Easter
April 5, 2025
William G. Carter
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’s head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed, for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.
This is the story of how it all began. Behind the pretty flowers, beyond
the joyful music, beneath the alleluias is the discovery that Jesus is not
among the dead. His tomb had been opened. The stone had been rolled away. Jesus
wasn’t there. He wasn’t where everybody expected him to be.
It was shocking news. It prompted a lot of running around. Mary
Magdalene ran to Simon Peter. Simon Peter and another ran to the tomb. It
became a footrace. Who can get there first? The unnamed disciple bends down,
looks in the grave, sees the grave clothes, but no Jesus. Peter arrives, a bit
breathless, and barges in. He sees the grave clothes – and realizes they have
been rolled up. Then the other one goes in, sees and “believes.” That is, he
thinks it could be true.
For John spells it out. “They did not understand.” Not yet.
To be fair, who does understand? Think of someone you loved, someone you
trusted, someone who was snatched away from you. Someone who died and was
buried. And you discovered, much to your shock and dismay, their grave was
busted open. Would you immediately rush to believe your loved one was alive
again? Probably not.
Mary Magdalene says, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb.” Who are
the “they”? First people to accuse would be Joseph of Arimathea and the
pharisee Nicodemus. They were the ones who put him in the tomb. Both were “secret
disciples,” afraid of the religious authorities. Did they change their minds?
Get bribed? Mary doesn’t know. She’s traumatized, so she figures there must be
some conspiracy. That’s a completely understandable reaction to the trauma. Try
to make some sense of it. Create a different story. She didn’t understand. Not
yet.
And the two men, Simon Peter and the other one. They seem more
interested in racing one another than figuring out what happened. An adolescent
response, equally a distraction. “I ran here faster than he did.” OK – but to
see what? An empty tomb?
Taken by itself, an empty tomb is underwhelming. It doesn’t mean much. As
Frederick Buechner wrote,
You can’t depict or domesticate
emptiness. You can’t make it into pageants and string it with lights. It
doesn’t move people to give presents to each other or sing old songs. It ebbs
and flows all around us, the Eastertide. Even the great choruses of Handel’s
Messiah sound a little like a handful of crickets chirping under the moon.[1]
So, the tomb was empty. They did not understand. Many people do not
understand. Some of them populate the pages of the Gospel of John. Nicodemus did
not understand when Jesus spoke of the Spirit blowing freely like the wind. The
Samaritan woman did not understand when he explained that God is not bound to her
religion. The people around the miracle pool in chapter five, they didn’t
understand that God would heal apart from their religious rules.
And the disciples, those closest to Jesus, there was plenty they didn’t
understand. They didn’t understand when he chose a donkey on Palm Sunday (12:16).
They didn’t understand when he knelt to wash their feet (13:7). So, they
certainly didn’t understand when he said early on that the temple of his body would
be raised on the third day (2:22).
On Easter, three friends race to the empty tomb. John tells us they did
not yet understand “the scripture.” OK, which scripture? John doesn’t tell us.
We have to go looking for it. That sounds confusing, too, until we realize he
is giving us a lesson in spiritual education. The lesson is called “faith
seeking understanding.” It’s been called that since the medieval scholar Anselm
of Canterbury, who cribbed it from Saint Augustine. The lesson goes like this:
God does something, you perceive it, and then you seek out the meaning of it
all.
As Anselm confessed, “I do not
seek to understand in order that I may believe, but rather, I believe in order
that I may understand.”[2] This
impulse prompted the early circle of Christ followers to hit the books.
Specifically, the books of their Bible, which was the Hebrew Bible.
They went to the prophet Hosea, chapter six, verse two, where it was
written: “After two days, he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us
up, that we may live in his presence.” And they discussed among themselves, “Is
the prophet speaking of himself, or about us, or is he giving us a clue about Jesus?”
And they left the conversation open.
Then they went to the scrolls of Isaiah. There are a lot of words in
those scrolls, but they found a long poem in chapters 52 and 53. Much of it
sounded like the crucifixion, and then they found this verse: “Yet it was the
will of the Lord to crush him with pain. When you make his life an offering for
sin, he shall see shall prolong his days.”[3] And they
discussed among themselves. The servant of God will suffer for our sins, yet he
has a future. And they kept thinking about this.
