On the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning while it was still dark, and saw the stone removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him.” So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb. (John 20.1-3)
In March of 1925, Father Columban Schmucky, a Benedictine monk assigned to a small parish in North Texas, went to Mineral Wells in an effort to regain his health, the wells in that locale known at that time for their curative waters. Hoping for a recovery, the 49-year-old monk looked forward to being back in his parish by April 7th for the Palm Sunday celebration. He sent word back to his concerned parishioners, assuring them, “It will be a triumphal entry.”
However, on March 13th, at 2:00 o’clock in the morning, the short, rotund and beloved pastor began having convulsions, succumbing to death before sunrise. His abbot, Ignatius Conrad, aged and frail at the time, had spent the night on a train in an effort to get to Mineral Wells in time to see his confrere. Later that morning, he sat in the undertaker’s office.
At some point, the undertaker, apparently unfamiliar with the monastic vow of poverty, recommended to Abbot Ignatius that Father Columban should be buried in a $10,000 casket. Staring at the man through his wire-framed glasses, the old Abbot, without a moment’s hesitation, replied to the undertaker’s suggestion with these memorable words, “That is for those who have no hope.” He arose, left the man’s office, and buried Father Columban in a plain wooden box.
That is for those who have no hope. For Abbot Ignatius, it was foolishness to bury his confrere in such an expensive coffin, as if this was the end, some final tribute to the man’s life, an unspoken effort to preserve the earthly remains of the man. Trained in a different school of thought, Abbot Ignatius did not see Father Columban’s death as the end. Even with his dimming eyesight, the old Abbot saw life on the other side of the grave.
Of course, that is the Christian belief that the Abbot articulated, built on the Easter experience of Mary of Magdala and the two disciples who went to the tomb of Jesus on Easter Sunday, finding it empty and having to decipher for themselves what the discarded burial cloths meant. The first articulation of the belief in the resurrection of the dead was made in the wee hours of that morning as they stood in front of the boulder and hoped for the impossible.
If there is one word that is inextricably linked to Easter it is the word hope. A tough word to define quickly or easily, hope is more than a desire or expectation that something will end well. Hope always carries a strong element of trust. Or, in the words of one Czech diplomat, “Hope is not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but that something makes sense, no matter how it turns out.”
The Lutheran writer and preacher Richard Lischer likes to say that the natural habitat of hope is distress. As he says, hope thrives in distress. He’s right, of course. It is when everything comes crashing down around us that hope kicks in. So long as our world is on course, there is no reason and nothing to hope for. Hope is on a coffee break. But let a strong wind knock us to the ground or adversity takes away our balance, then hope comes flying in on a supersonic jet.
It is interesting, as we study the biblical texts on this Easter Sunday, to recall that the Hebrew word for hope can also mean “to wait.” Again, the Jewish people show a keen insight into the human predicament because, as most of us know from experience, hope is activated in times of waiting. When the outcome is unknown and we can do nothing but wait, hope springs from the ground like a young, tender plant.
Of course, it is also in that interval of waiting that hope does battle with despair, the two in opposition to one another, the first promising a good outcome, the second predicting a bad outcome. For the Christian, the battle always exists, but because of the Easter experience of the first disciples, the balance is weighed in favor of hope. We dare to hope because the tomb is empty.
Professor Lischer recounts the time that he was visiting Africa when much of the continent was experiencing a drought. While he was visiting with people in Zimbabwe, Lischer said that he noticed the people did not talk about the weather in the same way that Midwesterners in the United States did. Referring to the drought, the native people always said, “We are waiting for the rain.”
The story illustrates beautifully the connective tissue between hope and waiting. In the interim between distress and outcome, there is waiting. And so long as there is waiting, there is hope. So, as Mary of Magdala and the two disciples stood in front of the empty tomb, there was distress. As Mary said to Peter, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him.”
In that interval, when the outcome was not yet known, the first kindling of hope began to ignite, as they begin to believe that maybe, just maybe, God has righted the wrongs done to their beloved leader, the Galilean Teacher; that maybe, just maybe, God had transformed the broken and beaten body of the Rabbi into a living being again; that maybe, just maybe, this time good had prevailed over evil.
For the same reason, we should not overlook that the evangelist John begins his telling of the resurrection with the statement that Mary of Magdala went to the tomb “while it was still dark.” The night has not passed yet. She sees no future, except more of the same brutal, ugly world. She has no reason to hope for anything better. She knows how the powerful crucify the powerless in this world.
But her despair changes as she stands in the garden, the sun slowly rising in the east. As one writer astutely said, “Every sunrise is a natural sign of hope.” And though she cannot see clearly, the outcome still uncertain in that moment of waiting, she begins the journey towards hope, her heart beating with a new life, her eyes seeing the world in a new way, her steps racing towards the other disciples with a new strength.
In time, as the day moved steadily across the sky, the interval slackening with each second, her hope was shown not to be in vain, not to have been misplaced, as the Risen Lord stood before Mary of Magdala in the garden, who, recognizing him, says, “Rabboni,” or “Teacher.” He replies, “Go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” With those words, the outcome is now crystal clear. The distress has disappeared. The wait has ended. The conclusion is certain. He is risen.
It is for the same reason that Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, will say some years later to early Christian believers, “Hope that is seen is not hope.” The reason is simple. If the results are right in front of our eyes, if the end is decided, hope has nowhere to grow. But, as Paul says, “If we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”
And that is where we stand this morning, with Mary of Magdala, looking into the empty tomb, waiting, hoping, wanting. Can we hope that this time good wins the battle, that this time love is stronger than hatred, that this time the death of a good man is not how the story ends? So long as we can hope, we can continue to live in a world darkened by greed, by war, by bigotry because we hold on–sometimes by the thinnest threads–trusting that the sun will rise and a new day will dawn.
Sustained by that hope, we fight on, even if the odds appear against us, battling the forces of evil, refusing defeat, courageous because we have already seen the first rays of light at the empty tomb, and day is sure to follow. Please God, please, let the day follow. That is the essence of the Easter message–there is hope behind the boulder, light after the darkness.
In Father Gregory Boyle’s new book, The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness, he shares the story of his 92-year-old mom’s last days. He writes, “My mom was sharp till the last moment. And she was not a lick afraid of dying. Some three weeks before she died, she said to me, giddy and exhilarated, ‘I’ve never DONE this before.’ It was something you’d say just before skydiving.”
He writes, “In fact, the day before she died, I was alone with her, the rarest of things, and she was asleep. When her eyes opened and she saw me there, she scowled, “Oh, for cryin’ out loud.’ And she closed her eyes. She was pissed that she wasn’t dead yet.”
Then, he writes, “But the next day my sisters went out to retrieve lunch and I was alone with her again, sitting at the foot of her bed. At exactly noon, she opened her eyes, lifted her head some, let out a glorious, wondrous gasp (skydiving) and she left us. And no one in earshot of the sound would ever fear death again.”
Hearing Father Boyle tell that story, we see hope in flesh and blood. His mother, waiting for the outcome, held onto her hope that good was on the other side of the boulder, love was on the other side of the boulder, God was on the other side of the boulder. And, with that hope, she took her last breath, moving towards a new sunrise, eyes now seeing.
Today, we wait on this side of the boulder where we get only faint glimpses, the darkness gradually fading as the light of day casts out the shadows until we also see the Risen Lord standing before us.
–Jeremy Myers
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