An open, empty tomb
Commentary
Object:
Many years ago, this pastor was invited to Easter dinner in the home of a parishioner. While we were standing around, waiting for the food to be spread out for us, the master of the house asked, "What is your definition of a Christian?"
"A Christian is a person who believes that Jesus rose from the dead." A simple answer. It seemed obvious enough, given that it was Easter Sunday. But the man looked appalled.
"If that's the definition, I don't know many Christians."
If that's the definition.... What other definition can we use? Jesus died on the cross? Yes, but if we stop there, the restoration of our relationship with God is tenuous at best. Did Jesus die in vain? Are we still living with only the faintest hope that we might attain eternal life? Are we, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:17, still in our sins, because our faith is futile, since we deny the resurrection of Christ?
For Paul, the resurrection of Christ is the cornerstone, capstone, be-all and end-all of the Christian faith. To put anything else in its place -- family, friends, social status, even our own health and welfare -- is to continue in a pre-Christian life. To deny the resurrection leaves us still without the joy that resurrection provides for our lives. To deny the resurrection leaves us still afraid of death, afraid of God, afraid that we are without hope or help.
So our job at Easter is to proclaim the good news: God has raised Jesus of Nazareth from the grave to a place "at God's right hand" -- in the common present vernacular, Jesus is God's wingman, guiding us to a new relationship of trust and love with the almighty God.
Acts 10:34-43
"Peter began to speak." Peter was the disciple who always had something to say in every situation. He was the one who even rebuked his master when Jesus told the disciples that he was going to die. Peter had been the first to speak to the crowds in Jerusalem on Pentecost, and he was a natural leader of the apostles. When Paul showed up on the scene and was preaching the good news to Gentiles (non-Jews), Peter opposed him and his efforts. After all, hadn't Jesus told the Phoenician woman who accosted him that "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel" (Matthew 15:21-28)?
But then there was the centurion (Luke 7:1-10) who had faith that Jesus could heal even at a distance; he had amazed Jesus and thus his servant was saved. Of course, one could say that Jesus had responded mostly because this case had been brought to him by some of "the elders of the Jews" who put it to him that this man "loves our nation."
Either way, Peter had not up to this point preached to Gentiles. So in the passage immediately preceding the reading for today, God had come to him in a vision, showing him a large cloth filled with all kinds of animals and telling him to "kill and eat." Even so Peter protested, saying he was a good Jew who would never eat anything that was ritually unclean. God replied that Peter should not call anything unclean that God had declared to be clean. This vision was repeated three times.
In this way, Peter must have been reminded of his failure to declare himself a follower of Jesus as he was being tried. He had followed to the place where Jesus was undergoing a mockery of a trial. But when Peter was confronted, he failed in what he had told Jesus he would do: to die with him, if necessary. Peter denied his master three times, just as Jesus had foretold. After the resurrection, Jesus appeared on the beach where Peter and the other fishermen who had followed Jesus were fishing, and asked Peter three times if he loved him. This drove Peter to tears, for though he told the truth -- that he did love Jesus -- he understood that Jesus knew he had denied him three times. All three of these events are tied together here. Peter intends to be a good Jew; he also intends to follow the leading of God. How strange it must have seemed to him that something so basic to being a good Jew of his day had to give way to following God.
This vision, which was brought on by Peter's hunger as he waited for the meal he could smell being prepared in the house below, opened Peter to some very new ways to serve God. For he had barely come out of the vision and was mulling over the possible meaning of it when there was a knock at the door, and the three men Cornelius had sent to find Peter were there, asking for him. Encouraged by the voice of the Spirit, he went with them to Cornelius' house in Caesarea. He then interpreted the vision to be about more than food; it was about people, and which people he was called upon to accept.
As a faithful Jew of his day, Peter had been brought up to know that the Jewish people were the sons and daughters of God, who favored them over all other people. The history of his people, and the nation of Israel, was interpreted entirely in this light. Did other nations overpower them? It must be that they had failed to please God. Were they taken into exile in Babylon? This had been a major stumbling stone for their faith, but being in that situation had seen to it that their stories had been written down, rather than passed down orally. Did they have problems with their neighbors as they returned to the land? This was a test of their faithfulness. They had only to push on as God was directing them. Eventually they believed all people would acknowledge YHWH and become faithful followers of the Jewish God and God's Law. When they were under the rule of Rome they chafed under that yoke, but they still knew that they were the chosen people. All others, no matter their earthly power, were "less than" those who were the children of Abraham.
And now God was saying, "Do not call impure anything that God has made clean." That phrase "that God has made clean" is the crux of Peter's ability to accept Gentiles into his home, and it gave him the courage to go into their homes. He could see that what Jesus had done in being crucified and resurrected was to make clean (acceptable to God) all of the people of earth. Now there was no barrier to reaching out to those who had been, in the Jewish mindset -- in Peter's mindset -- outcasts. And so he not only talked with the Gentiles, he entered the house of the centurion.
