[CatherineTorpey]

He is risen!

Jacqui is preaching for our Easter worship. The scripture just popped up on the website. The common lectionary is John 20:1-18, but Jacqui will be preaching from John 1:1-5, 9-14. So maybe we’ll read both. Jacqui’s sermon is “This Here Flesh.”

John’s account of the empty tomb is chapter 20:1-18. In this account, It is Mary Magdalene who goes to the tomb, and then she runs off to tell Simon Peter and “the other disciple” who is traditionally believed to be John.

Tha account of the empty tomb is a bit different in Matthew (chapter 28), where Mary is with “the other Mary.” In Mark (chapter 16) it is Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James (presumably she’s the same as Matthew’s “the other Mary”) as well as Salome. Luke says that “the women” went to the tomb, without specifying who, but later, he implies that it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them,” since it’s these women who tell the apostles.

So the gospel acounts seem to disagree about which women went to the tomb, but they all agree that it was only women who went, and that they went early on Sunday morning, after the sabbath had ended the night before. All 4 agree that Mary Magdalene was either the only one, or one of the ones, who was there. One can make all of these accounts agree if one assumes that they simply name different women who were there, or that the women didn’t all arrive at the same time.

In our gospel account from John, “the other disciple” outruns Peter — this always strikes me as a bit comical, since it is traditionally understood that John keeps referring to himself in the third person as “the disciple” — so it’s a brag, “I outran Peter and got there first!”

Here is an image of what a stone closing the entrance of a tomb might have looked like in Jesus’ day. Obviously, it is not easy to roll: https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/tomb-gm922000352-253148441

And this is a nice short video of the “Garden Tomb” in Jerusalem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXCZyqVK-7Y

The site shown in the video is not the site that is traditionally believed to be the burial site of Jesus (though it claims to be). The place traditionally accepted as the true burial site is the “Holy Sepulchre” in the Old City of Jerusalem, but over the centuries it has come to not at all resemble what it would have looked like in Jesus’ day. The “Garden Tomb” gives the visitor much more of a sense of what Mary would have seen. The stone that would have been rolled away from the entrance can be seen at the end of the video, as one exits.

Happy Easter! I look forward to being with you this morning for Bible in the Middle if you aren’t attending worship in person at 10am. The online worship as always takes place at 11:45.

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