AtomThe Tomb is Empty!
Matthew 28:1-10
Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed!)
It was the week before Easter and Doris Miller was worried. As a teacher at a private elementary school, St. Theresa’s, she had the opportunity each year to tell her second grade class the Easter story. Yesterday she had told them about Jesus and his going to the cross, about his resurrection from the dead, and about the promise of new life. And then, to further the learning, she had given them a homework assignment. She gave each of them a large plastic egg and said, “Now, I want you to take this home and bring it back tomorrow with something inside that shows new life. Do you understand?
“Yes, Ms Miller,” they all said enthusiastically – all except Jeremy. He had just listened intently, his eyes never leaving Doris’ face. And now she wondered, “Had Jeremy really understood?” After all, Jeremy was a special needs child. He had been born with physical and mental disabilities and as a twelve-year-old was still in the second grade. Doris wondered sometimes if St. Theresa’s was really the right school for him. She had talked to his parents about considering a special needs school, but the Forresters had begged her to keep him as there were no such schools nearby. Reluctantly she had agreed. But now she wondered again, “Am I really getting through to Jeremy? Maybe he hadn’t understood what I was saying about Jesus and the resurrection. Maybe I should call the Forresters and explain the project.”
But that evening things got hectic around the Miller household. The sink stopped up and it took over an hour to get that taken care of. Then there were some groceries to pick up, a blouse to iron, and a vocabulary quiz to prepare for the next day’s class. She forgot to call Jeremy’s parents.
The next morning, 19 children came to school, laughing and talking as they placed their eggs in the large basket on Ms Miller’s desk. After they had completed their math lesson it was time to open the eggs.
In the first egg, Doris found a flower, “Oh yes, a flower is certainly a sign of new life. When plants come peeking through the ground, we know that spring is here.” A small girl in the front row raised her hand and called out, “That was my egg, Ms Miller.”
She smiled. In the second egg there was a plastic butterfly that looked very real. Doris held it up. “We all know that a caterpillar changes and grows into a beautiful butterfly. Yes, that is new life, too.” Little Judy in the second row smiled proudly.
Next, there was a rock with moss on it. She explained that, yes, moss too showed life. Billy, in the back row, beamed. “My daddy helped me!” he said.
Then Doris opened the fourth egg. Her heart sank. The egg was empty. Surely it must be Jeremy’s, she thought, and of course, he had not understood. If only she had not forgotten to call his parents! And not wanting to embarrass him, she quietly laid the egg on her desk and reached for another.
Suddenly, Jeremy spoke, “Ms Miller, aren’t you going to talk about my egg?”
Flustered, Doris replied, “But Jeremy, your egg is empty!” He looked into her yes and said softly, “Yes, but Jesus’ tomb was empty, too.”
Finally, when she was able to speak again, Doris said, “Do you know why the tomb was empty, Jeremy?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, beaming. “Jesus was killed and put there. Then his Father raised him up. He wasn’t there anymore.” (Ida Mae Kempel, Focus on the Family Magazine, copyright 1988, 2006)
He wasn’t there anymore. The tomb was empty. Some of you have heard the story of Jeremy’s egg before. Some of you maybe saw a movie a few years ago about this true story. It is just too good a story not to tell for those who haven’t heard it, and for those of us who have. It relays so powerfully the incredible, heart-stopping message of Easter: “The tomb was empty. Jesus wasn’t there anymore.”
Matthew tells us in his gospel that when the women came to the tomb and looked inside, all they found were discarded grave clothes, like the cracked shell of a cocoon left behind when a butterfly has emerged and spread its wings to the sunshine.
But that was impossible. Jesus was dead. The Roman soldiers had seen to that. They drove huge nails through his hands and feet. He cried out in pain and gasped for breath. For six hours he hung on that cross as life drained from him, and then he quietly said, “It is finished…Father, into your hands I commit my Spirit.” And he was gone. But just to make sure, one soldier took his spear and drove it into his side, through his ribs into his heart, and the last remaining drops of blood poured forth.
They took him down from the cross and hurriedly anointed his body with burial ointments before wrapping him in a sheet. It was a poor job of preparation, but the Sabbath was approaching and they could do little more for him without breaking the law of the land. It would have to wait until after the Sabbath. It would have to wait until Sunday. They laid his body in the borrowed tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, and the soldiers rolled a stone across the entrance.
And so it was until they returned to the tomb early on Sunday to finish what they had started, to lovingly apply more ointments and rightly wrap the body. But sometime in the predawn hours, just before the sun rose, there had been a rustling of leaves as the breath of God moved through the garden. Perhaps it was more like an earthquake, as Matthew describes, but it was breath, nevertheless, breathing life into his dead body. And in that moment, Jesus rose from the cold stone slab on which they had laid him. He stood for a moment on wounded feet. His nose caught the strange scents of the tomb with its bandages and spices as the grave clothes tumbled to his feet. And then he smiles and steps out into the new day – alive! – and the tomb is empty.
