Easter
John 19: 38 – 20:18
Howard Memorial Presbyterian Church
Christopher H. Edmonston
A Meditation Delivered
in the Memorial Garden adjacent to HMPC, downtown Tarboro, NC
We gather this morning at this place of memory and hope. A place near our church, here in the heart of our town, where all that remained of many whom we loved has been scattered, prayed over, and memorialized. This is a sober place, full of poignancy and meaning, as all places of burial are.
So too must have been that tomb, the place where John tells us Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus had Jesus’ body laid. The only thing extraordinary about the tomb is that it was a new tomb, which means that the body of Christ was the only body in the tomb which in the ancient world was a rarity reserved only for Kings and the richest of the rich. Just like this memorial garden, this little place of memory and meaning, this new tomb of Jesus too must have been a sober place, full of memory, depth, and sorrow.
I often
wonder how sad it all must have been. To
see the new reign ushered in by Christ, to watch it proclaimed and lived-out by
him, to hear the Hosannas of the crowd, the cries of ‘save us,’ and knowing
that Jesus could, like none before him save them in ways that they had never
yet imagined. Then – to watch him be killed, to ask a friend, ‘where you there
when the crucified the Lord,’ to see his body laid in the tomb, which was
really only to see
And so in memory and in hope we rush to the tomb to remember and hope, to do the duty that has been placed before us as people of faith for so long. To pay our respect to the dead and pay tribute the remains lying in the tomb. Only to find, as dawn breaks and light reveals what no light had ever revealed before – that the tomb was empty. That God had lead Jesus through the death-shrouded Friday into the justice and mercy of the Easter dawning (taken loosely from a quotation by Ann Weems). Only to find God’s great tricks on the powers of this earth, who threaten most fully and awfully with death. God trumps it all with Christ, Him crucified, and Him raised. And so that tomb, like this memory garden, becomes not just a place of death but also a place of life sweeter than sweetness, life eternally given, and heaven flung open by the plan, providence, power, and hand of God.
That’s good news. No, better. It’s wonderful news. No better. It’s excellent news. No, better yet. It is the best news, the best news we might ever be told.
It is the best news we can hear – so good in fact, that to only hear it once does it justice not. It is so far and beyond the best news we have heard that we are called as disciples to hear it and proclaim it and through our service and witness, become it. The call of the church, of the discipleship of all the brothers and sisters of the faith is to become this best news, again, and again, and again, and again, and again.
Save the second coming, or your or my departure to go and meet the Lord in the next calendar year, I expect to see us all here, in memory and in hope, to stand at this place and declare with the Saints of every age – The Lord is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! He rises to life to defeat the demon of death. The Lord is Risen! Such is our hope and our faith. And it can neither be diluted by repetition or tarnished by time. Thanks be to God! Happy Easter!