SPEAKER_00: A reading from the gospel according to Mark.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter sixteen, verses one through eight.
SPEAKER_00: When the Sabbath was passed, Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Salome brought spices so that they might go and anoint him.
SPEAKER_00: And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb.
SPEAKER_00: And they were saying to one another, Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?
SPEAKER_00: And looking up they saw that the stone had been rolled back.
SPEAKER_00: It was very large.
SPEAKER_00: And entering the tomb they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed.
SPEAKER_00: And he said to them, Do not be alarmed.
SPEAKER_00: You seek Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified.
SPEAKER_00: He has risen, he is not here.
SPEAKER_00: See the place where they laid him.
SPEAKER_00: But go tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: There you will see him just as he told you.
SPEAKER_00: And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
SPEAKER_00: The Gospel of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Praise be to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in his great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: The women of Easter, Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Salome, waited until the Sabbath was passed.
SPEAKER_01: That would be Saturday at sundown.
SPEAKER_01: But on that Saturday evening, as the lamps were being lit and the shops were reopening, they waited no more.
SPEAKER_01: They made their way to their local Jerusalem funeral home to go and buy the burial spices that they needed.
SPEAKER_01: And perhaps, like us, when they got to that funeral home, they were surprised or shocked even to discover just how much a funeral costs.
SPEAKER_01: Perhaps like us, they groused a little bit about how expensive it is to bury a body nowadays.
SPEAKER_01: We grumble and complain about this, but we pay the fees nevertheless because a body is never just a body.
SPEAKER_01: Now, to be sure, we act like it and sometimes we say with a bunch of bravado, look, when I'm dead, you can do whatever you want with me because I won't be here.
SPEAKER_01: But we don't actually mean that.
SPEAKER_01: If a body, even a dead body, a corpse, really were nothing, then we would treat it like it was nothing.
SPEAKER_01: And it would certainly be cheaper to dispose of a body like we dispose of trash.
SPEAKER_01: Put it out on the curb for the garbage truck to come and pick up and take away.
SPEAKER_01: But we would never do that.
SPEAKER_01: And the women of Easter wouldn't do that either.
SPEAKER_01: Because they didn't go to buy spices to anoint it.
SPEAKER_01: They went and bought spices to anoint him.
SPEAKER_01: That pronoun carries weight.
SPEAKER_01: It signifies why we go to such great lengths and great expense to show respect to a dead body.
SPEAKER_01: Because even when the body is dead, it's still someone's.
SPEAKER_01: It's still a him or a her.
SPEAKER_01: And Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James and Salome, were convinced that this particular hymn would live on.
SPEAKER_01: Their actions tell us that they were very much resolved.
SPEAKER_01: Everything they did says, We will remember you, Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: So, yes, buying the spices and going early on Sunday morning to finish the burial, but then what?
SPEAKER_01: They strike me as the kind who would circle the anniversary date of Jesus' death on their calendar and make a point of going every year to the grave on that day to put the flowers by it.
SPEAKER_01: The women of Easter, you see, were convinced that Jesus would live on in their memories, in their minds, and in their hearts.
SPEAKER_01: And maybe someday in more than that.
SPEAKER_01: They had heard Jesus preaching and teaching about a resurrection of the dead, which was a hope that God's people had always held on to, a hope found in the promises of the psalms and the words of the prophets, and the exclamations from the lips of someone like Job saying, with my own eyes in my own flesh.
SPEAKER_01: And so the women going to anoint Jesus' body with spices not only demonstrated how much they loved Jesus, but also how highly they valued the gift of a body that could, hopefully, maybe someday at some time be raised by the power of God.
SPEAKER_01: And so the women went out early on Sunday morning to undertake the very unpleasant task of opening up a tomb, unwrapping a body, and doing all that they could to preserve the memory of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: When they left, they wanted to be able to say, we have done everything we could to see to it that Jesus lives on.
SPEAKER_01: And like those women going to buy spices on Saturday evening, you and I also are inclined to grab for anything we can hold on to to find a way to convince ourselves that our dead will live on.
SPEAKER_01: I will carry you in my heart forever, is said at hundreds of funeral luncheons across our country every single day.
SPEAKER_01: We set up memorial stones, we tend graves, we put the flowers on them on the anniversary, we visit them, we treasure old photos, we hold on to mementos, we tell stories about our dear deceased.
SPEAKER_01: Nowadays, there's options to do even more than that.
SPEAKER_01: Not long ago, my line of work took me to a funeral home, and I was waiting in one of their meetingslash showrooms with walls lined with glass cases filled with the various articles you can buy from someone in the undertaking business.
SPEAKER_01: And as I was waiting there, I was perusing through those glass cases and I found an entire case devoted to jewelry that you could have made that would contain some of the remains of your deceased.
SPEAKER_01: Now, I suppose our Roman Catholic friends would have told us that relics have never gone out of style.
SPEAKER_01: But I was a little bit surprised to realize that this had become such a popular practice.
SPEAKER_01: It demonstrates how much we want to hold on to the memory of those who have departed.
SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, there are the techno options for continuing life.
SPEAKER_01: Saying we're gonna be able to hack aging.
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to die.
SPEAKER_01: Sooner or later, we're gonna get the right combination of diet and exercise and supplements and meds and procedures.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna overcome death.
