In our gospel reading for Easter Sunday, we hear about three women who have the task of anointing the corpse of their dead Messiah, Jesus Christ. And on the way to the tomb, they ask each other, "Who is going to roll away the very large stone for us, so that we can get in?" It seems to them that Jesus is very secure in the tomb, at least, according to what they know about death. But these women receive the biggest AND SCARIEST surprise ever recorded in human history, so scary that they fled in terror and amazement. Jesus is risen! And death will never be the same again....
We've seen the cycle all our lives. People are born, they live to hopefully some ripe old age, and then they die. As young children, we witnessed that cycle with our pets and our livestock. As adults, we experienced that cycle as we brought children into the world, and as we buried our grandparents and maybe our parents. Birth, life, death. It's not something we have to think about very often, because it is so basic for us.
So as Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Salome were heading to the tomb of Jesus on Easter Sunday morning, their concern was NOT “Gosh, I sure hope Jesus is still in the tomb.” OF COURSE Jesus would still be in the tomb, because dead people don't move. And the three women also were NOT concerned about Jesus spontaneously starting to breathe again as they anointed him, because people who are dead, stay dead. And the women were not going to the tomb of Jesus ready to listen to him, because of course, dead people do not communicate.
Now think about the scariest movie or TV show you've ever watched. Chances are good, one of the things that made it scary for you is that one of these basic facts about death was overturned. Did the movie have skeletons or ghosts that roamed about, terrorizing people? Did the movie have vampires or zombies that just would not stay dead? Did the movie have whispering spirits or communication with “the other side”? No wonder the women in the gospel reading ran away from Jesus' tomb, terrified. In raising his Son Jesus, God has messed with the most basic thing we thought we knew – death.
And if death is not how we think it is, then a lot of what we do while alive, makes very little sense. For example, we let manufacturers use our conscious or unconscious FEAR of death to manipulate us into buying things that make us feel younger, safer, and more vibrant. We let governments use our fear of death to grab more power, and enforce more restrictions and safety codes. We let bullies, from individual muggers and carjackers, to rogue organizations and nations, use our fear of death to coerce us to release what is important to us. And in our fear of death, we tend to surround death with silence, never discussing it at a deep level, or truly dealing with it honestly and openly with the ones we love. The fear of death quietly dominates our actions and our attitudes.