It was difficult for Jesus to watch people he loved experience such heartache. Never was there a heart more tender than his. When the crowds begged for healing, he complied. When Mary and Martha wept for their brother Lazarus, he called forth Lazarus from the tomb. When the multitude hungered, he gave them fishes and loaves. When they cursed and crucified him, he asked the Father to forgive them. Now his closest friends were grieving. They were grieving because he had been nailed to a cruel cross on a hill called "the place of the skull." Jesus hurt in their behalf as they struggled with their feelings of loss and of betrayal.
Many of us have experienced such feelings. We dread death not so much because of our own anxiety about the end of mortal life, but because we fear the impact on those we love.
In John Gunther's moving book, DEATH BE NOT PROUD, Gunther tells of the death of his eighteenyearold son, Johnny. Johnny was a handsome, tall, fairhaired boy. He went to Deerfield Academy where he majored in mathematics and chemistry. For fourteen months Johnny had suffered from a brain tumor for which he had two operations. But even after the second, and about two weeks before he died, he passed his examination for Columbia. He was a fine, brave young man. After his first operation, the doctors asked his father and mother about the advisability of telling Johnny what was the matter with him. He was so intelligently interested that the doctors thought it wiser to explain, and the older Gunthers agreed. The surgeon went to Johnny alone and told him the full gravity of a brain tumor. The boy listened carefully, then looked the doctor in the eye and asked, "How shall we break it to my parents?" (1) He was more concerned about his parent's reaction than he was with the prospect of death.
Jesus had tried to break it to his disciples what was to happen to himthat he must suffer and die and on the third day be raised. Simon Peter had protested. He would defend the Lord all by himself if need be. The others never seemed to grasp the full import of Jesus' words. Now he had been crucified and they were scattered like sheep without a shepherd. Their dreams shattered, their hearts broken, they were headed back to their fishing nets, back to their tax tables, back to their farms and their household duties. The great void that the Master had filled in their hearts had been replaced with an aching emptiness. They hurt and Jesus hurt for them.
There stood his beloved Mary Magdala in the garden weeping beside the tomb that only a few hours before had held his body. Jesus moved closer to her and said softly, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?" Mary was so overcome with grief she did not recognize him. "Sir," she said, "if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away." Jesus could leave her in her grief not a moment longer. He called her name, "Mary." That was all it took-ust her name as only he could speak it. She turned and answered him in Hebrew, "Rabboni!" which means, "Teacher!" In a moment the emptiness within her was filled with a grand assurance, the sadness on her face was changed to a glowing radiance, her tears were transformed into a glad testimony. Later she would tell the others with great joy, "I have seen the Lord!"
On this Easter Sunday, as we comtemplate this most beautiful and tender scene by the garden tomb on that first Easter Sunday, let's consider some of the deeper reasons that Mary was weeping that dayfor her tears are universal tears, tears that the loving and tenderhearted Jesus wants to dispel even today.
IN THE FIRST PLACE, MARY WAS WEEPING BECAUSE SHE HAD LOST SOMEONE SHE LOVED. No experience in life is more universal than that. Somebody close to her had died. As George Bernard Shaw once remarked, "Life's ultimate statistic is the same for all men, one out of one dies." George Burns in his book, HOW TO LIVE TO BE 100 OR MORE has a chapter entitled, "Stay Away from Funerals, Especially Yours." George says that if you look in the obituary column in the morning and your name isn't there, "go ahead and have breakfast." He says that if he ever looks in the obituary column and finds that his name is there, he will still have breakfast. "I'm not leaving on an empty stomach," he says. Nothing is surer than death and taxes. But some people avoid taxes. No one avoids death. Even worse, no one avoids losing people they love. It happened to the brilliant writer C.S. Lewis. Lewis lived a comfortable life as a professor and author. He confidently expounded the Christian faith in the midst of skeptical colleagues.
His confirmed bachelorhood was rudely interrupted when he met Joy, a Jewish divorcee, a former communist, who became a Christian through the reading of Lewis' books.
They were married in an unusual secret ceremony, what he called a "technical marriage," in which they continued to live apart. When it was discovered that Joy had cancer, they married "openly" before God. A brief remission of the cancer only added to the devastating grief Lewis had to endure upon her death. He wrote, "I never knew that love could hurt so much, yet I love you, and all I want is to love you. Beyond every door, I hear your voice saying to me: This is the land of shadows...real life has not even begun yet." Love does hurt particularly when we are separated from the one we love.
Before George Burns became a star in his own right, he was better known as the straight man for his delightful wife, Gracie Allen. They worked together for many years in radio and television. After her death he visited her grave regularly. An interviewer jokingly asked him if, on these visits to her grave, he told her what had been going on. "Sure, why not?" was the reply. "I don't know whether she hears me, but I've nothing to lose and it gives me a chance to break in new material." Sometimes it takes a lifetime to get over losing someone we love.
It is a universal loss. Even some of our children know what it is to lose a pet. Some of our teenagers may know what it is to lose a friend in a tragic accident. Sooner or later though all of us have to confront that reality in life.
There are other ways of losing someone we love. There are those who would testify that divorce is as devastating as death. Sometimes moving can be the ocasion for real grief. Any break in a relationship can bring pain. Sooner or later we all feel it. Mary was weeping, first of all, because she had lost someone she loved.
MARY WAS ALSO WEEPING BECAUSE SHE DID NOT UNDERSTAND THE FULL GRANDEUR OF THE GOSPEL. She was weeping because she thought she was standing beside the tomb of someone who was dead. Perhaps she had heard Jesus say that he must suffer and die and after three days would be raised to life, but somehow it never became a reality in her own life. It might have been a piece of information that her brain had processed but it was not a reality in her heart. That is true for many of us as well.