It is incredible, unbelievable news. It is more wonderful than I can really comprehend. But I would like to suggest this morning that the empty tomb tells us at least two important things.
First, it tells us that Jesus was right. He is who he said he was. He is none other than the son of Almighty God. To be sure, the world is never quite sure that it believes this. It would rather make of Jesus great teacher or wonderful example of human love. The great skeptic become believer, C.S. Lewis once wrote, “Don’t give me all this jabber about Jesus being a great man or a great teacher. When you consider the things he said about himself, he was either a liear, a lunatic, or the Lord himself.” I mean, this great man, this great teacher claimed to be equal with none other than almighty God. Either he was right or he was looney tunes. The empty tomb says, “Jesus was right.” And so is the confession of Christianity down through the centuries. The tomb is empty. Jesus is alive. Jesus is who he said he is: God’s Son.
Perhaps you have heard the story of the Christian leader who traveled to Egypt with a high government official. Their conversation turned to religion. “We believe,” said the preacher, “that God is revealed to us in three ways.” “We, too believe that,” said the Egyptian, who happened to be Moslem. “We believe that God is revealed in the works of creation.” “We, too, believe that,” said the Moslem. “WE believe that God is revealed to us in a great book – the Bible.” “We too have a book of revelation – the Koran.” “We believe that God is revealed to us in the man Jesus Christ.” And we believe that God is also revealed in a man, the prophet Mohammed.” “We believe that Jesus died to save his followers.” “We, too, believe that Mohammed died for his people.” “And we,” the Egyptian was quick to add, “Know where the tomb of Mohammed is that we may go to worship…and you…” And he stopped himself. “You…have no tomb.” The tomb was empty. Jesus is God’s Son.
The second thing that the empty tomb tells us is that the tomb is also empty for us. For those who trust in this Son of God, for those who receive his forgiveness and promises of life, death is only the door to another world. The tom is empty…my tomb is empty; your tomb is empty.
I came across a devotional story this week that put this incredible good news in the mouth of Joseph of Arimathea – remember him? It was in his borrowed tomb that they lay Jesus on Good Friday. Joseph said it like this: “Do you know what changed it all for me? It wasn’t what the angel said. It wasn’t even that I finally saw him myself…and I did see him.
No, it was the fact that MY tomb was empty. Stop and think about that for a moment. It was MY tomb that was empty. Can you understand what that meant for me? All my loved ones would be buried there. Me and all my loved ones…and it was empty.”
When George Tomlinson, once Minister of Education in England, was in his last days, a friend asked him where he found comfort in his last days. His answer was, “I find comfort in this, that I shall win either way. If I get better, I shall go home and be with my wife. If I don’t get better, I shall go to heaven and rest with my Savior.”
That is the Christian hope. Because Christ’s tomb was empty, so shall mine be. It is the hope that carries us when we look toward our own death or grieve the death of those we love. And as much as we dislike talking about it, it is ever near, just out of sight or around the corner. We are frail, finite beings, even we who follow Jesus. Both my family and Pastor Dave’s family have had our own experiences of loss and grief these past weeks. And I am also reminded whenever we make our way through basketball tournament time, of my friend Al Sieck who had gone with the members of his small town congregation to cheer on the hometown basketball team at the girls’ state tournament. On the way back from the state champion ship game, another car crossed the center line and Pastor Al and his wife and his daughter were all killed. As I sat in the congregation at his funeral it was a kind of wake-up call for me. I sat there thinking, to myself, “None of us escapes…death happens to believers as it happens to non-believers.” And yet as we stood to sing the Easter hymns that Pastor Al and his wife had put in a funeral plan for the day when death would come, I found myself lifted by the good news they proclaimed, by the incredible, heart-stopping good news of Easter. None of us escapes death…yet the tomb is empty. Jesus tomb is empty, which means one day ours will be, too.
I can’t prove the resurrection to you friends. All I can do is pass on what has been told to me; all I can do is point you to the testimony of God’s people in God’s word and the incredible story that has changed lives and changed the world. All I can do is tell you is that the Spirit within tells me it is true. Jesus is alive. The tomb is empty.
By the way, shortly after Jeremy brought his egg to Ms Miller’s classroom, he became very ill and did not survive the illness…true story…and all of those who came to pay their respects were surprised to see 19 plastic eggs on top of his casket – all of them empty. Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed!)
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