“[W]hen the sabbath was over” (16:1), the women bought what they needed to finish the unfinished burial rites.  They couldn’t finish!  The law made them unable to finish.  The traditional Jewish determination is that the Sabbath has ended when three stars are visible Saturday evening.  Did the shops open up right away—back open for business, all smiles, rubbing hands, and sighs of relief?  Then again, maybe the women bought what they needed the next morning, Sunday morning, but they were already on their way to the tomb the earliest they could.  Oh, happy walk!— Around here at this time of year, that would be something just after 6:30.  What shop would be open earlier than that?  Well, Shipley’s is open at 4:00.  Because, you know, donuts past 4:30 just aren’t worth it.

The women were determined to do the right thing by the one they loved and had lost.  Taken from them.  Gone too soon!  They needed something to do, keep moving, keep their hands moving, so that they didn’t have time to think, remember, reflect.  They couldn’t just sit around, thinking about it, missing him, empty, grieving.  They needed to do something, be busy.

As soon as they realistically could, they took their supplies and started for the tomb in the garden.  I don’t suppose any of them gave that much thought: a tomb in a garden.  The Bible told them that we had made the garden a tomb by our disobedience—ashes to ashes, dust to dust.  But all that was way before anyone alive now, and what did that have to do with anything happening today, anyway?

Besides, they had a much bigger problem on their minds, suddenly: “they asked each other, ‘Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?’” (16:3).  Oh.  That.  Difficulties and obstacles—it seemed like life was just one long, rarely interrupted series of difficulties and obstacles.  It just made the sadness all the sadder, the injustice all the more aggravating.  Why can’t things ever be easy?  Why can’t the obstacles just be taken away, lifted away, rolled away?  “But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away” (16:4).  You’d think, if they were in that sad, frustrated, bewildered frame of mind, you’d think that seeing the obstacle had already been rolled away would have made them glad.  O, thank God!  But to find a tomb opened that you knew to have been closed, because with your own eyes you watched as it was sealed: that was not a cause for relief.  It was a cause of fear, and trembling.

Determined.  They had to finish what the law had kept them from finishing.  They go in.  They were going to go in, anyway.  That was the plan, had been the plan, unhappy plan as it was, but they needed to do for the dead what they could.  The horror of Friday needed to be offset by what they could do for the dead, now: gentle love, trembling hands, tears.  They hadn’t thought about what the dead man had done for them by dying.  Death was just an injustice and a tragedy, and that was all anyone really had to look forward to, after all, wasn’t it?

They go into the tomb, more scared than curious, but also curious, in a terrified sort of way.  Jesus had been dead some thirty-six hours.  A dead body is unpleasant to say the least, but a more-than-thirty-six-hour-dead body . . . was just revolting.  And what if someone had broken in to do something disgraceful to the corpse?  Oh, what would they find?  They didn’t want to know, didn’t want to see!  They had seen so much, too much, already: cross, blood—so much blood—dying, burial, the heavy stone heaved into place.  Yet they had to see, know.  They came to finish something so important to them.  They had to finish what they began.  They weren’t able to understand, yet, that God had finished what He had begun; that discovery—epiphany is the old church word—that would take a little time.

“As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed” (16:5).  You think?  Who wears white in a tomb?  Who sits in a tomb?  And on the right side, too.  On the right side?  Why would it matter what side he was sitting on?  It would matter if you were describing what you saw, later, to people who weren’t there, who weren’t even sure you were there.  He was sitting on the right.  He was dressed in white.  That’s eyewitness testimony.  It’s only believable because it’s what they saw.  Of all that they might have been expecting, they hadn’t been expecting that.

But why was he there?  To tell them something.  “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified.  He has risen!  He is not here.  See the place where they laid him” (16:6).  Not here.  Yes, that was obvious!  Know for sure he isn’t: look where they laid him.  You remember, don’t you?  Oh yes, they remembered him lying there.  Not there.  But not just not there.  Risen.  Like, taken away?  No.  Risen.  He arose.  What does that mean?  What could that mean?  Beloved, I daresay many of us, too many of us, have seen death, a dead body.  If someone, even a young man in a white robe sitting in a tomb, were to tell you that that dead person was risen, not dead, my guess is that you would be incredulous at best, maybe even outraged.  How dare you insult my intelligence!  Is this some sick joke?  How dare you add hurt to my broken heart!  But this isn’t jest.  This isn’t cruelty.  It’s God’s own truth: light, life; power, glory . . . grace.

Risen.  I’m not going to pretend I know all that word means, but I do know it means at least this: not dead but alive.  And I know that no dead body can come alive, restored—especially after three days—but by the power, glory, and grace of God.  God had said to Abraham, centuries of generations earlier: “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” (Gen 18:14).

“But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee.  There you will see him, just as he told you’” (16:7).  Really no point in hanging around the empty tomb.  The empty tomb means go.  The empty tomb means tell.  Tell who what?  Jesus isn’t in the tomb.  The man in white said he was risen; he also said he is going ahead and that, if you want to see him, you have to go to him.  What Jesus had already said would happen has happened, and is happening.  Jesus is telling the truth.  If you want to know truth, if you want to go in company with truth, go find Jesus.

Okay, so that’s a lot, a lot to take in, shock upon shock.  This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.  This wasn’t how this day was supposed to go.  Only, if they had been listening and remembering as Jesus had been asking them to listen and remember, they would have remembered that he had told them all about it already.  It had happened just as he said it would.  Not dead.  Risen!  Sounds like a good reason to celebrate, to share the good news, share the joy, the excitement, the relief.  “Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb.  They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid” (16:8).

What many find hard to believe about all this Jesus stuff is that there’s just so much that’s hard to believe—it’s bewildering how much there is that’s hard to believe!  I mean, they don’t object to the things Jesus says about being nice—that’s okay, of course.  Justice and kindness and feeding people—right on!  It’s just too much to ask, though, to believe the impossible stuff: virgin birth, Incarnate Word, healings, walking on water, casting out demons, feeding multitudes with basically nothing, rising from the dead.  Such things don’t happen, miracles.  There’s physics, you know, and . . . chemistry, and . . . biology, and . . . geology, after all!  You know—how we know the world works.  Only beloved, what we’re being told about today isn’t about how the world works.  We know about that, all too well.  What we are being told about today, what we are being told about every Lord’s Day, is about how God works.  Therein is the mystery and the miracle for those listening and attentive, for those open to the light like . . . like an empty tomb.