APRIL 12, 2009  SERMON ARCHIVE

It does not matter how many times you encounter it, it never feels natural, never feels right.

Death always feels wrong.

Something inside does not accept that we will not hear that voice, see that face, touch that hand, experience that laughter ever again. The grief counselors can talk till they are blue in the face about how death is simply a part of life and how you must accept it as inevitable and natural.

But you never do.

You never will.

Mary did not accept death. Oh, she had no doubt that her Lord, her teacher, was dead. She had witnessed the horror of it. Standing beside His mother, she had seen the light die in his eyes as he hung gruesomely upon the cross. She had seen them take his limp body from the wood, heard the horrid sound as they pulled nails.

He was dead. She had no doubt of that.

But it was not right. She knew it was not right. And she simply had to touch him again. It was imperative to her that she see that body again.

But the body was gone. She had run to tell Peter and John—big help they were. They checked it out and told her she was right: the body was gone. Then they left her, but she remained. She did not know what to do, where to go, to whom to turn.

So she just stood there and started to cry.

Not the easy, gentle tears of the merely sad, but Mary wept the gut-wrenching, full voiced sobs of the grieving. death. It wounds not only those it takes from us, but it also wounds those who are left. And sometimes it wounds you so badly you think it will kill you then and there. Mary knew something of that as she sobbed and looked into the tomb.

But something was different now.

The tomb was not empty after all. There were angels there, clothed in white. One was sitting where the Lord’s head had been, one where his feet had been. And though Mary’s sorrow could never shake or destroy their joy, they were concerned for her. "Woman," they ask, "Why are you weeping?"

Jesus’ death was such a given that she did not say, "Because my Lord is dead." Instead, her answer was, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him."

Not knowing about the location of the body was tearing her up. Death was horrible enough, but to not be able to find the body? To niot be able to tend it and give it her last services?

She had to know where Jesus was, to touch his body once more. How else could she face tomorrow? how else could she face the rest of her life?

Mary’s grief was of such a magnitude that a conversation with angels did not faze her.

She straightened up and turned and almost ran into the one who had never been far from her, the one who stood right beside her in her grief—though she knew it not. He gently asksed, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?"

Hope began to rise in Mary’s heart. Was it the gardener? Perhaps he was the one who moved her Master’s body. "Sir," she cried, "If you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away."

Was it her tears that blinded Mary’s eyes that morning?

Was it the grief of her heart that made all the world seem to move in slow motion, unreal and phantomlike? It all changed when he said one word. He called her name: "Mary."

"My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me" (John 10:27).

Although she had not recognized him before, at the sound of her name, Mary’s heart pounded, her breath caught, and she moved the hair from her face and stared in awe, in terror, in joy rising like a flood.

"Rabboni!" she cried. "My teacher!" And she lunged for Jesus and held his feet.

Beyond hope, beyond her wildest dreams, he stood there.

Not a ghost.

Not a spirit.

Not an illusion or some wishful thinking.

Her Jesus—flesh and blood, the wounds still visible, but transfigured, her Jesus, shining in all His glory. Christ is RIsen.

And the tears came again, but this time they were another kind. These were not the sobs of despair, but the tears that brim from a cup that runs over with joy. It was a tender moment, but the joys were only beginning. Jesus had work for Mary to do, an embassy for her to carry out.

He sent her first to his apostles to give them the message that he lives and that He was preparing to ascend to his Father and their Father, to his God and their God.

Death was not the end of him, and so it would never be the end of Mary or of the disciples.

Nor will death be the end of you. Jesus has changed forever how you should live, how you should grieve, and how you should die.

Oh, you will still feel in your bones how wrong death is, how unnatural, and you will still hate it with a passion. But Jesus has made it something you never have to fear—not ever again.

For by his death and resurrection, Jesus has wounded death itself, dealt it a mortal blow from which it will never recover. He came out of its stinking gullet alive again, never to die again, and his promise to Mary, to his apostles, and to all his baptized children is that he will bring each and every one of yopu through the hole He punched in death into the home he has prepared for you with his Father.

To strengthen your faith in his resurrection victory, Jesus Christ will continue to put into your dying bodies his body,

that body that was on the tree, atoning for all your sin;

and that body that Mary held in the garden that first Easter day.

He will continue to pours down your throat the blood that He shed to wipe out the sin of the world, and He will remind you that it is all for you.

He will continually whisper to each of you, "As death could not hold Me, so it will not hold you, My child.

Baptized into My undying life, I will bring you out of death just as I came out of it—alive, never to die again. and then the celebration will really begin!"

Christ is risen!

Christ is risen!!!!