It was very early on the first day of the week,
And still dark,
When Mary of Magdala came to the tomb.
She saw that the stone had been moved away from the tomb and came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple,
The one Jesus loved.
They have taken the Lord out of the tomb,
She said,
And we do not know where they have put him.
So Peter set out with the other disciples to go to the tomb.
They ran together,
But the other disciple,
Running faster than Peter,
Reached the tomb first.
He bent down and saw the linen cloths lying on the ground,
But did not go in.
Simon Peter,
Who was following now,
Came up,
Went right into the tomb,
Saw the linen cloths on the ground,
And also the cloth that had been put over his head.
This was not with the linen cloths,
But rolled up in a place by itself.
Then the other disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in.
He saw and he believed,
Till this moment they had failed to understand the teaching of Scripture that he must rise from the dead.
The Gospel of the Lord.
I wonder at the fact that the disciples did not guard Jesus's tomb.
Bishop Oliver said in a service last night that we often tend to think about this time of Holy Week in separate sections,
So Thursday,
Holy Thursday,
Then Good Friday,
And Saturday with the Vigil,
And then today as different things and separated or separate events.
But it's a normal weekday or a normal week that we are covering,
A Holy Week,
But it happened in a couple of days.
So where do we find ourselves now as disciples?
The Twelve had just seen their master killed.
The hope of Israel,
The hope of the Jews,
The hope of being free from this yoke of the Roman Empire,
The Messiah is dead.
And in this time they were scared.
Remember they ran away.
So we see the disciples basically in hiding,
Just as Christ said it would happen.
But not Mary.
Mary of Magdala,
The one who is said to have either been a prostitute or been filled with seven devils,
Maybe sometimes just in an effort to discredit the holiness that she was and the role that she played as being,
In my mind,
The first among the disciples.
She went there first.
While the others were still,
And I use the word very,
Very carefully,
But cowards,
Where they were still fulfilling their part of prophecy,
Mary went to look for Jesus.
She went to the tomb.
Now I wonder what she was waiting for,
What she was expecting.
Maybe she was expecting the miracle.
And maybe we see here that she also,
She was frantic.
They've taken him.
Even Mary had the doubts after seeing Jesus die agonizingly on the cross.
That is what we read in the gospels.
And yet she goes to see what is happening with Jesus.
And then he's gone.
She goes back and we see Simon Peter and John run.
John doesn't go in,
Even though he's there first,
He doesn't go in to the tomb.
And I want to focus on that tonight.
Knowing that something has happened,
Something that might be miraculous,
But doubting.
Unable to take this last step because up until there,
There's still hope.
There's still hope that his body might be there.
There's hope that his body might not be there.
There's hope that Christ might be standing there.
It's still potential,
But once you step over that threshold into the tomb,
It's over.
It's like Jesus said it is over before he passed.
How many times do we find ourselves that we work ourselves up and we align ourselves and we pray or we bless or we are mindful or we send out energy or we reiki or we do whatever we do for a specific outcome because we believe that we can do something.
And then is the big reveal.
And just before we step into this excellence,
Just before we are embraced by the power of God,
Just before we connect with our full harmony,
We start sending out our unique,
Beautiful vibration and energy into this universe that God created.
We get cold feet because what if it isn't as good as I thought it was going to be?
Even scarier.
What if it is even better than I thought it was going to be?
And so like John,
We sometimes need somebody else to go first.
I remember as a child,
It was much easier to very gallantly offer somebody else to go into a dark space before you.
And then follow when they say from the inside,
Okay,
It's okay to come in.
We do this still today.
We sometimes want to follow in other's footsteps so that if something goes wrong,
We are not alone.
And unfortunately,
Some of the journeys that we take are not journeys that we can take with other people.
And this is one of the big things that stood out for me over this week is that Jesus was alone.
There were people around him,
Yes.
There were followers.
When he went into Jerusalem,
There were thousands.
And yet he was alone on the cross.
And so for us,
For many of us,
Things that we do need us to be alone with God.
And those two words in the end is where the power comes in.
Because in as much as we are physically alone,
We can feel that and we feel the depression and the loneliness and all of those things that come up with it.
We are never truly alone because we are in God,
We are with God.
And we forget that.
And that I believe is one of the reasons why we struggled so much.
And I am not minimizing the effects of depression.
Depression is a real thing.
Depression is a thing that oftentimes needs medication because it's sometimes this vehicle of ours that is not functioning properly.
Sometimes a car needs a service.
Sometimes it needs a new spark plug.
And sometimes that spark plug is medicine.
But we make it worse on ourselves by forgetting that we are not alone.
And it's not a physical presence like a person that we can hold their hand and say,
I feel scared.
Because it permeates us.
It is us.
We are it.
God.
God is all.
God is in the beautiful Paschal candle that's burning.
God is in this lectern.
God is in the light.
God is the light.
God is all.
So we are never alone.
We forget that.
And then we reach a point where we build ourselves up with God and we follow what we believe is the right path that God wants us to be.
We feel that we are in harmony with the universe and with God and with everybody else.
And life is brilliant.
And we get to a challenge like the disciples.
That was a very intense challenge.
But we have our own challenges.
And after the challenge is over,
We are also called to the tomb.
We all have then a Mary of Magdala running to us and saying,
It's gone.
Maybe he has risen.
But let's go and see for ourselves.
And we go to the tomb and right before we enter and we get to see so that we can believe we freeze.
Because we are human.
So let us then pray that God will send for each one of us the person to go in before us or to send us the strength to open our eyes so that we can believe and step into the tomb and see for ourselves that God,
Christ,
Is risen.
That by standing up out of that tomb,
He had overcome death.
And what does that mean for us?
It means that he broke down all of these walls that we perceive between each other.
Christ broke down these things about you are a body and then you're going to die and your mind is what matters.
Now Christ came to teach us that we are spirit.
And that the spirit never dies.
So that when we pass,
We give up this physical body that can do jazz hands,
That can walk,
That can smell,
That can sense.
It is like upgrading a car.
And we go from a tricycle to one of the richest cars and the most expensive cars there is.
That of spirit,
That of pure spirit.
That becomes part of the great I am.
Where time doesn't exist,
Where space doesn't exist,
Where we become part of all.
We just need that nudge.
And that nudge we find in God.
Amen.