How odd this must have felt to him; in fact, he begins by saying so. How humbling to know that this man standing before him, this centurion, a symbol of Rome and everything Rome had done to Judea, was now declared clean by God. All of this is included in his opening statement that "God does not show favoritism but accepts people from every nation who fear him and do what is right."
In saying this, Peter is affirming the veracity of Cornelius' own vision (also prior to our reading for the day, in the same chapter of Acts), in which an angel said that the way Cornelius lived had come to the attention of God, and that he should send for Peter. Cornelius had been living as a devout man, not only praying "regularly" (Acts 10:2) but also "giving generously to those in need." And so he sent two servants and a guard to fetch Peter.
As Peter is retelling the story of Jesus and the forgiveness of sins for all those who come to believe, something even more telling took place: The Holy Spirit came down on all those gathered to listen (all of Cornelius' family and those friends who accepted the invitation), and they all proceeded to praise God in the same way the apostles had on Pentecost -- in a variety of languages. For Peter, this was confirmation that God had blessed the gathered people, and since they were "baptized in the Spirit" nothing could stand between them and water baptism.
There are several points that could be made with this story. First, this story is highly relevant to issues the church faces today: What kinds of people do we exclude from membership in our congregations? On what grounds? Many a congregation today is sitting in a changing neighborhood and either cannot figure out how to reach out or are afraid to do so. Many of our congregations see no connection between the practice of de facto segregation and our spirituality. In many instances newer, smaller congregations are sharing buildings with older, dwindling congregations, an arrangement that could be to the advantage of both groups, but instead many of these churches fall into squabbling over who can use which rooms, how big the speakers for the band can be, how the kitchen is used, and in what condition it needs to be when events are over. Even churches where everyone is the same skin color and all speak the same language are fighting about what kind of music is included in worship and whether bulletins or projection screens (or both) are to be used. And this doesn't even touch on the question of admitting homosexuals to our congregations. Do we admit that our congregations are made up of sinners, not saints, and that God will deal with the sins of each individual without our help once they hear that the good news is for everyone, not just a select few? One recent indicator of how we're doing would be the vituperative reaction on the part of some to the Coca-Cola Super Bowl ad that shows people of various colors and languages singing "America the Beautiful." (Go to http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/02/03/coca-cola-ad-su... to see the original ad and some commentary about the reactions.)
Second, there is the question of speaking in tongues, which a few years ago was a major point of contention in many of our denominations. Some churches simply forbade the practice, and those who enjoyed the experience and wished to retain it had to go elsewhere, and often left the denomination altogether. On the other side of the issue, there were many who insisted that the only way to know if a person had received the gift of the Holy Spirit was if s/he spoke in tongues, which meant essentially that people had to prove to others that they had "the right stuff." Those who were uncomfortable with the practice were driven away from those prayer groups or congregations and so on.
Third, there are many today who are interested in the mystical side of Christianity, which includes the acceptance of visionary experiences such as Peter and Cornelius had. Again, there is a general sense of unease in many rationalistic denominations (and people) when faced with these events. And there is no way for the visionary to explain in rational terms the sense of the presence of God. In this passage, Peter's vision is clearly initiated by the smell of cooking food at a time when he is admittedly hungry. The sheet full of all kinds of animals, the voice telling him to kill and eat, his refusal to eat what is tref (non-Kosher, i.e., ritually unclean), all point to food being the point of the vision. Yet to Peter it is clear, when the servants and soldier arrive, that he is to go out to people he has considered to be unclean. This is typical of visions. What is pictured is often symbolic or metaphoric and open to interpretation. And anything open to interpretation can become a point of contention.
Colossians 3:1-4
The New Interpreter's Study Bible says that this letter from Paul was probably one of those he wrote while in prison. But there is some doubt; others think this letter was written under the name of Paul after his death around 60 CE. But Colossae was devastated by an earthquake in that year, so if it were written later, it was ostensibly written to a city that had already died. This is a conundrum, and one can easily find those who want to discuss the probabilities on either side.
However, let us look at this from a different point of view: When the author says "... you have died..." he is talking to a people for whom this is literally true (or about to be). The Christians tended to be from the lowest classes (though not entirely) at this point in history, and we have seen, even today, that in devastating earthquakes, wherever they occur, it is often the poor who are the hardest hit. So whether we think that this earthquake is hanging over the heads of those who received this letter (an eerie thought) or that the survivors are digging out what they can from the rubble that has perhaps buried entire families, friends, neighbors -- in this situation, Paul talks about death and resurrection.
Think on what Paul has to say in the face of desperation and overwhelming loss. If Easter is to mean anything to us today, what he has to say is central to that meaning. How easy it is to despair when old enemies seem to rise out of the dust to threaten a renewal of the Cold War; when war is being fought in the same places it was more than a century ago, only with new combatants; when leaders of nations use weapons on their own people that we have condemned for use in war between nations; in a time when our own nation is still struggling with a devastating economic collapse; this despair can be daily delivered to our own doorsteps. Yet Paul begins with hope: We have been raised with Christ. This is no hope for "pie in the sky by-and-by," it is a hope for the here and now. If it were not that Paul is in prison, we might think otherwise, but Paul has words to express what he is about in Philippians 4:10-12 (a letter he certainly wrote from prison):
I rejoiced greatly in the Lord that at last you renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you were concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it. I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.
