In our gospel readings for Easter Sunday, Mary panics at the tomb of Jesus early in the morning, for the stone at the entrance has been removed, and the body is gone – her Messiah has been stolen...to what end? But angels come to her to explain, and the risen Jesus appears to her, and Jesus uses her voice to prepare the disciples to receive the proof of the resurrection from the dead, as Jesus uses their voices to prepare us....
There is a scene in George Orwell's book “1984”, where the protagonist Winston Smith is at work in the Ministry of Truth. And his job is to edit history. He rewrites old news stories, and removes people from old photos, so that people who are inconvenient to the regime can be “unperson-ed”; all references to them are eliminated, and it is as if they never existed. Winston posts the new version of history, and the old versions – they are sent down the “memory-hole” to the furnace below....
Mary Magdalene was prevented from visiting the tomb of Jesus on the Sabbath, between sundown Friday and sundown Saturday, as it was farther away than “a sabbath's journey” would allow. So she goes out to the tomb of Jesus as soon as it was practical – before dawn on Sunday. And she is immediately alarmed – the stone has been removed from the tomb, and Jesus' body is gone. So Mary collects Peter and John and tells them, “THEY have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Who is THEY? The religious elites? The Romans? Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus? And why would they do this? To memory-hole Jesus and try to erase his influence? To discredit the disciples with accusations of conspiracy? To give Jesus a more permanent resting place? Peter and John race to the tomb to investigate.
And what they find there is confusing. “They saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself.” If the body was destroyed by the religious elite, it was sloppy of them to forget to destroy the wrappings; but if the body was moved to another tomb, why would the body have been unwrapped? Peter and John do not have a theory as to what has occurred, and they go back to their homes, bewildered.
We who live in Orwell's 1984 world can come up with all sorts of conspiracy theories for the missing body of Jesus. That's the mindset we operate in, and we have a deep distrust of the reporting of supposed events. We are used to bias in everything we see, hear, or read; both subtle bias and blatant bias. And when we encounter stories like the resurrection, the counter-theories leap to our mind immediately. Jesus wasn't really dead – just unconscious, the tomb was emptied by the disciples to keep the Jesus movement going, the Romans stole the body to annoy the Jews. On and on it goes, the resurrection is a fake, Christianity is a scam. This guy on the internet with 10 followers has debunked the resurrection, and now CSIS is chasing him, so it must be true. Like the disciple Thomas, we are skeptical...VERY skeptical....
But then, Jesus appears and interacts, to give physical proof of his rising from the dead. Jesus appears to Mary at the tomb, and when Jesus calls her name, she recognizes his voice, even though she cannot recognize Jesus by sight alone, an interesting tidbit of information about the resurrection. And Jesus asks Mary to tell the disciples that he is alive, getting them ready to accept what their eyes will soon see. Later that evening, Jesus appears to ten disciples, and they recognize the marks of the wounds Jesus received, even though they cannot understand how Jesus entered the locked room, another interesting tidbit of information about the resurrection. And a week later, Jesus appears to Thomas, the lone disciple who missed seeing Jesus the first time, to give him the physical proof he needed to believe that Jesus rose from the dead.
We have in front of us, the words of John, first disciple at the tomb, written so that we may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing we may have life in his name. John's words prepare us to accept what we see in our lives. The influence of Jesus through the Holy Spirit, guiding us to reject sin and forgive the sins of others. The presence of Jesus in bread and wine, given for us for the physical remembrance of him. And of course, the hope of sharing with Jesus the eternal life of the resurrection.
Gracious God, we thank you for raising your son Jesus from the dead. Continue to bless us who have not seen him, and yet have come to believe, in Jesus' name. Amen.