Homily for Easter Sunday, the Resurrection of the Lord, April 9, 2023. The Gospel of St. John 20:1-9. Theme: The Mystery and Message of the Empty Tomb
There’s a powerful realism to the news of an Empty Tomb. It’s certainly not the way to begin a make-believe story that was created in order to elevate the status of the Lord’s apostles and give Christianity credibility, as unbelievers suggest. And if the alleged myth-makers were indeed trying to pull off a fast one, as we say, then they made a couple of huge mistakes right from the beginning. First, they present the apostles as being rather dumb and clueless. Upon encountering the mystery of the Empty Tomb they just kind of scratch their heads in confusion. And some of them, at first, outright refuse to believe. And they would’ve made another huge mistake in having it be a woman who first discovers the Empty Tomb. Because, you see, in ancient Middle-Eastern culture a woman’s testimony was considered to be totally unreliable. It had no credibility behind it whatsoever.
And yet the Gospel of the Resurrection starts off with these two huge mistakes, so to speak, because that's exactly the way it happened. It was a solitary woman, Mary Magdalene, who first discovered the Empty Tomb. We all know what it’s like to receive unexpected shocking news, so imagine her panic and anxiety! She loved Jesus with all her heart and had faithfully stood at His cross to the bitter end. And afterwards, she sat across from the Lord’s tomb on Good Friday afternoon, not wanting to go home and begin life without Him. When she saw the stone rolled away from the entrance to the tomb, she initially drew a natural conclusion based on logic. She assumed that the grave had been violated and the body stolen and so she ran quickly to look for help and share the devastating news with the apostles.
Many people today draw the same conclusion. They figure that there has to be a natural explanation as to why the tomb was empty and so the obvious answer to them is that someone stole the corpse of Christ. But if this was so, then we must ask…who did it? The Romans? Highly unlikely since they were the ones who carried out the bloody crucifixion and had no vested interest in staging a fake resurrection. The Jewish Leaders? If so, they could have produced the corpse for all to see and put an end to Christianity with its myth of Resurrection right at its beginning. Then, perhaps it was some of the Disciples? Hardly so. They were locked away in hiding, afraid to be identified as the companions of the One Who had been publicly executed as a blasphemer by the Jews and a traitor by the Romans. And even if some of them dared to do so, how in the world would they have overcome the heavily armed Roman soldiers standing guard at the tomb?
But today’s Gospel shows us that there is also another answer to the Empty Tomb besides thievery. It’s a response that brings us from the logic of unbelief to faith in a mystery. As soon as Mary Magdalene made her discovery known to both Peter and John, they immediately ran to the tomb. The beloved disciple John peered into the rocky cavern, saw the empty resting place along with the rolled up burial linens and believed. His faith was based on what he saw with his own eyes, though he did not understand how it could have happened. And after the two disciples left the tomb, Mary Magdalene would experience her own leap from logic to faith. Part of the story that we do not hear at today’s Liturgy informs us that she took another look into the tomb. However, this time she experienced something different. She heard a familiar voice and turned around. The Risen Lord was standing behind her, calling her by name!
Though we live two millennia after the Resurrection, the spiritual challenge to belief or disbelief remains the same. Now as back then, each one of us must make a personal response to the Empty Tomb based on the evidence. Mary and John stand as powerful eye-witnesses for us to the fact that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified for they were both with him when he hung upon the cross. They are powerful eye-witnesses to the fact that he indeed died and was laid to rest, for they were both there at his burial. And they are powerful eye-witnesses to us of the fact that there was an Empty Tomb on that first Easter morning as we just heard in today’s Gospel. And in addition to Mary and John, we also have the documented eye-witness experiences of many others who had personal encounters with the Risen Christ. They saw him. They touched him. They spoke with him and ate with him. They affirmed that He was neither a ghost nor a hallucination. It was Jesus of Nazareth, alive again and glorious!
But not everyone believes that Jesus has, in fact, overcome death and provides us with the only way to eternal life. For them Easter remains nothing more than a myth or a fanciful story. They are stuck at the level of logic, unwilling to acknowledge the possibility of faith in a mystery; unwilling to go beyond what they themselves can see and know. And sadly, this kind of response to the Empty Tomb leaves them trapped in the bondage of their sins, causing them to expend energy in their lives trying to escape the inescapable reality of their mortality.
But then there are those who like the beloved disciple John, encounter the reality of the Empty Tomb and believe that something more has happened even if they don’t understand how. These people have examined the evidence and accepted its conclusion. They become changed on the inside. They become different. They are open to the possibility of the supernatural and can never go back to where they were before they made that all-important step from logic to mystery, from doubt to faith. They now have hope for the future. They now experience the peace of heart that comes from knowing that their sins are forgiven. And they are filled with an interior spiritual joy that no one can take from them, all because of the mystery and message of an Empty Tomb that was discovered in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago.
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