Easter Day (Fr. Roberts)

Alleluia. Christ is risen.

Christ is risen. But that was not obvious to anyone on the first Easter morning. Peter goes into the tomb, sees the burial clothes, and goes home. The other disciple sees and believes something, but John immediately tells us that they did not yet understand the Scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead. Mary Magdalene stands outside weeping. She sees Jesus with her own eyes and thinks he is the gardener. The resurrection is happening all around these people and not one of them can see it for what it is.

And what John is doing in this passage may not be obvious to us either. He is writing for people steeped in the Hebrew Scriptures, and he fills this scene with details that some of us read right past. He spends an unusual amount of time telling us exactly where things are. The linen wrappings lying here. The cloth that covered Jesus' face set apart there. Two angels in white, one seated at the head, one at the foot, right where the body had been. Why does John arrange the scene so carefully?

I think he is painting an old picture. With a twist.

In the book of Exodus, God tells Moses to build the tabernacle, the tent of meeting, the portable sanctuary where God would dwell among his people on their journey through the wilderness. At its heart was the Holy of Holies, and within it, the mercy seat. "You shall make two cherubim of gold, at the two ends of the mercy seat." And then God says: "There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim, I will deliver to you all my commands." Between the two cherubim is where God chose to make himself known. In Hebrew, one of the words for God's presence is panim, which also means face. Scripture speaks of God's panim dwelling between the cherubim on the mercy seat.
 
Now look at the tomb. Two angels. One at the head. One at the foot. Between them, the place where Jesus' body had been. The place where his face had rested. John seems to be telling us what this tomb has become. It is the Holy of Holies. And the place where the body lay, between the two angels, is the mercy seat. The place where God's panim dwelt is now empty. The presence has gone out. Risen.

Now, Scripture is clear that God was never confined to one room. Solomon himself, dedicating the temple, said, "The heaven of heavens cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built." Israel knew God in prayer, in prophecy, in the intimacy of the Psalms. God was always the God who heard, who spoke, who was near.

But there was one thing that ordinary devotion could not touch. Once a year, on the Day of Atonement, one man entered the Holy of Holies with the blood of a sacrifice and sprinkled it on the mercy seat between the two cherubim. This was not for the everyday failures that prayer and repentance could address. This was for the deep fracture between God's holiness and his people's frailty, the accumulated weight of sin that could only be dealt with at the cost of a life.

If John is right, if this tomb really is the new Holy of Holies, then the body that had lain between those two angels was the sacrifice on the mercy seat. And the mercy seat is empty because the offering has been accepted.

Consider what that means. The old covenant had a mercy seat where blood was offered to repair what could not otherwise be mended. Now the tomb has become that sacred room. The angels mark the place. The offering is the body of Jesus. And the offering has been accepted, because the body is no longer there. God has taken it up. The room stands open. And Mary is standing right outside it, looking in freely, without a priest, without a veil, without permission.
 
So what does Jesus say to her, when she finally recognizes him? He does not say: I have conquered death. He does not say: I told you so. He says: go to my brothers and tell them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.

Israel had always known God as Father. "Is not he your father, who created you?" Moses asks. "As a father has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him," the Psalms say. But now Jesus does something new. He takes his own relationship with the Father and joins it to ours. Not simply the Father of the nation, not simply the creator, but yours, with all the intimacy that the risen Christ himself enjoys.

And notice how he does it. Mary is looking for Jesus among the dead. She is peering into the tomb. She is looking in the wrong place. And Jesus is standing behind her, alive, in a garden, and she does not know him. He does not prove the resurrection to her with evidence. He does not argue. He speaks her name. One word. Mary. And she knows his voice.

If you want to know what the resurrection means, listen to that moment. One of the great early church fathers, preaching on this very feast sixteen centuries ago, called Christ "both sacrifice and celebrant, sacrificial priest and God himself." The voice that speaks Mary's name is the same voice that once spoke from between the cherubim. He is not merely an offering placed before God. He is God who offers himself. And having offered himself once for all, he lives still as our priest, our mercy seat, our way to the Father.

Alleluia. Christ is risen. And because he is risen, the God who met his people at the mercy seat is your Father. Alleluia