Thomas J Parlette
“What Do You Mean There’s No Body?”
John 20: 1-18
4/20/25, Easter
Imagine if this happened to you. It’s a lovely Sunday afternoon on Easter. You meet up with some members of your family, and before you sit down to Easter dinner, you decide to go out to Oakwood Cemetery and place some flowers on your grandparent’s graves.
But when you get to their grave sites, you find that the headstones have been knocked over, there’s a pile dirt off to one side and the coffins have been opened. The bodies are gone, bones and all.
Imagine the emotions that might course through your system – anger, disgust, despair, confusion, fear. The list could go on.
Well, that’s exactly what happened to Mary on that first Easter Sunday. The tomb had been opened and Jesus’ body was gone.
The same kind of thing happened to a lady named Sherene Johnson.
Ten members of the Johnson family are buried in Brighton Cemetery in Alabama. Brighton is a town that gets a lot of rain, and it is not unusual for the cemetery to be completely underwater. This is a problem because when graves are submerged, especially those on hillsides, the deluge can literally raise the dead and send them floating away. After a particularly heavy rainfall, Sherene Johnson went out to the cemetery with some flowers to remember her sister’s birthday. She noticed that several of her family’s headstones had been “rearranged” by the flood waters. She had to pay someone $75.00 per grave to reset the stones in concrete again. (1)
Others are not so fortunate. The bodies either go missing, or need to be reburied entirely.
Mary Magdalene had no idea who had come for Jesus’ body. She had seen him die with her own eyes. She had watched his limp, broken body being taken down from that diabolical Roman instrument of torture – the cross. She assumed now, more than 48 hours later, that her Lord was till captive to what Shakespeare called in Romeo and Juliet, that “detestable maw… womb of death.”
All she knew was that Jesus was not where he was supposed to be.
This is a truth that many of us have come to understand. Jesus, so often, isn’t where he is supposed to be. Jesus is often found where you least expect him. It’s a reality that speaks to the way we often project our expectations onto God, expecting God to show up in ways we can understand and predict.
Mary expected to find a lifeless body but was instead met by the risen Christ. Imagining the scene, it’s easy to overlook the fact that there were really two shocking moments for Mary here on Easter morning. The first was finding the empty tomb and the second was being scared to death when she finds Jesus wandering around in the garden. I don’t which one was more shocking!
That’s the way it goes when Jesus shows up when we least expect it – it’s a bit of a shock. Martha expected Jesus to show up before her brother Lazarus died, not afterward. And she didn’t hesitate to give Jesus a piece of her mind. “Where were you – you’re late. Right when we needed you most, you are nowhere to be found. Thanks for nothing Jesus.”
We are accustomed to looking for Jesus in all the right places – such as churches – and we’re surprised when we don’t feel his presence in our rituals, traditions, churches, cathedrals, sacred music, or any of the other places we expect to feel his presence. But we are nonplussed when he acts outside of those boundaries, or at least we should be. The empty tomb symbolizes a new reality, one that challenges our assumptions and invites us to encounter Christ in unexpected ways.
In the end, Jesus did show up for Martha, and the Mary of today’s reading. The truth is, Jesus might not seem to be present when we want him to be present – but he’s there when he needs to be. Frequently, Jesus is at work in the unseen, in the brokenness, in the thin places, in the ordinariness of life where we often forget to seek him.
The other featured actors in our text for today are Peter and John – the guys who run to the tomb, racing to see for themselves what Mary has reported. They arrive at the tomb and they see the linen clothes that Jesus was buried in – but no body. The Bible says that they saw and believed, even though they didn’t fully understand what was happening – much like our own journey in which we can have an intellectual understanding of what’s going on, but we can remain clueless as to it’s significance.
The well-known documentary filmmaker Ken Burns once gave an interview on a podcast called Ye Gods. The interviewer, Scott Carter asked him how he decided to become a documentary filmmaker. Burns said the decision was rooted in his childhood experience of losing his mother at age 11, after a long illness.
Six months later, as he and his father were watching a movie together, Ken saw his Dad cry for the first time since his mom died. At that moment, Ken Burns decided he was meant to make films. Years later, at age 39, Ken himself realized he’d never made peace with the experience of losing his mother. He admitted this to his father-in-law, Gerald Stechler, a psychologist, who said it didn’t surprise him. “Look what you do for a living,” he said. “You wake the dead. You make the soldiers of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln and Jackie Robinson come alive. Who do you think you’re really trying to wake-up?” (2)
The resurrection can be daunting and confusing if we try to understand it solely from a scientific or rational perspective. Books have been written purporting to “prove” how the resurrection was possible. Not to take away from empirical studies, but one must remember that the resurrection as a pivotal doctrine of our faith doesn’t rely just on rational or empirical possibilities. Remember, Peter and John. They saw – and they believed.
These two great pillars of the church entered the tomb, saw that there was no body – and they believed. They didn’t need any research, they didn’t need any scientific studies. They believed first – understanding would come later.
This is precisely the point that Jesus makes to the disciple Thomas, who would later, according to tradition, become a missionary, venturing as far east as India. After Thomas showed him the marks in his hands and side – which Thomas refused to touch – Jesus said, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” In other words, Jesus seems to prefer belief based on faith, rather than hard evidence.
One of the great minds of the medieval church was Saint Anselm, the 11th century archbishop of Canterbury, who wrote extensively about believing and understanding. He reduced the issue to a nice catch phrase – “Credo ut intelligam”, that is, “I believe so that I may understand.” This, for Anselm, was the opposite of “I think so that I may believe.” Anselm writes, “I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but rather, I believe in order that I may understand.” This is what he would call “faith seeking understanding.” (3)
Faith first; reason later. Believe first; understand later.
Sometimes the understanding never comes. The unknown author of Hebrews says of the many saints of the Old Testament, “Though they were commended for their faith, they did not receive what was promised.” But often the understanding does come. We go through the dark night of the soul, and joy does come in the morning. All is revealed. The “aha” moment arrives. But it arrives when God is ready for it to arrive.
So, the empty tomb, while initially a source of distress, becomes the ultimate symbol of hope. In a world filled with uncertainty and disruptions, division, arguments and pettiness, poverty and disease – the resurrection of Jesus Christ provides hope that change and redemption is possible.
For believers, death is not the end of the story. This hope is transformative, giving us a new perspective on life and death. We are faced with grief and loss, the resurrection reminds us that death never, ever has the final word.
This hope we carry is not just for the future – this is a hope for the present. This is hope for the here and now. It is a hope that impacts the way we live today.
Many of us don’t feel all that hopeful. We live lives that are littered with bad choices, bad people, brokenness and loss. But what the resurrection shows us is that that is precisely the time Jesus shows up – just like he did for Mary at the tomb. The resurrection shows up. The resurrection tells us that nothing is beyond God’s power to redeem.
Post-resurrection believers can now live with courage, faith and hope. As people of hope:
Our lives bear witness that we’re friends and followers of Jesus.
Our lives are filled with the light of Christ.
We do not despair, but rejoice in the power of Christ.
We do not give in to fatigue, but continue to work in service of the Lord, because we know that in the Lord, our labor is not in vain.
We are people of courage, willing to be prophetic voices in the wilderness
Above all, as people of hope, we live guided by love and compassion.
Will you join me in Affirming our Resurrection Hope, using the Festival of Resurrection printed in your bulletin…
1. Dinah Voyles Pulver. “When the dead don’t stay buried: The grave situation at cemeteries amid climate change.” Usatoday.com, sept. 19, 2023.
2. Scott Carter, Ye Gods podcast, March 29, 2023.
3. Homileticsonline, Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion
