If I’d been present on the first Holy Week, as a classic over-functioner, it’s not hard to guess what I would’ve been doing. I probably would’ve spent Friday crying myself sick, Saturday morning berating myself for all the ways I’d failed Jesus, and Saturday afternoon making a list of necessary actions. I can imagine deciding to go to the tomb before dawn on Sunday because I can’t sleep and because rubbing Jesus’ body in spices is the only thing I can think to do for him. I can imagine creeping through the dark with friends, terrified of getting caught but determined to do our part, then realizing far too late that we’d forgotten about the giant rock that we don’t stand a snowball’s chance in Phoenix of budging.
But when the women arrive at the tomb in the account of Mark 16, they don’t find the problem they were expecting. The stones has been moved, and there isn’t a body there to care for.
This is perhaps my favorite detail of the Easter story—no one was present for the main event. Jesus isn’t shut in the tomb when the women arrive, shouting, “Can anyone hear me? Will someone move this rock so that I can get out?” He doesn’t bunny-hop out the door, wrapped in tight in grave clothes, going, “Can someone please help me free an arm?”
Sometime while it’s still dark, Jesus sits up, takes his grave clothes off, folds them and leaves them on the burial bench. Then he seemingly steps through the sealed door and heads on his way. The angel propping the door is little more than a tomb tour guide. By the time his followers show up, in Mark’s account, Jesus is already headed for Galilee. He has left a short message: “I’ve gone ahead—come and join me when you’re ready.”
Some Easter Sundays are hard to celebrate. Sometimes we are stuck in silent Saturday. We’re busy and overwhelmed. We’re scared or isolated. We’ve got so many things we’re worried about—jobs and finances, our kids’ education, our parents’ health, our struggling neighbors. We’ve perhaps never felt more aware of how badly the world needs saving or how inadequate we are to the challenge.
But when we feel this way, there is no better time than this to stop and celebrate Easter Sunday. Because what we celebrate on this day is that the world has been saved—it just wasn’t, and won’t be, by us.
Jesus isn’t waiting around graveyard for someone with shoulders broad enough to hulk the rock out of his way. He’s unwrapped himself. He’s walked through that stone. He has gone on his way. He’s already on the Emmaus road, meeting up with travelers. He’s breaking into rooms where terrified people are hiding themselves. He’s cooking breakfast for his followers with fish he caught with his own hands. The most important thing that ever happened, happened without any assistance from us. Jesus is alive in ways we cannot help and cannot stop.
For most of my career as a preacher, I never chose Mark’s resurrection account to read on Easter. Why? Because I hated the final line: “Overcome with terror and dread, the women fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.” I mean, seriously Mark, what kind of ending is that? Was your editor asleep? No one wants this kind of downer in their Easter celebration.
But recently I’ve begun to realize what a brilliant ending this is. The women go to the empty tomb and are too scared to speak of what they’ve seen. But do you know what it hurts? Absolutely nothing. Eventually they will find their courage and start to tell their story. But in the meantime, Jesus is walking and eating and speaking for himself. One way or another, word will get around. Jesus’ followers, men and women alike, have fallen apart for a while. But Jesus has left his tomb regardless, and because of that, it’s a whole new world.
Mark’s strange ending to his gospel is a playful invitation to get over ourselves. We aren’t the main characters in this story. The world needs a savior and has one, and that savior isn’t us. Anyone who can get himself out of a tomb is more than capable of rolling back the stones for the rest of us.
This is such good news! We can afford this Sunday. We can afford a day not to work or strive or save but to rest and celebrate. A day to celebrate that Christ has come for the world and that we are being caught up in his resurrection wake. We don’t power it or steer it; we just ride his wave.
So if only for a day, stop pushing the stone that was already moved and just sit down and breathe deeply life that’s in the air. Drink something sweet. Eat something delicious. Laugh from your belly. Lift your face to the sun. Lie down and sleep peacefully. Because Jesus is alive and the tomb was empty long before you got there. We will harvest from a garden whose seeds we didn’t plant. All this is from God and not from us, and that’s the best thing about it. Christ is risen, and he’s gone ahead of you. Wherever you go next, he’s already there.