In that passage, Paul tells us what it means in practical terms to "set our minds on things that are above, not on earthly things." Of course, we are going to grieve the loss of people dear to us; of a profession or occupation; of the body's ability to do what we want to be able to do. But at some point, if we really trust God and the teachings of Jesus, we must learn to give over our self-centeredness to Christ. This is the meaning of "not [setting our minds] on the things of earth." Not that we give up planning for the future, nor give in to despair when we have suffered heavy losses, but that we remove our sense of security from our ability to work, have money or status symbols, and place our hope of security in God. Our security is not in a wrathful, punishing, or capricious God, but in a God as loving and self-sacrificing as Christ has demonstrated God to be.
This is the meaning of our lives being hidden with Christ. The commentary in the New Interpreter's Study Bible says that the Colossians "have in effect died and are buried (hidden) -- not in the earth, but in God, along with Christ, where all wisdom and real knowledge lie hidden, undiscerned by the world." Our Christian peace may seem foolish to what Dickens called the "man of the worldly mind" (Scrooge), but when we know that Christ is our life, no matter how bad our circumstances, we may, with Paul, learn to be content.
Paul is speaking from the perspective of a man who has spent many years planting churches and spreading the word throughout the Eastern Mediterranean; who has been prosperous and lost everything; who has fought with other apostles to be true to the message of Christ as he sees it. He has been successful, has failed, and has had tumultuous relationships and loss of friends and succor. At last, he is able to be content. This is the process of a lifetime. And if he is writing this from prison, he is in the worst circumstances the Roman world could inflict on a man. And still he claims to be content -- and grateful for whatever the church sends his way to ease his life. This is the meaning of Easter to Paul.
John 20:1-18
The danger with this gospel reading is that we have heard it so many times that it can easily lose its impact. But we should not allow this to happen, if we can avoid it. One of the ways to avoid the problem is to look at the story from the point of view of each of the participants. We can then put their stories back together for a "final reading" and retelling.
The first character in John's resurrection story is Mary Magdalene. While the synoptic gospels have other women with her, from the enigmatic "other Mary" in Matthew 28, to "Mary the mother of James and Salome" in Mark 16, to Luke's statement that it was "the women who had come with him from Galilee" who came to the tomb that morning, John has Mary Magdalene coming to the tomb alone in the early morning. Tombs in Judea were usually caves, natural or hand-hewn from the rock, and the tomb was closed with a large, round rock that acted as a door. We hear in Matthew 27:57-61 that this tomb was a new one, as yet unused (and so undefiled, to received the body of Jesus). It belonged to Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin, and at the same time a disciple of Jesus.
The rock that sealed the tomb was too heavy to be moved by a woman alone, so John, like Matthew, apparently does not intend for us to think of Mary as coming to anoint the body, which seems to be the case in Mark 16:1 and Luke 24:1. John does not say that the tomb was sealed to prevent the disciples from removing the body and claiming that Jesus rose from the dead, as Matthew 27:62-66 does.
So Mary is perhaps coming to pray and cry at Jesus' tomb, as we do today. As she approaches the tomb she sees that the rock has been moved, and her first thought is that Jesus has been the victim of tomb robbers. She runs to Simon Peter and "the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved" (more about him later; right now, we are centering on the story from Mary's point of view), and tells them the news. It's interesting to note that John has Mary using a plural pronoun -- "we do not know where they have laid him," which is the crux of the story from the point of view of the women in the other gospels. If someone has stolen the body, why did they steal it? And where would they put it?
These two disciples come and look and then go home, leaving Mary at the tomb. She is crying, left alone again with an empty tomb. At last she bends over "into the tomb," as the Greek says it, and finds it not empty but occupied by "two angels in white" who ask her why she's crying. It's to her credit that she doesn't say "Why do you think I'm crying?" Instead, she repeats what she had said to the disciples.
There is apparently no response from the angels. At least John does not record any. Mary turns away from the tomb, still weeping, and sees the figure of a man standing there. Blinded by her tears, and perhaps by the half-light of early morning, she doesn't recognize him. She hears a voice asking "Woman, why are you weeping?" but doesn't recognize his voice.
Now, Mary was an interesting person for Jesus to have as a disciple. She had been, according to Mark (16:9) and Luke (8:2), cured of seven demons. Although she is often portrayed as a prostitute, the text nowhere calls her one, even though Jesus was criticized for hanging out with prostitutes. Perhaps the business of her having seven demons is the root of this: if the number seven is usually a holy number, and she had seven demons, it must be that she broke seven of the Ten Commandments, and that would infer sexual sin to the men who were doing theology in the ancient past. But seven demons could include a harpy, shrewish woman who had stooped to theft or murder as easily as it might mean she was sexually sinful.
