no more sub-artic blasts coming from the north.  It isn’t because it’s time to put the shovels and ice melt away.  It isn’t even because the Red Sox are back.  I know when spring has arrived when I see the first crocus burst through the soil on the front lawn of this church, right by the walkway.  It is as if nature is peeping its head out.  She stretches her arms, yawns, and say, “It’s so good to be back.”  How apropos that this first sign of spring is found on the front lawn of our church.  New life bursts through dormant soil.  Life has returned where death thought it had the final say.  How apropos, for today is the day that Jesus Christ is risen.  He is risen indeed!

Okay.  “I’ll believe it when I see it.”  This is not just the claim of the skeptic.  This is a fundamental aspect of human nature.  We are empiricists by nature: our knowledge comes to us through experience, through our five senses.  We need to see it, touch it, hear it, taste it, and even smell it to believe it.  Let’s face it: people do not rise from the dead.  No one has ever seen it happen.  Dead is dead.  It is final.  It’s the end.  The final chapter.  You do not come back from it.  When someone close to us dies, we grieve because we know that we will never see that person again — at least not in this life.  When someone dies, we do not lose the past.  Those memories remain with us.  However, we do lose the future.  All the possibilities that tomorrow holds for that person are now gone.  The younger someone is, the more tragic the loss, because there is more “future” that has been taken away from that person and from those who love him or her.

Every Easter, I think about Mary Magdalene.  Isn’t it interesting that the Gospel writers spend more time talking about her than even some of the other disciples?  What do you know about Bartholomew, for example, or how about Thaddeus?  Mary is a key figure in the narrative.  She is one of the first ones to arrive at the empty tomb.  What does she do?  She stands there weeping.  Why?  Didn’t Jesus say that he would rise from the dead?  I am sure that some of his disciples believed that he would.  I am sure that some believed that he wouldn’t.  However, after seeing the suffering he underwent two days prior, most (if not all) of them must have felt as if he was dead for good.  People do not rise from the dead.  This was a tremendous loss: the person who established a new covenant with his followers, who claimed to be one with God, who healed the sick, who exorcised demons, who brought the dead back to life, who fed multitudes, who walked on water, and who turned water into wine, was now dead and buried in a borrowed tomb.  The tomb was sealed.  It was as if someone slammed the door on the message.  Boom!  Done!

But that isn’t how the story ends.  Praise be to God, that is not how the story ends.

Mary did not just stand there weeping.  She peered into the tomb.  What she saw was not just a miracle.  She was one of the first witnesses to THE pivotal event that would forever change history.  Jesus was not there.  Instead, there were two angels.  They ask her why she is weeping.  Notice that Jesus asks her the exact same question two verses later when he appears.  Her sobbing must have been quite evident.  It is only once Jesus says her name, that she recognizes him.  She is elated.  Christ is risen!  Christ is risen indeed!

The fact that he says her first name is important.  At first, she thinks that he is the gardener.  It isn’t until he says her name that she recognizes him.  Mark Meynell tells us how important this is.  He writes, “Being on first-name terms is a genuine sign of friendship.  And Mary was a real friend of Jesus.  She was the only person recorded in the Gospels as present at Jesus’ crucifixion, His burial, and His empty tomb.  The only one.”[1]  She recognizes him when he says her name and she becomes the first witness.

Jesus calls us by name as well to be witnesses to the same event.  This is the centerpiece.  The entire Gospel narrative culminates at this point.  This is the overarching point of our faith.  As the Apostle Paul would later tell the believers in Corinth, “if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Cor. 15:14).  This is what we have witnessed.  This is the story we are to tell.

Many refer to this event as the greatest story ever told.  It is, but I shy away from that title a bit, because it suggests that it is a work of fiction.  It is anything but that.  It is the greatest story because it offers the greatest gift imaginable.  Because Jesus defeated the powers of sin and death, we, his followers, are guaranteed the same gift.  Because it is a gift, it comes without cost.  It is free.  But like any gift, it had to be accepted.  We accept it using another gift: the gift of faith.  Why wouldn’t everyone accept what the empty grave offers?

We could list many reasons.  We know many of the things that are on that list: people follow culture and the ways of the world, they look for immediate gratification in whatever makes them feel good, they don’t believe in what they cannot see — the list goes on and on and on.  But I think there is another reason.  Maybe we find it hard to believe because we feel as if we are not worth it.

On the one hand, we’re not worth it.  We know we are sinners that fall far short of the grace of God.  We deserve nothing.  Therefore, we doubt the grace that the empty tomb offers.  On the other hand, though, we are worth it.  In the eyes of God, we are worth it.

God created us out of nothing to be in a unique, loving, personal relationship with him.  He loves us so much that he came here in the flesh to experience life as we know it.  He defeated death.  He rose to new life to offer us eternal life.  You only do that for someone who is worth it.  You only do it for someone you deeply love.

Don’t stand at the grave and weep.  He is not there.  He is risen.  Like Mary, our tears change to proclamations of joy once Jesus calls us by name.  he may have called you long ago.  He may have called you sometime in the recent past.  Either way, he calls and offers a gift beyond compare.  The order of nature has been reversed.  The greatest miracle of all has occurred.  Death is no more.  As Paul declared, “O death, where is thy sting?  O grave, where is thy victory?” (1 Cor. 15:55, KJV).  The Apostle is mocking death here.  The ancient enemy, the ultimate tool of the devil, has lost.

New life is ours, my friends.  It is ours.  Our Lord and our Savior is risen.  He is risen indeed!  Amen.

[1] Mark Meynell, The Resurrection: First Encounters with the Risen Christ (Leyland: 10 Publishing, 2013), 38.