Mary’s Tears

Posted on by korgrocker

“Mary was standing outside the tomb crying, and as she wept, she stooped and looked in. She saw two white-robed angels, one sitting at the head and the other at the foot of the place where the body of Jesus had been lying. “Dear woman, why are you crying?” the angels asked her. “Because they have taken away my Lord,” she replied, “and I don’t know where they have put him.”
John 20:11-13 NLT

Our first thoughts are probably about which Mary this was, but further down in John 20 we find that it was Mary Magdalene. Different people grieve in different ways and Mary was at the tomb, returning there after she had told Peter and John about the rolled-away stone. She was breaking her heart because of her loss, probably wondering how Jesus could have been taken from His friends so quickly and so barbarically. Trying to get her mind around a future without Jesus. Feeling pain inside her, but through all her tears she took a peep inside the tomb and found two angels there, sitting either side of where Jesus’ body had been placed. They asked her why she was crying and clearly and succinctly she said, “Because they have taken away my Lord, … and I don’t know where they have put him.” 

People often need a grave to visit after the death of a loved one. Walk around any graveyard and you will find bunches of flowers, freshly laid, or, occasionally, single people or families just standing there by the gravestone, silently reflecting or praying. There is something special with the thought of being near the remains of a loved one, ever though the life that was once enjoyed has gone. In my early years, there was a family tradition to go to my grandfather’s grave several times during the year to tend it, cut the grass and reflect. Today, more and more people are being cremated and the place of memories replaced by a favourite garden, somewhere at sea, where the ashes are scattered, and a gravestone replaced by a plaque on a park bench. 

But how did Mary, or John who wrote the account, know that the two figures in the tomb were angels? Many people today do not believe that angels exist, consigning them to the domain of fairies and the like. But there was something about the two men in the tomb that convinced Mary that they were indeed angels. It could have been their attire. Or the fact that they had never been seen in that area before. Perhaps their features and clothes were glowing. We don’t know, but Mary was convinced about what she saw, and John as well, because he wrote it down. 

We pilgrims will inevitably experience the death of a loved one. It may be expected, after or during an illness. It may be, as in the case of my father, due to old age, when he just slipped away in his sleep. A friend of mine has just lost his 103-year-old father-in-law after a chest infection. The saddest occasions are when a young person or baby dies, unexpectedly and tragically. Families are left in turmoil, whatever the cause of their loss, and the grieving process starts, the tears fall, an emptiness remains. But there is something about the death of a believer, because the believers left behind know where they have gone. Their bodies may end up in a tomb but their spirits live on in the presence of the Lord, and there is always the prospect of a reunion one day. Because of this, we pilgrims must make every attempt to evangelise our families. While the person is still alive they can make a choice of their ultimate destination, their new spiritual home. Those who fail to believe will still live on through their spirits, but in a place where they find they don’t want to be.

Mary was weeping because she didn’t have a tomb where she could grieve the loss of Jesus. But as a preacher once said, “It may be Friday, but Sunday’s a-coming”. Mary was about to find something better than an empty tomb – the risen Jesus Himself.

Dear God. Jesus could never stay in a grave and we thank You that He is alive today. We worship You. Amen.

The Empty Tomb

Posted on by korgrocker

“She ran and found Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved. She said, “They have taken the Lord’s body out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!” Peter and the other disciple started out for the tomb. They were both running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He stooped and looked in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he didn’t go in. Then Simon Peter arrived and went inside. He also noticed the linen wrappings lying there, while the cloth that had covered Jesus’ head was folded up and lying apart from the other wrappings. Then the disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in, and he saw and believed— for until then they still hadn’t understood the Scriptures that said Jesus must rise from the dead. Then they went home.
John 20:2-10 NLT

John’s account of the first Easter Sunday morning continued to be factual, providing details of the events following Mary Magdalene’s startling news that the tomb was empty. We don’t know where Peter and John were when they heard the news but they wasted no time in getting there and we then read of what they saw. No body and the grave-clothes, the “linen wrappings”, just lying there, as though the structure, the body, that was holding them in shape, had suddenly disappeared, leaving them to collapse under their own weight. It is significant that the two disciples didn’t just assume that someone had stolen the body, because if that was the case, the graveclothes would either not have been there, or would have been lying in an unravelled heap. But Peter and John immediately “saw and believed— for until then they still hadn’t understood the Scriptures that said Jesus must rise from the dead”. And the verses today end with the underwhelming statement that “they went home”. Really? I expect that they were talking excitedly with each other, even offering prayers to God requesting an explanation. If social media had been around in those days, their Facebook pages would have been buzzing. Everyone in their WhatsApp group would have received a message. But John was now a believer in Christ. Before, he was a disciple and friend of Jesus, now he said that he believed. 