Jesus was doing something here that was completely contrary to the folkways and mores of his time. Calling women to be disciples, having women following him around, providing for him out of their own means, was simply not done. It was odd enough that he had men who had formerly had occupations they had left, men who were married and therefore had to support their wives and children, who were now living on what people donated to their cause. But to include women in this! And the story of Martha and Mary points us to understand that these women were not there just to do the wash and cook the meals. They were disciples.
So Mary was not a fringe-dweller to Jesus. She was a part of his circle of disciples. When most of the men melted into the shadows, she stood with the other women around Jesus, at a distance to be sure, but they witnessed his suffering and death on the cross. She was no simpering girl; she had stood by Jesus in the last moments of his life, and now, as soon as feasible, she was at the tomb to mourn his death.
Women mourners were often professionals -- singers, wailers, those who gave voice to the grief of losing a loved one. Those who could afford to hired these professionals to keep up the weeping and crying out that the death of an important person deserved. But as far as we know, Mary was not one of these. She was weeping for herself, crying out at the injustice of the horrible death her Lord and master had suffered. Even so, we ask, how could it be that she didn't know the identity of the man to whom she was talking?
She wasn't expecting Jesus. She may have been crazy at one time (another possible interpretation of those "seven demons" claiming her), but she had been there. She had seen him die, seen his suffering and humiliation, seen him taken down from the cross and delivered to his tomb. What could possibly persuade her that he was not, after all, dead?
"Whom are you looking for?"
"Just give me his body. Just tell me where he is, and I will take him away."
Ridiculous. She would carry away Jesus' dead body? How might she do this? She doesn't care. Just point the way, and she will do whatever it takes. The men may have gone back home, but that's not for her. She needs to settle this, to make things right, to see to it that nobody mutilates her Lord's body even more.
Jesus replies with just one word: "Mary!"
And she turns and says, "My Teacher!" She evidently starts to run to him, to grab hold of him, to be certain that what she is seeing is real, because he cautions her, "Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father."
Right here, we could preach an hour's worth. Is it that she must not "interrupt the events of the hour" as the NISB comments (v. 17, p. 1949)? Is it that this resurrection body is not in its final form (vv. 24-29)? We have no way of knowing. What we do know comes next: Mary Magdalene is the first apostle (the title applied to early followers of Jesus who carried the Christian message into the world). She is, in fact, the apostle to the apostles, and early Christian writers assigned her a high place in the followers of Jesus. While it is not so common in the United States, there are hundreds of churches throughout the Western World dedicated to her.
So back she goes to the male disciples with a simple statement: "I have seen the Lord. And he says I am to tell you that he is ascending to his Father and our Father, to his God and our God." They might, because of her history, make fun of her, question her closely, or ignore her. In fact, Mark's gospel says (16:11): "But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it." Even in Matthew's gospel, which tells us that the disciples went to Galilee to see the risen Christ, "some [of the disciples] doubted."
But what about the two male disciples, Peter and "the disciple Jesus loved"? Why would they look into the empty tomb and then just go home? We may suppose, in the lack of any other explanation, that they were no more expecting Jesus' resurrection than any 21st-century person! It is only after multiple visions of the risen Christ that any of the disciples came to believe the unbelievable. It is only when faced by his Savior with the question "Peter, do you love me?" that Peter both confesses his love for Jesus and accepts that his denial of his Lord has been forgiven. It wasn't until the Holy Spirit infused the group that they had the courage to speak boldly about the reality of the living Christ as opposed to the crucified teacher. And it isn't until the book of Acts that we see Peter as a confident apostle, going about doing what his master had done, healing and teaching in the name of Jesus.
As for that other disciple, "the one that Jesus loved," we really have no idea who that person might be. He is talked about in this way only in the events of the Last Supper, crucifixion, and resurrection. This has left a wide-open field of speculation, none of which is particularly helpful, but there are a few things that may be said without dipping into that pool of speculation.
First, the use of this device does not really indicate that the author is modestly hiding his own identity. He has named James and John as being part of the "inner circle" of disciples, along with Peter. It would be a likely thing that the "other disciple" would be either James or John. So why switch to this way of talking about himself in these last chapters of the gospel?
John's gospel was written, by all evidence, after the destruction of the temple, which took place in 70 CE, by which time John would have been quite old. This gospel was written in elegant Greek, such as used by the upper classes. The beginning of the gospel discusses Jesus' origins in very erudite terms, terms used by people well-educated in Greek philosophy. So by both the dating of the work and the level of education indicated by the writing, we can exclude the apostle as the author of the gospel (since John was a fisherman), thus doing away with the need for modesty to cover his identity.
The NISB comments that this disciple may well have been so well-known to early Christians that his or her name need not be said. On the other hand, it could be that this device was used so that we might know that we, the readers, can connect with the story through this unnamed, but beloved, disciple. So he becomes us, peering into the tomb, standing aside while Peter rushes into the tomb, leaving as Peter does, going back home to think things over, wondering, doubting, hoping.
