• Acts of the Apostles 10: 34-43

This excerpt is a confession of faith by first witnesses to the announcements of the resurrection of Jesus who feel compelled to testify to what they have heard and seen.

OR

• Jeremiah 31: 1-6

From Jeremiah’s singular experience, the unstable times in which he lived caused despair due to human failures.  But, he was also inspired by faith in God’s desire and goal to reunite and restore all of God’s people.

• Psalm 118: 1-2, 14-24

Using call and response, the psalmist presents himself as one whose presence in the Temple was initially rejected, but now he is front and center at worship.

• Colossians 3: 1-4

Paul encourages the readers of his letter to imagine themselves in the presence of the risen and reigning Christ more than on the plane of the “earth.”  Using a familiar baptismal theme, he continues: because they have been “buried” with Christ, so they are to look forward to being “revealed” when he is “revealed in glory.”

OR

• Acts of the Apostles 10:34-43

(see above)

• John 20: 1-18

John’s narrative names Mary Magdalene as the one who went alone to the tomb of Jesus “Early on the first day of the week, while it was dark….”  Seeing the stone had been rolled away from the tomb, she went to tell “Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved.”  She said, “they have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we do not know where they have laid him.”  Peter and the unnamed, but prominent disciple (who was never mentioned in the earlier sections of John’s gospel that dealt with the public ministry, but is now placed next to Jesus at the Last Supper, next to Peter in the sad scene when Peter denied Jesus three times, and next to Jesus’ Mother at the foot of the cross),  together the two men ran to the tomb.    The “beloved disciple” got there first, saw the abandoned burial linens, but did not enter the tomb until Peter, who was running behind him, caught up and went in first.  Each man had a distinctive reaction.  The disciple “loved by Jesus,” as soon as he saw the linens “believed,” although John points out, they did not know the scripture that Jesus must be raised from the dead.  Both men returned to their homes, leaving Mary Magdalene, alone, weeping at the tomb.  When she looked into the tomb, she saw “two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet.”   They asked her why was she weeping.  She explained that “they” have taken the body of Jesus and she did not know where to find it.  When she turned around, she saw Jesus, whom she did not recognize, who also asked why she was weeping and added, “whom are you looking for?”  Still consumed by grief and dismay, Mary Magdalene assumed Jesus was the gardener or caretaker.  But when he called her by name, she immediately recognized him and addressed him affectionately, “Rabbouni (which means Teacher).”  Jesus told her not to “hold on” to him, because he had not yet ascended to the Father, but instead to rush to tell “my brothers” that he will “ascend to my Father, to my God and your God.”  Mary Magdalene jumped to the task, rushed to the others and “announced” that she had “seen the Lord.”  She also recounted all that he had said to her.  John’s narrative privileges Mary Magdalene as the one who alone discovered the empty tomb, told the others, was the first whom the Risen Lord personally addressed, and was given the responsibility to announce the startling news to others.  Peter was the first to go into the tomb, in John’s carefully constructed narrative, but did not grasp its full meaning until later.  The enigmatic disciple, the one “whom Jesus loved” “believed,” even before the task of interpreting the scriptures had begun.

OR

• Matthew 28: 1-10

(see the Great Vigil of Easter)

Such a mishmash of reactions.  Yet what is perfectly clear, especially in John’s account of the discovery of the empty tomb, is that each person reached his or her own conclusions in his or own time and own way.

Likewise, each person who hears this startling news will reach her or his own decision about its meaning in her or his own time and own way.  This is one of those decisions with life-long ramifications.

The biblical accounts shift the emphasis away from ‘evidence’ to decision.  We necessarily rely on others for their testimony/announcement, but each person makes a unique, personal decision about its meaning.  And that decision prompts a life-time of subsequent choices that, taken together,  comprise one’s life and have important ramifications for others who are affected by our lives.

Hans-Gorg Gadamer wrote:

“…[T]he gospel does not exist in order to be understood as a merely historical document, but to be taken in such a way that it exercises a saving effect…”  “…[I]n every concrete situation, in a new and different way.  Understanding here is always application.”  (Truth and Method, second edition, p.309)

Paul Ricoeur wrote:

“We wager on a certain set of values and then try to be consistent with them; verification then is a matter of our whole life.  No one can escape this.”  (from “Lectures on Ideology and Utopia,” George H. Taylor, ed)

The distinctive and inter-related reactions of Mary Magdalene, Peter and “the beloved disciple” to the discovery of the empty tomb demonstrate that the news is shared among those who love the Lord, but each hears and internalizes the news in her or his own unique way.  And, what one does with that news has profound implications for her or him, but also for others.  Why? Because the announcement that the reason that the tomb is empty is because Jesus has been raised is a direct affront to any and everything that diminishes humankind.  Walter Brueggemann writes at the conclusion of Biblical Perspectives on Evangelism (pp 129-130):

“At base, biblical faith is the assertion that God has overcome all that threatens to cheapen, enslave, or fragment our common life.  Because the power of death is so resilient, this triumph of God is endlessly reiterated, reenacted, and replicated in new formats and venues.  As a result of that always new victory, we are left to do our most imaginative  proclamation and most courageous appropriation.”

We have heard the announcement of Mary Magdalene and others; what are we going to do with it; now, what are we going to do about it?