SPEAKER_01: Or you could go the route of having your body frozen in the hopes that some days they'll be able to thaw you out and wake you up.
SPEAKER_01: Or at the very least, you could train an AI on everything that you ever wrote so that for perpetuity your kids could always quote unquote consult with dad.
SPEAKER_01: These are the ways that we buy spices.
SPEAKER_01: And I understand why.
SPEAKER_01: Life is so unbelievably incredible, our bodies are so amazing.
SPEAKER_01: The love that we share with those who are closest to us is such that it we don't ever really want to have to say goodbye to them.
SPEAKER_01: And if life is so good, then it just seems so wrong that death has to come and end it all.
SPEAKER_01: And so we are willing to go to great lengths to preserve the memory of those we've loved and lost.
SPEAKER_01: We too are willing to do whatever it takes so that they will live on in our memories, in our minds, in our hearts.
SPEAKER_01: But the problem is that all of those things that we reach for, the spices that we buy, don't actually offer much of a future existence for those whom we have loved and lost.
SPEAKER_01: They don't actually work, at least not long term.
SPEAKER_01: Memories fade and die away within a few generations.
SPEAKER_01: Memorial stones get worn down by wind and rain, freezing and thawing until the names and dates disappear entirely, and those resting beneath them rest in blissful anonymity.
SPEAKER_01: And the techno options for hacking death don't reckon with the deepest cause of death, namely sin.
SPEAKER_01: And so cannot deliver on what they promise.
SPEAKER_01: We need something more than this.
SPEAKER_01: And ever since Mary, Mary, and Salome traveled to the tomb on Easter morning, we have it.
SPEAKER_01: They went there, expecting to do all they could to keep the memory of Jesus alive.
SPEAKER_01: But what they didn't expect was to find the stone already rolled away.
SPEAKER_01: What they didn't anticipate would be hearing that he had already risen from the dead.
SPEAKER_01: They weren't prepared for this.
SPEAKER_01: That already Jesus lives.
SPEAKER_01: That already now he lives on.
SPEAKER_01: And of course, how could they be prepared for that?
SPEAKER_01: Ever since that gray day when death entered into our world through sin, it has been the one constant present reality of our existence here and now.
SPEAKER_01: We know how it works.
SPEAKER_01: Generations come and go.
SPEAKER_01: God's creative activity raises us up when we are born.
SPEAKER_01: Death comes and cuts us down one and all.
SPEAKER_01: Death misses no one, and it is final.
SPEAKER_01: How are the women to be prepared?
SPEAKER_01: When you and I know what it's like.
SPEAKER_01: After you've buried a few hymns or hers in your life, you know how this works.
SPEAKER_01: You put him in the grave, and that's where he remains.
SPEAKER_01: End of story.
SPEAKER_01: But when the women of Easter arrived at Jesus' tomb, there was no blood-caked, dead, cold flesh for them to anoint.
SPEAKER_01: Just an empty spot that had been occupied recently by a dead body.
SPEAKER_01: And more of those glorious pronouns for them to take in.
SPEAKER_01: He has risen.
SPEAKER_01: He is not here.
SPEAKER_01: You will see him.
SPEAKER_01: They went to anoint Jesus, but they left the tomb with the promise that soon they would see him living and breathing, raised from the dead as he already was, that soon Jesus would show up and he would make his glorious resurrection appearances to women who would throw their arms around his feet, his living feet, to disciples who were cowering in fear behind locked doors.
SPEAKER_01: He would show up and breathe on them from his breathing, living body.
SPEAKER_01: They would stretch out their hands and touch him, and everyone would see that he lives, he lives on, in his flesh and blood.
SPEAKER_01: What the women found at Easter is that resurrection is not a sort of someday, maybe, I hope, long in the future kind of thing, but a present reality.
SPEAKER_01: One of us with a body like yours and mine died and now lives again.
SPEAKER_01: And that present reality that Jesus lives, he lives on, is also, therefore, the promise of the resurrection of your body from your grave.
SPEAKER_01: It's the promise that the Hymn or the Her that your loved ones will someday put in its final resting place will live again.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus will raise it from the dead.
SPEAKER_01: That is the comfort and the consolation and the hope that we have.
SPEAKER_01: And it is a living, breathing hope.
SPEAKER_01: Look, if you can discern the fact that you are alive and have a body, if you can see the hands that are yours that are in front of you, they may be young, firm and fresh.
SPEAKER_01: They may be old and wrinkled with veins and tendons and bones showing through thin skin.
SPEAKER_01: But the message of Easter is that if you can see these hands of yours, then you see what it is that God is going to raise from the dead.
SPEAKER_01: Your body.
SPEAKER_01: It will be these hands of yours that stretch out and touch the resurrected body of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: It will be these hands of yours that you throw open to embrace the saints who have gone before us in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: It will be this body that is raised from the dead.
SPEAKER_01: Because Jesus' tomb was empty, and the spices that the women bought were worthless, not needed.
SPEAKER_01: This is our hope, my friends.
SPEAKER_01: And Easter is both the promise that we will not be disappointed and the reminder that it's okay to slurge on caring for the bodies of our dead.
SPEAKER_01: Because they will live again, because they will live on, because he lives again, and he lives on.