Our Tomb

How does Resurrection: our rising, our flourishing, Easter, apply to us today?

What is perhaps hidden?

John’s Gospel has been all about Darkness and Light. Lazarus returning to life from that tomb, what might we expect to find with Jesus? Looking through John 20: 1-18 we find some interesting issues at play, more so if we look at all of the four Gospels on offer: but how do they affect us in the 21st C? If we look back at Lazarus, who has only recently left his tomb, and Jesus: where is our tomb?

While it was still dark…the stone rolled away… The tomb was entered by Peter and possibly Lazarus?

They noticed the linen wrappings, neatly wrapped so no grave robbers (Matthew’s claim)

It was Peter that entered the tomb but the beloved disciple who first believed. Is seeing everything for our belief?

They then went home… what? did they really believe that the body had been taken?

Saw and understood – what had Jesus been telling them from the outset: Come and See?

Some time later…Mary weeping, dares to look in

Sees 2 angels – why 2? Matthew and Mark only reported one – they need to go to SpecSavers perhaps. Why didn’t the Beloved Disciple and Peter not notice them??

It is ok to face up to issues with the text. It doesn’t mean we don’t believe but we are willing to consider. Angels mean messengers. They tell the story. It is the only time in John’s Gospel that angels make an appearance. Mary turns and is faced with Jesus. 

Why the gardener?

Mary Jesus said – she recalled the voice – last thing to go possibly the first thing we use to recognise people as well.

She cries out Rabboni – teacher, not Messiah and clings onto him, but Jesus is ascending to God. Interesting as the other Gospels have Jesus ascending many days later. Is Jesus really with God already, albeit on Earth?

Let’s dress up for this occasion

Some people regard this Sunday as one of the main times that they may go to church: other than baptisms, weddings and deaths, and Christmas and Easter. We may feel like dressing up for those occasions – make it really special. But when we really examine what this day is all about, it is so very different. Do we believe that dressing up will free us from our own tomb?

Yes, it is the greatest story ever told but not the story that we might tell. This story is about flesh and dirt and utter confusion, that God exceeds our expectations and pulls out of our own tombs – hold that thought!  

Why do we envisage Jesus as all clean and neat, his garments freely flowing, and neatly laundered, his hair clean and flowing? If we look at some artwork of Jesus after the resurrection he certainly does appear whiter than white. But do we expect to find him like that? Has he been cleaned up for the potential visitors to the tomb? 

Clean pair of hands?

Mary Magdalene, the women who many have cast dispersions about her sexual past, wasn’t expecting this Jesus, the one with muck on his hand, under his nails, grubby – just like the gardener. She saw Jesus the one with dirt from the inside of the tomb.

How do we see God?

Over the millennia we have seen God portrayed as angry, aloof, vengeful – possibly as that as how we might have responded under pressure. God, according to our expectations, was one who wouldn’t be born as a baby, in the muck of a stable of kinds. We wouldn’t expect Jesus to grow up as an unimpressive handyman. Jesus certainly would never have met up with seriously odd people such as sex workers, fishermen, people from rural backwaters, perhaps you or I? He started to make waves by doing some amazing things, you know that water to wine bit, healing folk; and the little band or men and women followed – the men not understanding, the women financing it all (Luke 8:1-3).  He started to upset the bigwigs by saying things which turned the tables – literally – on the rulers. Not only the political rulers but those of the religious bodies.

So the church needs to watch out as well.

They seem to work together and bring an end to Jesus, using the most horrific method possible of the day. And this is Jesus who would rather die than be in the sin accounting business, not one to lift a finger to condemn those who crucified him. And rises again afterwards with messy hands – this is a God who is real to us.

Confused?

The disciples were still amazingly confused about the Resurrection. The exponential rise in people believing has yet to be seen – check out the book of Acts. It’s ok to be confused about the whole episode but let’s be open to how God can continue to be with us no matter where we go. 

And Jesus is there, amazingly new. What does new look like – is it always wonderfully clean? The advertisers would like us to think so. But that’s materialism for you.

• What may be new is that bond between folk who have never spoken for years. It’s rough around the edges, painful but it is a fresh start.
• What may be new is releasing ourselves from the trauma of the past, allowing us to consider ourselves free from those burdens, we are anew.
• What may be new is that feeling I hear about when I hear of an alcoholic who is a few days free of alcohol – that exhilaration despite the challenges of the days, weeks and years ahead.
• What may be new is allowing us to love our bodies without that pull from society that we are fat or thin, ugly or smelly.
• What may be new is who is offering that comparison: society or God? We are anew every day with God.

Is that a description of us in our tomb today? Constrained, stuck, enclosed but with that opportunity to see all things anew by looking through the eyes of God. It might be a mental cavern, where we are imprisoned; or a physical one, our reflection of ourself seen as disabled, when God sees us for who we are, and are still capable of. It could be a spiritual buffer we have hit – take heart, God is willing us to go onwards – in th knowledge of that love.

Always loved

We might never have seen that this is also resurrection, where God walks alongside us as we are allowed to flourish, where God whispers gently in our ear, you were always loved.

Because God simply keeps reaching down into the dirt of humanity and pulling us out of the graves we dig for ourselves through our violence, our lies, our selfishness, our arrogance, and our addictions. And God keeps loving us back to life over and over, over and over again – like a spin cycle.

This Christ who has emerged from the tomb , risen from death, offers life to those of us still stuck in our tomb. Can we accept that offer today? Can we share that story with others, to allow all to flourish?