The wonderful part of this story is that we have these choices -- a woman disciple, a known male disciple, an unknown disciple -- whose doubt and fear and grief are wiped out by the resurrected Christ, standing by an open, empty tomb.
"A Christian is a person who believes that Jesus rose from the dead." A simple answer. It seemed obvious enough, given that it was Easter Sunday. But the man looked appalled.
"If that's the definition, I don't know many Christians."
If that's the definition.... What other definition can we use? Jesus died on the cross? Yes, but if we stop there, the restoration of our relationship with God is tenuous at best. Did Jesus die in vain? Are we still living with only the faintest hope that we might attain eternal life? Are we, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:17, still in our sins, because our faith is futile, since we deny the resurrection of Christ?
For Paul, the resurrection of Christ is the cornerstone, capstone, be-all and end-all of the Christian faith. To put anything else in its place -- family, friends, social status, even our own health and welfare -- is to continue in a pre-Christian life. To deny the resurrection leaves us still without the joy that resurrection provides for our lives. To deny the resurrection leaves us still afraid of death, afraid of God, afraid that we are without hope or help.
So our job at Easter is to proclaim the good news: God has raised Jesus of Nazareth from the grave to a place "at God's right hand" -- in the common present vernacular, Jesus is God's wingman, guiding us to a new relationship of trust and love with the almighty God.
Acts 10:34-43
"Peter began to speak." Peter was the disciple who always had something to say in every situation. He was the one who even rebuked his master when Jesus told the disciples that he was going to die. Peter had been the first to speak to the crowds in Jerusalem on Pentecost, and he was a natural leader of the apostles. When Paul showed up on the scene and was preaching the good news to Gentiles (non-Jews), Peter opposed him and his efforts. After all, hadn't Jesus told the Phoenician woman who accosted him that "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel" (Matthew 15:21-28)?
But then there was the centurion (Luke 7:1-10) who had faith that Jesus could heal even at a distance; he had amazed Jesus and thus his servant was saved. Of course, one could say that Jesus had responded mostly because this case had been brought to him by some of "the elders of the Jews" who put it to him that this man "loves our nation."
Either way, Peter had not up to this point preached to Gentiles. So in the passage immediately preceding the reading for today, God had come to him in a vision, showing him a large cloth filled with all kinds of animals and telling him to "kill and eat." Even so Peter protested, saying he was a good Jew who would never eat anything that was ritually unclean. God replied that Peter should not call anything unclean that God had declared to be clean. This vision was repeated three times.
In this way, Peter must have been reminded of his failure to declare himself a follower of Jesus as he was being tried. He had followed to the place where Jesus was undergoing a mockery of a trial. But when Peter was confronted, he failed in what he had told Jesus he would do: to die with him, if necessary. Peter denied his master three times, just as Jesus had foretold. After the resurrection, Jesus appeared on the beach where Peter and the other fishermen who had followed Jesus were fishing, and asked Peter three times if he loved him. This drove Peter to tears, for though he told the truth -- that he did love Jesus -- he understood that Jesus knew he had denied him three times. All three of these events are tied together here. Peter intends to be a good Jew; he also intends to follow the leading of God. How strange it must have seemed to him that something so basic to being a good Jew of his day had to give way to following God.
This vision, which was brought on by Peter's hunger as he waited for the meal he could smell being prepared in the house below, opened Peter to some very new ways to serve God. For he had barely come out of the vision and was mulling over the possible meaning of it when there was a knock at the door, and the three men Cornelius had sent to find Peter were there, asking for him. Encouraged by the voice of the Spirit, he went with them to Cornelius' house in Caesarea. He then interpreted the vision to be about more than food; it was about people, and which people he was called upon to accept.
As a faithful Jew of his day, Peter had been brought up to know that the Jewish people were the sons and daughters of God, who favored them over all other people. The history of his people, and the nation of Israel, was interpreted entirely in this light. Did other nations overpower them? It must be that they had failed to please God. Were they taken into exile in Babylon? This had been a major stumbling stone for their faith, but being in that situation had seen to it that their stories had been written down, rather than passed down orally. Did they have problems with their neighbors as they returned to the land? This was a test of their faithfulness. They had only to push on as God was directing them. Eventually they believed all people would acknowledge YHWH and become faithful followers of the Jewish God and God's Law. When they were under the rule of Rome they chafed under that yoke, but they still knew that they were the chosen people. All others, no matter their earthly power, were "less than" those who were the children of Abraham.
And now God was saying, "Do not call impure anything that God has made clean." That phrase "that God has made clean" is the crux of Peter's ability to accept Gentiles into his home, and it gave him the courage to go into their homes. He could see that what Jesus had done in being crucified and resurrected was to make clean (acceptable to God) all of the people of earth. Now there was no barrier to reaching out to those who had been, in the Jewish mindset -- in Peter's mindset -- outcasts. And so he not only talked with the Gentiles, he entered the house of the centurion.
How odd this must have felt to him; in fact, he begins by saying so. How humbling to know that this man standing before him, this centurion, a symbol of Rome and everything Rome had done to Judea, was now declared clean by God. All of this is included in his opening statement that "God does not show favoritism but accepts people from every nation who fear him and do what is right."
