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Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this joyous celebration of the feast of victory of our God, the text comes from the Gospel reading. You may be seated. The first Easter was nothing like this. This we celebrated with gusto and joy and loudness of bells and horns and celebration. But on that first Easter it was not so. You heard the text. Mary comes to the tomb weeping and sorrow filled, for she has firmly fixed in her mind’s eye the sight of her dear beloved Lord, whose body had changed. Changed. It went from rosy cheeks to ashen gray, soft supple skin to hard, cold flesh. It had gone from vibrancy to death.
You and I, all of us here, have never forgotten, nor will we ever forget, the very first time we with our own eyes saw and looked upon a dead body. Incomprehensible. It would be the only word that we could come up with as we contemplated what our eyes beheld. And if we were young as we grew older and began to reflect upon how different this person’s body was compared to what their body looks like now, incomprehensible could be the only word. Maybe you have someone very near to you whom you have seen lying in state in that casket. Whether it’s been weeks or months or even years, you do not forget that sight. It overwhelms you as it overwhelmed Mary in the garden as she approached the tomb, filled with grief, questions abounding in her mind. Where she used to see life and vibrancy, as we saw it in our loved one, we don’t see it, at least not yet.
Hear the voice of your Good Shepherd, who shatters and takes away the stupor in which you have been put by Satan and your flesh. Mary arrived at that tomb that morning not looking for a live body. The text is very clear. She came looking for the dead body of her Lord. She gazed upon the two earthly witnesses that said he is not there: the linen cloths and the head cloth folded up and lying separate from the linen cloths that she had seen wrapped around him when they had brought him down from the cross. As she is grasping that, she sees two heavenly witnesses, two angels. Her eyes behold something that few, if ever, in this world have seen.
And not only do her eyes behold God’s messengers, her ears hear their words. “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Why didn’t Mary recognize Jesus when she turned, and the same question was asked of her by him? “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” That is a very good question. Because Jesus’ bodily appearance on that morning, on this day of the week, of all days of the week, did his body, his flesh and blood, look differently than it did when she had seen it taken down off the cross, but even more profoundly than when she had seen it at its vibrancy as he taught and preached among them?
There he stood in his glorified flesh and blood, the kind of flesh and blood that you can touch, a voice that you can hear, a body you can see. And there he stood beside her, and she did not recognize him. When mortal puts on immortality, you, he, we shall be changed. When we look at our loved one and we see something that has resemblance to our loved one and yet is not our loved one, we struggle, just as Mary did. But we shall see our loved one clothed with radiant flesh, rosy cheeks, eyes to see us and behold us, a voice to call out our name.
Now it’s interesting. When Jesus asks this question, “Whom are you seeking?” he does not ask it to shame her. Jesus never came to shame anyone. Jesus came to bear shame. Amen. Your shame and my shame. He asked this question to bring them out of the stupor in which Satan had drafted them, to remove the scales from her eyes and your eyes. And he does it with one word. Those of you who remember our midweek services, where I spoke about the one word that changed so many people’s lives, he speaks one word in Aramaic: “Miriam.” In English: “Mary.” And in that one word, did the scales fall from her eyes and she sees her Lord as he really is, full of real flesh and real blood, embraceable, touchable, seeable. One word from the mouth of the shepherd draws the lamb away from sorrow and grief into joy. Joy. Changing her forever.
Just as your loved one has been changed. More importantly, just as you shall be changed. You shall have flesh and blood. You shall have a body glorified without sin, like our Lord’s. Which is why his bodily resurrection is penultimate in our faith. Without which, we’re just another mystery religion without any substance. With it, this is truth. We have hope. There is no fear of the grave. It has been crushed, and it has been removed from you and me.
It was her voice that found her. Found her in her grief. Found her in her sorrow. Jesus left the 99 on the hillside and revealed himself only to her, not to the 12, not to anybody else, but to her. And he didn’t reveal himself to her in some flashy, grandiose manner, but in a humble, quiet, gentle, genuine, sincere fashion through his voice. That voice was spoken over Maddie this morning. That voice has been spoken of you when the waters were placed upon your head. That voice has been speaking to you from that word of God since you were an infant. And that voice speaks to you his very flesh and blood, resurrected flesh and blood, that you shall feast upon and have the medicine of immortality. This is an amazing thing indeed.
She’s told by Jesus to “Go tell my brothers.” Stop. Why? Why should our Lord call the very cowards who ran away from him in the garden, who denied him by their actions and by their words? Why should he call them brothers? They treated him like Joseph’s brothers, didn’t they? And yet he calls them brothers because his forgiveness has been given. By calling them brothers, he absolves them of their sin. He wants her to give that absolution to them when she goes. Because if you are Christ’s brother or sister, what else do we need? We have the victory over death and the grave.
Mary was forever changed by that one word spoken to her by her shepherd. Your loved one, whose image in your eyes still remains, has been changed. And you too, as one who has been baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection, shall be changed with new flesh and new blood, a glorified appearance like your Jesus’s. And you shall live and reign with him forever.
And we shall gather every Lord’s Day, the day of the feast of victory of our God, Sundays, to feast upon him, the bread from heaven, and receive life eternal. In the name of Jesus, the risen one. Amen. Christ is risen. Alleluia indeed.
The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
