“For they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.”
The readings for the morning Mass of the Resurrection of the Lord can be found here.
When I was a teenager, I found myself spending the night during various visits to a pediatric hospital in downtown Atlanta for treatments for some serious illnesses (I’m all healed now!). During these stays, I would always welcome visitors, but between receiving medicine, playing catch-up with school assignments and the work of healing generally, I was usually asleep by the time visitors were able to stop by after work.
I distinctly remember how I would feel waking up the next morning after a visitor came in while I was asleep. The room would feel different and a blanket or two would have been moved. Candy or other goodies would be on my bedside table, and sometimes a fragrant smell would be present after a visitor had brought me colorful flowers to brighten an otherwise dreary hospital room.
In these moments, despite not being able to see it in action, these signs of love were tangible and palpable.
In these moments, despite not being able to see it in action, these signs of love were tangible and palpable.
John’s telling of the resurrection of Christ feels oddly similar. Unlike the Synoptic Gospels (the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke), John’s resurrection narrative doesn’t begin with a dramatic flair of the stone actively being rolled away or angelic beings greeting bewildered visitors to the tomb. Rather, it begins with fear and stress as Mary Magdalene sees the stone having been already pushed aside, with Peter and the Beloved Disciple entering and seeing the burial cloths, folded and put away. It is only later in this chapter that Jesus reveals himself to Mary Magdalene in the form of a gardener.
But early in this narrative, Jesus is notably absent and quiet in this resurrection story. Yet, it is with these tangible signs of love, the rolled-away stone and the folded-up burial cloths, we learn that the Beloved Disciple (which John’s Gospel is careful to add that he beat Peter to the tomb, but humbly waits for him to enter first) “saw and believed.” As for the Beloved Disciple, so too for us: we are invited to behold Jesus in his absence in the empty tomb, the folded-up burial cloths and the stone cast aside, and come to believe that Jesus truly has risen from the dead, just as he said.
In these signs of love, Jesus invites us to see at his empty tomb our own stone rolled away and our burial cloths rolled up with his.
Maybe you, like me, can’t help but feel like Jesus is absent from our world sometimes like he is in the beginning of John’s resurrection story. Whether in the refusal to ban conversion therapy by the Supreme Court this past week, skepticism towards our transgender siblings by some church leaders, the continuation of violence and wars across the country and in our own or in the feeling of isolation that you might feel like I did in the hospital, it can be hard to notice signs of Jesus’ presence.
To be fair, Jesus does tell us that we will not see him in his fullness until his second coming. However, his promise to be with us always “even to the end of the ages” (cf. Matt. 28:20) is fulfilled in the Scriptures, the sacraments (especially the Eucharist) and the love that we give to and receive from one another. In these things, these signs of love, Jesus invites us to see at his empty tomb our own stone rolled away and our burial cloths rolled up with his. In so doing, we join with Mary Magdalene, Peter and the Beloved Disciple on that first Easter morning to encounter the emptiness of Christ’s tomb so that we might be filled with hope and great faith that ours will be the same on the last day.
That’s true, even if, as in my hospital bed, we aren’t immediately aware of those signs of love. If we look carefully, and pay attention, we’ll see the love. Just like the disciples all eventually encountered the Risen One.
Alleluia, Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed, Alleluia!