And then, somebody remembered the story of Jonah. Remember that story? Jonah
was swallowed by a big fish and stayed in the belly of the fish for three days
and three nights.[4]
And they remembered that Jesus quoted that story, and had told them, “For just
as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so
will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”[5] It was
an odd analogy, but Jesus had said it. So, they kept thinking about this.
And then they opened the hymnal. You remember what their hymnal was? The
Book of Psalms. And they turned to Psalm 110, and the first verse: “The Lord
said to my lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your
footstool.” With this, they looked at one another. That sounds like Jesus:
raised to the right hand of the Father until everything acknowledges his rule. That
verse became the most quoted Hebrew verse in the Christian scriptures.
And then they went to the hymnal again. They remembered a verse that
explained to them the empty tomb. Psalm 16, verse 10: “For you will not abandon
my soul to Sheol, nor will you let your holy one see decay.” There is no
clearer revelation of the God of life. No greater confirmation that love holds
us even beyond death.
The point is any of those verses could spark interest. Yet when we start
holding them together, the case becomes clearer. Jesus, the Holy One, had to be
raised from the dead. God was not going to let him slip away. Jesus was too
good, too true, too righteous to be abandoned by the God who gives life. And
when you understand this, it becomes the key to an otherwise locked door.
And the witness of our faith is that it was the plan of God to lay our
sins on his shoulders, where they could be taken away. And then God raised him
to life so that he could continue to give us life. All we have to do is trust
that. And if we read the scriptures deeply, they will confirm what we trust to
be true.
It’s the difference between knowing and knowing. The New Testament uses
two different words. “Eido” is knowing a fact. “Ginosko” is having a
relationship. We can know a tomb has been cracked open (that’s “eido,” knowledge
of the head). And we can know the One who has been raised from the dead (that’s
“ginosko,” wisdom of the heart).
We can see the flowers blooming and say it’s spring again. That’s the knowledge
of the head. And we can understand that life is the power of God, grace is the
glue for the universe, love is the ultimate destination. That’s the knowledge of
the heart. It is the move between seeing an open tomb and knowing the One who
is now free from it. And then we understand Easter.
Someone was telling about pastor he knows named Mark. A man in Mark’s
church was dying, and he asked Mark to stay close to his teenage son following
his passing. So, the pastor reached out to the boy. They had an awkward
conversation over a couple of Cokes. The teenager asked, “How will I know my
dad will be OK after he died.” Mark fumbled for a response, then blurted out, “I
promise you will know.” Immediately he regretted saying that.
They gather for a private graveside
service after the father died. A butterfly landed on the casket. Mark said, “I
made eye contact with the son as if to say, ‘Hey look! I told you you’d know.’”
The boy looked back at the pastor with absolute scorn. He was probably thinking,
“A bug landed on my dad’s casket, and you think it means something? You’re
disgusting.’” When the service was over, the boy bolted and walked away. No
words.
Mark went home.
He was beating himself up from the gaffe. The phone rang. It was the boy’s mother.
She said, “Please come to our house right now. There’s nothing wrong, but you
need to get over here.”
When he got to
their home, she took him downstairs to the boy’s room. He could hear sobbing –
and then laughing, and again. They opened the door and the room was filled with
butterflies. The boy was sitting on the bed laughing and crying at the same
time. Butterflies continued to fly in through an open window.
We could take
that as fact of nature, perhaps even a coincidence. But pastor Mark spoke in
faith when he told the boy, “You will know.” By faith and by trust and by
living into the light God has given us, the boy was free.[6] Even the darkness of grief
could not extinguish the light.
Coming to the
empty tomb of Jesus, “they did not yet understand.” But in time, their faith
would be informed by scripture. And they would know, in their heads and in
their hearts, that Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead. May that be so
for all of us. Happy Easter.
[1] Frederick Buechner, whistling in the Dark: An ABC
Theologized (San Francisco: Harper
& Row, 2008), 42.
[2] Anselm of Canterbury, "Neque enim quaero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut intelligam."
Online at https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/anselmproslogion.html#capi
[3] Isaiah 53:10.
[4] Jonah 1:17.
[5] Matthew 12:40.
[6] Told by Mark Yaconelli
in https://pcusa.org/news-storytelling/news/2026/3/31/churches-can-change-their-stories-anxious-hopeful
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