In saying this, Peter is affirming the veracity of Cornelius' own vision (also prior to our reading for the day, in the same chapter of Acts), in which an angel said that the way Cornelius lived had come to the attention of God, and that he should send for Peter. Cornelius had been living as a devout man, not only praying "regularly" (Acts 10:2) but also "giving generously to those in need." And so he sent two servants and a guard to fetch Peter.
As Peter is retelling the story of Jesus and the forgiveness of sins for all those who come to believe, something even more telling took place: The Holy Spirit came down on all those gathered to listen (all of Cornelius' family and those friends who accepted the invitation), and they all proceeded to praise God in the same way the apostles had on Pentecost -- in a variety of languages. For Peter, this was confirmation that God had blessed the gathered people, and since they were "baptized in the Spirit" nothing could stand between them and water baptism.
There are several points that could be made with this story. First, this story is highly relevant to issues the church faces today: What kinds of people do we exclude from membership in our congregations? On what grounds? Many a congregation today is sitting in a changing neighborhood and either cannot figure out how to reach out or are afraid to do so. Many of our congregations see no connection between the practice of de facto segregation and our spirituality. In many instances newer, smaller congregations are sharing buildings with older, dwindling congregations, an arrangement that could be to the advantage of both groups, but instead many of these churches fall into squabbling over who can use which rooms, how big the speakers for the band can be, how the kitchen is used, and in what condition it needs to be when events are over. Even churches where everyone is the same skin color and all speak the same language are fighting about what kind of music is included in worship and whether bulletins or projection screens (or both) are to be used. And this doesn't even touch on the question of admitting homosexuals to our congregations. Do we admit that our congregations are made up of sinners, not saints, and that God will deal with the sins of each individual without our help once they hear that the good news is for everyone, not just a select few? One recent indicator of how we're doing would be the vituperative reaction on the part of some to the Coca-Cola Super Bowl ad that shows people of various colors and languages singing "America the Beautiful." (Go to http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/02/03/coca-cola-ad-su... to see the original ad and some commentary about the reactions.)
Second, there is the question of speaking in tongues, which a few years ago was a major point of contention in many of our denominations. Some churches simply forbade the practice, and those who enjoyed the experience and wished to retain it had to go elsewhere, and often left the denomination altogether. On the other side of the issue, there were many who insisted that the only way to know if a person had received the gift of the Holy Spirit was if s/he spoke in tongues, which meant essentially that people had to prove to others that they had "the right stuff." Those who were uncomfortable with the practice were driven away from those prayer groups or congregations and so on.
Third, there are many today who are interested in the mystical side of Christianity, which includes the acceptance of visionary experiences such as Peter and Cornelius had. Again, there is a general sense of unease in many rationalistic denominations (and people) when faced with these events. And there is no way for the visionary to explain in rational terms the sense of the presence of God. In this passage, Peter's vision is clearly initiated by the smell of cooking food at a time when he is admittedly hungry. The sheet full of all kinds of animals, the voice telling him to kill and eat, his refusal to eat what is tref (non-Kosher, i.e., ritually unclean), all point to food being the point of the vision. Yet to Peter it is clear, when the servants and soldier arrive, that he is to go out to people he has considered to be unclean. This is typical of visions. What is pictured is often symbolic or metaphoric and open to interpretation. And anything open to interpretation can become a point of contention.
Colossians 3:1-4
The New Interpreter's Study Bible says that this letter from Paul was probably one of those he wrote while in prison. But there is some doubt; others think this letter was written under the name of Paul after his death around 60 CE. But Colossae was devastated by an earthquake in that year, so if it were written later, it was ostensibly written to a city that had already died. This is a conundrum, and one can easily find those who want to discuss the probabilities on either side.
However, let us look at this from a different point of view: When the author says "... you have died..." he is talking to a people for whom this is literally true (or about to be). The Christians tended to be from the lowest classes (though not entirely) at this point in history, and we have seen, even today, that in devastating earthquakes, wherever they occur, it is often the poor who are the hardest hit. So whether we think that this earthquake is hanging over the heads of those who received this letter (an eerie thought) or that the survivors are digging out what they can from the rubble that has perhaps buried entire families, friends, neighbors -- in this situation, Paul talks about death and resurrection.
Think on what Paul has to say in the face of desperation and overwhelming loss. If Easter is to mean anything to us today, what he has to say is central to that meaning. How easy it is to despair when old enemies seem to rise out of the dust to threaten a renewal of the Cold War; when war is being fought in the same places it was more than a century ago, only with new combatants; when leaders of nations use weapons on their own people that we have condemned for use in war between nations; in a time when our own nation is still struggling with a devastating economic collapse; this despair can be daily delivered to our own doorsteps. Yet Paul begins with hope: We have been raised with Christ. This is no hope for "pie in the sky by-and-by," it is a hope for the here and now. If it were not that Paul is in prison, we might think otherwise, but Paul has words to express what he is about in Philippians 4:10-12 (a letter he certainly wrote from prison):
I rejoiced greatly in the Lord that at last you renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you were concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it. I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.
