Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning,
while it was still dark,
and saw the stone removed from the tomb.
It was still dark, still early morning on the third day, but Mary Magdalene felt the necessity to come to the tomb. Her grief was one level of darkness, her lack of understanding of why things had turned out this way was still another. But it was love that lit the way to that tomb. Despair tends toward paralysis and inaction, whereas love continues to seek presence even when it is not at all evident how it could receive it.
So she ran and went to Simon Peter
and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them,
“They have taken the Lord from the tomb,
and we don’t know where they put him.”
Mary Magdalene followed the light of her love for Jesus, but on its own this was not enough. Neither were the investigative powers of herself or those of Peter and John, since "they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead." What her love, and the zeal of the beloved disciple, and the careful gaze of Peter discovered was that something was indeed amiss. The evidence did not add up to any hypothesis they themselves were capable of generating.
When Simon Peter arrived after him,
he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there,
and the cloth that had covered his head,
not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place.
Mary Magdalene learned that Jesus was not in the tomb. At first she attributed this to the body having been stolen. Peter and John saw evidence that it could not have been a thief, for they would not have neatly rolled up the burial cloths and set them aside. Neither was it an event like the resurrection of Lazarus who came out from the tomb still bound in burial cloth and in need of someone to release him.
This man God raised on the third day and granted that he be visible,
not to all the people, but to us,
the witnesses chosen by God in advance,
who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.
Jesus was firmly in control of his appearances to the disciples after his resurrection. They were not the haphazard result of when he happened to cross their paths, but rather part of the divine plan. As a consequence of this we can believe that he permitted the moments when the disciples sought him but did not encounter him, when they desired to understand but remained in confusion. Perhaps this was meant to allow them to exhaust their own attempts at explanation or understanding, to come to the edge of themselves, to a state of mind and heart that would be open to the truth in the fullness of its power. We may think of the power of belief Thomas showed when he finally confessed, "My Lord and my God", and imagine that it would not have been as comprehensive and profound if he had not first been allowed to miss the manifestation of Jesus to the other disciples. So too for us. Even our moments of darkness and incomprehension are permitted by the Lord, designed to be woven into a still more profound tapestry of faith.
Only an encounter with the Risen Lord himself is sufficient to bring our hearts from doubt to faith. Only he himself is the interpretive key by which me can make sense of the promises of the Scriptures. And yet, he may not be immediately available when we seek him. Let us not on this account despair, but rather continue to seek him until he himself decides the moment has come and reveals himself to us. The love he has already instilled in us disposes us to remain close by, open and available, and ensures that we will not miss him when he does so. Though he may make us wait a day or a week he will not tarry long. He desires to be known by us far more than we ourselves desire to see him.
For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ your life appears,
then you too will appear with him in glory.
Once we encounter the risen Christ we in turn discover a new and profound hidden meaning in our lives in this world. We then realize the limitations of what is below, and are able to more and more completely rely on the revelation of what is above, as Jesus himself has made manifest. Just as what was below could not explain what happened to the body of Jesus, so too can it not fully explain any of us or our destiny. Only the resurrection revealed by Jesus can explain both his followers and himself.
Clear out the old yeast,
so that you may become a fresh batch of dough,
inasmuch as you are unleavened.
We must now be careful not to slide back into the old ways we used to analyze everything including Jesus, ourselves, and the world. Such ways have had their limitations exposed. We must instead rely on the renewal of mind that begins when we behold the risen Christ. Perhaps such a vision was once the fuel that powered our lives but it has since grown dim. Today is the perfect day to ask Jesus to give us an even greater revelation of himself in the power of his resurrection so that we too can become "witnesses of all that he did."
This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.
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