“When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed.  But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” (Mark 16:1-8)

You and I often lament about empty things – emptiness is not a feeling that we like. We do not like empty stomachs – we do not like empty gas tanks. We do not like discovering empty boxes in our pantries – and we do not like finding empty mild cartons in the refrigerator. The more I think about it, the more I realize we deal with a lot of emptiness in our lives. Many people, in fact, spend a good portion of their lives trying to fill the empty places and the empty spaces in their lives – but they often make very poor choices and decisions trying to fill the emptiness in their lives. Some choose to fill themselves with food – hoping this will fill them – but it only fills them in the wrong ways. Others look to fill their emptiness with bad relationships, drugs, gambling, alcohol, and the like.

Think about your own lives, think about the things that you have done to avoid emptiness – to fill the voids in your lives.  Now think about the women coming to the tomb on the first day of the week after Jesus, their teacher and friend, had been killed and laid to rest. As the sun was soon about to rise, they were walking to the tomb, and there would have been a great emptiness – a great void in their minds and a void in their feelings as they trekked to the tomb. There was Mary Magdalene, one of the closest friends of Jesus, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome. While the others had fled, while the other disciples were hiding, the women, who had stood of in a distance to watch his agonizing death, these women were coming to the tomb to do what their society expected them to do. The emptiness they must have been feeling and experiencing would be overwhelming.  So to help deal with the emptiness, they were coming to do something that gave them purpose. They were coming to the tomb – hoping it would help to fill their emptiness. We do not like to think of graves – they are not places we think of as alive and joyous. To us, the tomb is nothing but corruption, stench, decay and death. The only sound in a tomb is the sound of destruction – of the cells, molecules, DNA decomposing in the stench of decay. For us, to be placed into the tomb means the body is done – there is no more life – even Dr. Frankenstein cannot re-animate the body. No amount of voltage will re-constitute what has decayed. The women were hoping to prepare the body of Jesus with spices to help to cover the stench of corruption. But the biblical witness tells us that Jesus did not experience any corruption. His body, though placed in the tomb, well, it lay undisturbed, uncorrupted. But it also did not remain in the tomb – Jesus was unleashed.

As believers, we all stand on the cross of Christ – or another way to talk about the centrality of the cross is to say that we stand in the shadow of the cross.  Either way, today we should be focused on the Cross of Christ — not as a means of putting a negative spin on this most joyous Sunday, but for the joy that begins with the fact that there would be no empty tomb, if there was no cross. Today, as you raise your voice to shout “Alleluia, Christ is Risen” – remember the centrality of the cross in your life – and then live into the joy of the resurrection.

Pastor Dave