In that passage, Paul tells us what it means in practical terms to "set our minds on things that are above, not on earthly things." Of course, we are going to grieve the loss of people dear to us; of a profession or occupation; of the body's ability to do what we want to be able to do. But at some point, if we really trust God and the teachings of Jesus, we must learn to give over our self-centeredness to Christ. This is the meaning of "not [setting our minds] on the things of earth." Not that we give up planning for the future, nor give in to despair when we have suffered heavy losses, but that we remove our sense of security from our ability to work, have money or status symbols, and place our hope of security in God. Our security is not in a wrathful, punishing, or capricious God, but in a God as loving and self-sacrificing as Christ has demonstrated God to be.
This is the meaning of our lives being hidden with Christ. The commentary in the New Interpreter's Study Bible says that the Colossians "have in effect died and are buried (hidden) -- not in the earth, but in God, along with Christ, where all wisdom and real knowledge lie hidden, undiscerned by the world." Our Christian peace may seem foolish to what Dickens called the "man of the worldly mind" (Scrooge), but when we know that Christ is our life, no matter how bad our circumstances, we may, with Paul, learn to be content.
Paul is speaking from the perspective of a man who has spent many years planting churches and spreading the word throughout the Eastern Mediterranean; who has been prosperous and lost everything; who has fought with other apostles to be true to the message of Christ as he sees it. He has been successful, has failed, and has had tumultuous relationships and loss of friends and succor. At last, he is able to be content. This is the process of a lifetime. And if he is writing this from prison, he is in the worst circumstances the Roman world could inflict on a man. And still he claims to be content -- and grateful for whatever the church sends his way to ease his life. This is the meaning of Easter to Paul.
John 20:1-18
The danger with this gospel reading is that we have heard it so many times that it can easily lose its impact. But we should not allow this to happen, if we can avoid it. One of the ways to avoid the problem is to look at the story from the point of view of each of the participants. We can then put their stories back together for a "final reading" and retelling.
The first character in John's resurrection story is Mary Magdalene. While the synoptic gospels have other women with her, from the enigmatic "other Mary" in Matthew 28, to "Mary the mother of James and Salome" in Mark 16, to Luke's statement that it was "the women who had come with him from Galilee" who came to the tomb that morning, John has Mary Magdalene coming to the tomb alone in the early morning. Tombs in Judea were usually caves, natural or hand-hewn from the rock, and the tomb was closed with a large, round rock that acted as a door. We hear in Matthew 27:57-61 that this tomb was a new one, as yet unused (and so undefiled, to received the body of Jesus). It belonged to Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin, and at the same time a disciple of Jesus.
The rock that sealed the tomb was too heavy to be moved by a woman alone, so John, like Matthew, apparently does not intend for us to think of Mary as coming to anoint the body, which seems to be the case in Mark 16:1 and Luke 24:1. John does not say that the tomb was sealed to prevent the disciples from removing the body and claiming that Jesus rose from the dead, as Matthew 27:62-66 does.
So Mary is perhaps coming to pray and cry at Jesus' tomb, as we do today. As she approaches the tomb she sees that the rock has been moved, and her first thought is that Jesus has been the victim of tomb robbers. She runs to Simon Peter and "the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved" (more about him later; right now, we are centering on the story from Mary's point of view), and tells them the news. It's interesting to note that John has Mary using a plural pronoun -- "we do not know where they have laid him," which is the crux of the story from the point of view of the women in the other gospels. If someone has stolen the body, why did they steal it? And where would they put it?
These two disciples come and look and then go home, leaving Mary at the tomb. She is crying, left alone again with an empty tomb. At last she bends over "into the tomb," as the Greek says it, and finds it not empty but occupied by "two angels in white" who ask her why she's crying. It's to her credit that she doesn't say "Why do you think I'm crying?" Instead, she repeats what she had said to the disciples.
There is apparently no response from the angels. At least John does not record any. Mary turns away from the tomb, still weeping, and sees the figure of a man standing there. Blinded by her tears, and perhaps by the half-light of early morning, she doesn't recognize him. She hears a voice asking "Woman, why are you weeping?" but doesn't recognize his voice.
Now, Mary was an interesting person for Jesus to have as a disciple. She had been, according to Mark (16:9) and Luke (8:2), cured of seven demons. Although she is often portrayed as a prostitute, the text nowhere calls her one, even though Jesus was criticized for hanging out with prostitutes. Perhaps the business of her having seven demons is the root of this: if the number seven is usually a holy number, and she had seven demons, it must be that she broke seven of the Ten Commandments, and that would infer sexual sin to the men who were doing theology in the ancient past. But seven demons could include a harpy, shrewish woman who had stooped to theft or murder as easily as it might mean she was sexually sinful.