Karl Barth, considered by many to be the greatest theologian of this century, was once asked, "Why do people come to church?" Barth answered, "People come to church asking the question: "Is it true?" I suspect that is particularly true on Easter Sunday. "Is it true? I have heard that there is a loving God who created this universe and who presides over it, who knows when even the tiniest sparrow falls from the sky. I have heard that because he so loved the world that he sent his own Son that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life, but is it all true? Can I really trust my life and the lives of those I love to His care? Is it true? Can I count on it?"
Many people are weeping today inwardly because they do not realize in their hearts the message of the Gospel. In their book, THE PILL BOOK, Harold Silverman and Gilbert Simon say that fifty-ne million Americans take prescription tranquilizers; twenty-eght million take sedatives; seventeen million take stimulants. What is it that we cannot bear?
Look what has happened to many of our churches. Elie Wiesel tells a story of a rabbi who throughout his life maintained a weekly ritual. Every week he would go to a special place in the forest, light a fire and say a prayer that told the story of God's salvation. The rabbi's students, deeply influenced by the old man, continued his ritual for many years after his death. However, little by little, they changed the tradition. First they lost the place in the forest. Then they failed to light the fire. They forgot the prayer. Eventually all they could do was tell the story. (3)
Something like that has happened to us. We go through the rituals but somehow the power of the Gospel is not experienced in our life as a people. We become discouraged and disheartened as if there was no hope for usas if God in his purpose and power no longer cared about us, as if Christ had never been raised from the dead!
That great missionary and writer E. Stanley Jones used to say that he didn't grieve over the awful events in life because he knew how it would all turn out. God is in control! Christ is alive!
A little girl had a terrible fear of tunnels. As the family car made its way through the mountains near her home, she buried her head in her mother's lap every time they approached a passage through a mountain. Later her fear of tunnels subsided. With time she came to see that tunnels have light at both ends. That is the Gospel, and it is a powerful word for us when we are in the valley of despond. God always walks with us THROUGH the valleys. By the grace of God even tombs turn into tunnels with light at both ends.
Mary wept because she had lost someone she loved. Mary wept because she did not realize the full grandeur of the Gospel. EVEN MORE IMPORTANTLY, MARY WEPT BECAUSE SHE HAD NOT YET ENCOUNTERED THE RISEN CHRIST.
Many of us say to ourselves, "Oh, if only I could have walked with the Master 2,000 years ago. If I could have heard him speak, seen his miracles, been there when he raised the dead, the life of faith would be so much easier." You might be surprised. IT IS AMAZING IN THE GOSPEL STORY HOW LITTLE IMPACT THE LIFE OF THE HISTORICAL JESUS HAD ON HIS FOLLOWERS. Please stay with me for a moment. The teachings of Jesus are the most beautiful and important teachings that humanity has ever received. We are still trying to understand the full import of them, but they are not enough. Jesus dying on the cross of Calvary was a turning point in the relationship between God and man. "By his stripes were we healed." But even the cross is not enough. Peter was still a reed, not a rock after the crucifixion. Judas had walked with Jesus and talked with him daily, but still he betrayed him. The others fled and deserted Jesus in the face of impending danger. There are those who want to see Jesus only as a great teacher, but it is not enough. Others want to elavate him as the perfect role model. He was, but that is not enough. Others want us to see Jesus die on the cross and say that is the kind of courage and sacrificial love we need in the world today. It is, but it is not enough. If the story of Jesus had ended with his life, teachings, passion, and death on the cross, it is clear that his disciples would have gone back to their previous occupations and Jesus would have long ago been forgotten.
IT WAS THE EXPERIENCE OF THE RISEN CHRIST THAT TRANSFORMED THAT LITTLE COMMUNITY OF FOLLOWERS INTO A DYNAMIC FORCE THAT SOUGHT TO TURN THE WORLD UPSIDE DOWN. AND IT WAS THE AVAILABILITY OF THE RISEN CHRIST THROUGH THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT THAT SUSTAINED THAT DEDICATED COMPANY THROUGH EVERY KIND OF PERSECUTION AND PERIL IMAGINABLE.
Let no one say, "I am a Christian, but I do not believe in the resurrection." Without the resurrection there would be no Christian community today! That is the blessed truth that we have gathered here this morning to affirm. HE IS ALIVE!
That great and committed preacher W.E. Sangster found that he had an incurable disease that caused progressive muscular atrophy. His muscles would gradually waste away. His voice would fail. His throat would become unable to swallow. On Easter morning just a few weeks before his death, he wrote to his daughter, "It is terrible to wake up on Easter morning and have no voice with which to shout`He is Risen!' but it would still more terrible to have a voice and not want to shout."
You and I have voices. We can shout, "He is Alive!" Jesus was moved by Mary's tears. He spoke her name. Jesus is moved by the inward tears of many of us who also do not realize the full grandeur of the Gospel, who also have not encountered the Risen Christ. Do you hear him calling your name this Easter morning? He is alive. If you know that truth in your heart, doesn't it make you want to shout? He is alive. He has risen as he said.
(1) Clifton Fadiman, General editor, THE LITTLE, BROWN BOOK OF ANECDOTES (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1985).
(2) C. S. Lewis, THROUGH THE SHADOWLANDS
(3) Tom Sine, WHY SETTLE FOR MORE AND MISS THE BEST? (Waco: Word Books, 1987).