Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (she may have been Jesus’ mother[1]) had followed Jesus all the way from Galilee. They were among the women who had come with him from Galilee, who followed him, because in his presence a world where the poor are the blessed ones was tangibly near. They hungered and thirsted for righteousness, and when they were with him they were filled. Jesus had shown them a world where love embraces all, even the enemy. A world where all who mourn are comforted. They witnessed how he touched and healed the sick, broke bread with friends and strangers, and declared God’s forgiveness to people stumbling under the yoke of sin. Somewhere along the way, they had begun to believe that the kingdom of heaven had indeed come near, and that he embodied it. They looked at Jesus and they saw the whole creation held by divine grace and infused with God’s mercy. He had awakened a dream in their hearts, the dream of a redeemed world. And on Friday, after Judas had betrayed him, Peter had denied him, and the rest of the Twelve had deserted him, on Friday, they were still there, watching his life drain from his body. And they watched Joseph of Arimathea as he wrapped Jesus’ body in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb. He then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb.[2] The funeral was over, and everybody but the two Marys had gone home.
We live in a Good Friday world. In Matthew, death-dealing human authority seeks to suppress God’s purposes from the beginning of the story. Herod’s response to the news that a new king had been born was to kill Bethlehem’s children.[3] And when the religious and imperial authorities at last succeeded in their quest to kill Jesus, they had soldiers seal the tomb and guard his body, to make certain he stayed dead, buried, and silent.[4] “Go, make it as secure as you can,” the governor said, as though armed guards in the cemetery could keep the kingdom of heaven from bathing the world in divine light.
We know we are living in a Good Friday world. We know that life is fragile. We know that in this country, the idolatrous cult of the Second Amendment is better protected than the lives of our children. We know that peeing in a fellow legislator’s chair won’t get a representative expelled from the Tennessee legislature, or being convicted of domestic assault, or admitting to sexually assaulting high school girls they coached, or exchanging racist and sexist texts with staff members—no, but speak out on behalf of the victims of gun violence and demand legislative action, and do so out of order, and you will find yourself expelled in the name of “decorum.”[5]
We are living in a Good Friday world, but as Easter people we know that the voice of justice cannot be silenced. We know that the will of God for life to flourish in true community cannot be broken. Thomas Reese writes,
Holy Week is not just a single week in the year. Rather, it is the daily life of millions of people around the world who suffer because their consciences tell them to live and work in ways that political and religious authorities find objectionable. They, like Jesus, suffer and die because of their commitments to justice, freedom, peace and love.[6]
Martin Luther once said, “If I were God, I’d kick the world to pieces.”[7] Thank God, he isn’t. The God we know in Jesus Christ is out of the tomb and on the loose, kicking to pieces anything that would keep the world from fully living the life God has given it. The two women went to see the tomb, but they walked into an earthquake of cosmic proportions: it was the rumble of God kicking to pieces the chains of death, and breaking down the walls of fear and despair.
We know we are living in a Good Friday world. Sooner or later, one way or another, we all stare at the massive stone that secures the tomb where our soul has been buried, together with our hope. Everything, it seems, collapses into this enormous black hole. Sooner or later, one way or another, we all stare at the stone and we feel abandoned by God or that there is no God to abandon us, just the predictable cruelty of the Good Friday world where might makes right.
But today we sing. Today we sing with joyful stubbornness against the world as we know it. Today we sing the song of the world to come. We sing because on this mother of all mornings the guards of death shook for fear and swooned, and two broken-hearted women heard an angel speak,
“Do not be afraid, I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’”
Jesus is risen; death could not hold him. We are living in a world where the way of Christ, the way of the cross doesn’t end in the tomb, but has been powerfully affirmed by God as the way of life. “Good Friday is at the center of this world,” said Jürgen Moltmann, “but Easter morning is the sunrise of the coming of God and the morning of the new life and is the beginning of the future of this world.”[8] God knows we are living in a Good Friday world, but it is a world recentered in Easter hope:the one whose life was a gift of compassion, healing, and forgiveness, has been raised from the dead. Jesus was betrayed, denied, and deserted by his friends; he was tortured, mocked, crucified and buried, but God raised him from the dead. And the resurrection changed more than the body of Jesus and the hearts of his disciples: the resurrection redirected the course of creation from death to life.
The women met him when they ran to tell the disciples that he had been raised. “Do not be afraid,” he said to them; “go and tell my brothers and sisters to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” With death defeated and the way of Jesus revealed as the way of life, there is nothing to be afraid of. Ordinary women and men are now free, as followers of Jesus to live, imagine, and proclaim the kingdom of God.
Mary and Mary are the mothers of the church, apostles to the Apostles. They ran to proclaim his resurrection, but they didn’t run because they had seen him; it was the other way round. They saw him when they trusted the words of an angel who spoke to them at the tomb. They saw him when they trusted those words enough to turn around and wonder, “What if?” They knew the reality of death, they knew the darkness of shattered hope, but by the grace of God they found the courage to take the first step. What if God did raise Jesus from the dead? Then the triumph of the powers that want Jesus dead is not final. If Jesus has been raised, the myth that any and all paths end in the tomb is shattered. If Jesus is risen, the light and life of the world will illumine even the remotest depths of the universe.
We know we are living in a Good Friday world, but this morning the two Marys stand in our midst, laughing and crying, out of breath from running, telling us to go to Galilee; telling us to make room for faith the size of a mustard seed, just enough to take the first step on the way. “Question your old certainties,” they say, “the tomb is empty, and the guards of death are like dead men. The rulers of the world thought they were finally finished with Jesus, but Jesus isn’t finished with the world—his mission continues. Make room in your over-certain hearts for a little subversive resurrection faith—Jesus is on the loose in the world, and you will see him. Kindness and mercy are not lost causes in these violent times. Forgiveness makes the world larger, selfless service bears fruit. Your struggle for justice and your work for peace in the name of Christ are blessed. Go to Galilee; follow him on the way; listen to him, and you will see him.”
Rep. Justin Pearson certainly heard what the two and multitudes after them declared. “Oh, we have good news, folks!” he said on Thursday.
We’ve got good news that Sunday always comes. Resurrection is a promise, and it is a prophecy. It’s a prophecy that came out of the cotton fields. It’s a prophecy that came out of the lynching tree. It’s a prophecy that still lives in each and every one of us in order to make the state of Tennessee the place that it ought to be. And so I’ve still got hope, because I know we are still here, and we will never quit![9]
We live in a Good Friday world where the guards of death make the tomb as secure as they can, but that’s all they can do. Christ is risen.
[1] See Judith Jones https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/vigil-of-easter-3/commentary-on-matthew-281-10-7
[2] Matthew 27:55-61
[3] Matthew 2:1-18
[4] Matthew 27:62-66
[5] See Holly McCall’s tweet from April 6, 2023. https://twitter.com/jhollymc/status/1644132005175590912
[6] Thomas Reese, SJ https://religionnews.com/2023/04/04/christ-continues-to-be-crucified-in-todays-world
[7] Frederick Buechner http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week633/feature.html#right
[8] Jürgen Moltmann, Cole Lectures at Vanderbilt 2002; Jürgen Moltmann, Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel, Passion for God: Theology in Two Voices (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2003), 84.
[9] https://www.democracynow.org/2023/4/7/justin_jones_tennessee