Jesus was doing something here that was completely contrary to the folkways and mores of his time. Calling women to be disciples, having women following him around, providing for him out of their own means, was simply not done. It was odd enough that he had men who had formerly had occupations they had left, men who were married and therefore had to support their wives and children, who were now living on what people donated to their cause. But to include women in this! And the story of Martha and Mary points us to understand that these women were not there just to do the wash and cook the meals. They were disciples.
So Mary was not a fringe-dweller to Jesus. She was a part of his circle of disciples. When most of the men melted into the shadows, she stood with the other women around Jesus, at a distance to be sure, but they witnessed his suffering and death on the cross. She was no simpering girl; she had stood by Jesus in the last moments of his life, and now, as soon as feasible, she was at the tomb to mourn his death.
Women mourners were often professionals -- singers, wailers, those who gave voice to the grief of losing a loved one. Those who could afford to hired these professionals to keep up the weeping and crying out that the death of an important person deserved. But as far as we know, Mary was not one of these. She was weeping for herself, crying out at the injustice of the horrible death her Lord and master had suffered. Even so, we ask, how could it be that she didn't know the identity of the man to whom she was talking?
She wasn't expecting Jesus. She may have been crazy at one time (another possible interpretation of those "seven demons" claiming her), but she had been there. She had seen him die, seen his suffering and humiliation, seen him taken down from the cross and delivered to his tomb. What could possibly persuade her that he was not, after all, dead?
"Whom are you looking for?"
"Just give me his body. Just tell me where he is, and I will take him away."
Ridiculous. She would carry away Jesus' dead body? How might she do this? She doesn't care. Just point the way, and she will do whatever it takes. The men may have gone back home, but that's not for her. She needs to settle this, to make things right, to see to it that nobody mutilates her Lord's body even more.
Jesus replies with just one word: "Mary!"
And she turns and says, "My Teacher!" She evidently starts to run to him, to grab hold of him, to be certain that what she is seeing is real, because he cautions her, "Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father."
Right here, we could preach an hour's worth. Is it that she must not "interrupt the events of the hour" as the NISB comments (v. 17, p. 1949)? Is it that this resurrection body is not in its final form (vv. 24-29)? We have no way of knowing. What we do know comes next: Mary Magdalene is the first apostle (the title applied to early followers of Jesus who carried the Christian message into the world). She is, in fact, the apostle to the apostles, and early Christian writers assigned her a high place in the followers of Jesus. While it is not so common in the United States, there are hundreds of churches throughout the Western World dedicated to her.
So back she goes to the male disciples with a simple statement: "I have seen the Lord. And he says I am to tell you that he is ascending to his Father and our Father, to his God and our God." They might, because of her history, make fun of her, question her closely, or ignore her. In fact, Mark's gospel says (16:11): "But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it." Even in Matthew's gospel, which tells us that the disciples went to Galilee to see the risen Christ, "some [of the disciples] doubted."
But what about the two male disciples, Peter and "the disciple Jesus loved"? Why would they look into the empty tomb and then just go home? We may suppose, in the lack of any other explanation, that they were no more expecting Jesus' resurrection than any 21st-century person! It is only after multiple visions of the risen Christ that any of the disciples came to believe the unbelievable. It is only when faced by his Savior with the question "Peter, do you love me?" that Peter both confesses his love for Jesus and accepts that his denial of his Lord has been forgiven. It wasn't until the Holy Spirit infused the group that they had the courage to speak boldly about the reality of the living Christ as opposed to the crucified teacher. And it isn't until the book of Acts that we see Peter as a confident apostle, going about doing what his master had done, healing and teaching in the name of Jesus.
As for that other disciple, "the one that Jesus loved," we really have no idea who that person might be. He is talked about in this way only in the events of the Last Supper, crucifixion, and resurrection. This has left a wide-open field of speculation, none of which is particularly helpful, but there are a few things that may be said without dipping into that pool of speculation.
First, the use of this device does not really indicate that the author is modestly hiding his own identity. He has named James and John as being part of the "inner circle" of disciples, along with Peter. It would be a likely thing that the "other disciple" would be either James or John. So why switch to this way of talking about himself in these last chapters of the gospel?
John's gospel was written, by all evidence, after the destruction of the temple, which took place in 70 CE, by which time John would have been quite old. This gospel was written in elegant Greek, such as used by the upper classes. The beginning of the gospel discusses Jesus' origins in very erudite terms, terms used by people well-educated in Greek philosophy. So by both the dating of the work and the level of education indicated by the writing, we can exclude the apostle as the author of the gospel (since John was a fisherman), thus doing away with the need for modesty to cover his identity.
The NISB comments that this disciple may well have been so well-known to early Christians that his or her name need not be said. On the other hand, it could be that this device was used so that we might know that we, the readers, can connect with the story through this unnamed, but beloved, disciple. So he becomes us, peering into the tomb, standing aside while Peter rushes into the tomb, leaving as Peter does, going back home to think things over, wondering, doubting, hoping.
The wonderful part of this story is that we have these choices -- a woman disciple, a known male disciple, an unknown disciple -- whose doubt and fear and grief are wiped out by the resurrected Christ, standing by an open, empty tomb.