To be fair to the two men, the events that Sunday morning were far outside their experience. Nothing like this had ever happened before, certainly in their lifetimes. So what was going to happen next? They were in uncharted waters and were probably feeling that they had lost control of their lives. But there had to be an empty tomb. If Jesus had still been inside a grave then there would be no Christianity. No eternal life. No Holy Spirit as we know Him. After all that Jesus had said, then if He was still in the tomb today, then He would have had no credibility at all. But, praise God, the tomb was empty. Demonstrably so. In Acts 13:35-37 we read, “Another psalm explains it more fully: ‘You will not allow your Holy One to rot in the grave.’ This is not a reference to David, for after David had done the will of God in his own generation, he died and was buried with his ancestors, and his body decayed. No, it was a reference to someone else—someone whom God raised and whose body did not decay“. The Holy Spirit prophesied through David when he wrote Psalm 16, enabling him to see down the centuries to an empty tomb.

We thank God today for the empty tomb. There is no other religion on earth today where their god came to earth, born as a human baby and after their death, left behind an empty tomb. I love Matthew’ account where the angel rolled away the tomb and then sat on it. A touch of humour that seemed to say that it would take more than a lump of rock to keep Jesus in the grave. There was no tomb on earth that could retain the Son of God because, as Jesus said, He not only had the power to lay down His life. He also had the power to take it up again. We worship a living Saviour today, not mourn and grieve in front of a grave, marked with the gravestone inscription, “Here lies Jesus, the Son of God”.

Dear Lord Jesus. There was no power that could keep You dead and buried. And today You await us in Heaven, having gone before us. Thank You. Amen.

Nick and Joe

Posted on by korgrocker

“Afterward Joseph of Arimathea, who had been a secret disciple of Jesus (because he feared the Jewish leaders), asked Pilate for permission to take down Jesus’ body. When Pilate gave permission, Joseph came and took the body away. With him came Nicodemus, the man who had come to Jesus at night. He brought about seventy-five pounds of perfumed ointment made from myrrh and aloes. Following Jewish burial custom, they wrapped Jesus’ body with the spices in long sheets of linen cloth. The place of crucifixion was near a garden, where there was a new tomb, never used before. And so, because it was the day of preparation for the Jewish Passover and since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there.”
John 19:38-42 NLT

In spite of the conspiracy theories that claimed Jesus never died on the cross and that He just “swooned”, Jesus definitely died that fateful day. The Roman soldier, used to seeing death, confirmed it with his spear, and the two Jewish leaders (secret disciples of Jesus), took Jesus’ body down from the cross and prepared His body for burial, tightly wrapping it in sheets of linen interspersed with a large quantity of spices. That they were fooled into thinking Jesus was dead when He was still alive, is so unlikely that such an event can be discounted as being totally untrue. There are all sorts of legends around Joseph but little about him can be found in the Bible. He may have been a relative of Jesus and, because Jesus’ father, Joseph, was no longer around, he may have taken on the responsibility of dealing with Jesus’ body, hence Pilate’s willingness to allow him to do so. Nicodemus we know more about, as we can read in John 3. After preparing the body, the two men laid Jesus in a new tomb, that Matthew recorded had been prepared for Joseph. But Nicodemus and Joseph were in a bit of a hurry because the start of the Passover celebrations were imminent. The proximity of the tomb to the place of execution helped them greatly.

This factual account of what happened to Jesus’ body forms another facet of the Good Friday events. They were just normal details of the process of dealing with the dead. Nothing really worthy of note at all. But John included them, facts for which we’re grateful. To just have been told that Jesus died and was buried, although true, would not have provided the authenticity that has helped people come to faith in Jesus ever since.

What do we pilgrims think of the arrest, trial, whipping, crucifixion and then burial of Jesus? It of course has formed the bedrock of our faith, that Jesus went through all of that and in the process took on the punishment we so richly deserved for our sins. It was a time when Heaven and earth collided, when sins performed in the body on earth, were forgiven in Heaven, implementing God’s plan for the salvation of the world. But, as we will find out, it didn’t just end with a body in a tomb. Jesus’ body rested there for a while as His Spirit spent time elsewhere. But we pilgrims look at the story before us with horror, that God would allow His Son to suffer what He did, but also with gratitude that His love for us was so great that Jesus’ death was a price worth paying. 

Dear Father God. We pray prayers of gratitude this morning. We worship You with wonder in our hearts. We once again confess our sins, knowing that You will forgive us and wipe the record clean. Thank You Lord. Amen.