How many of you have been on an airplane since 9/11? A lot of things have changed in airports since then. Not just going through metal detectors, but pat-downs, body scans, scans of our luggage and purses… whole arenas for security procedures have been set up in every airport, and a whole new bureaucracy has been created: the Transportation Security Administration, or TSAs.
If you’ve been in an airport in the last twenty years, or on a train or bus in a larger city, you’ve probably seen a sign that says, “If you see something, say something.” The idea is that the TSAs’ eyes and ears can’t be everywhere, but ordinary citizens might notice something that seems off and by reporting it, prevent a tragedy.
However, it would seem that many people do not take this recommendation seriously. Several years ago, a New Jersey man on a bus from South Carolina to New York noticed that a passenger had gotten off the bus in Delaware and left his bag behind, so he called first the Delaware State Police, who said there was nothing they could do; when the bus crossed the New Jersey border, he called the New Jersey state police, who also refused to respond.
Finally, the man called Port Authority, who intercepted the bus, stopped it and made everyone get off, and inspected the bag, which turned out to contain sixteen cartons of cigarettes. The rest of the passengers were angry at John Heinlein, the man who had made the call, and one told the Port Authority police that it was John who had a bomb.
Reading the story, I got the impression that the rest of the passengers on the bus, and even the driver, who threatened to fight John, would not have reported the unattended bag. Most of them were angry about the delay in getting into the city, for work or whatever their purpose for traveling might have been. John Heinlein himself stated that he was 99% sure the bag was nothing to worry about – but that one percent prompted him to make the call. All kinds of transit stations and carriers may have signs that say “If you see something, say something” – but this story seems to indicate that only about 2% of the population is likely to actually do so.
In our gospel story for today, Mark’s version of the story of Jesus’s resurrection, three women head to Jesus’s tomb in the early morning hours after the Sabbath has ended. They are carrying spices, in order to finish the task of preparing Jesus’s body for burial, which was cut short by sunset on Good Friday night – the start of the Sabbath. As they walk toward the tomb, they are having a discussion amongst themselves, sharing their concerns. They know that the tomb was sealed with a very large rock, and are wondering if they’re going to be able to find someone who can roll it away for them.
But when they get there, the stone has already been moved, and the tomb is empty. Or almost empty. There’s a young man sitting inside, and he isn’t Jesus – but he’s dressed in white, and he has some instructions for them. First, he explains what’s going on: “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him.” And then the young man tells the women what they are supposed to do next: “But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”
They are the first witnesses to the resurrection. The word “witness” in English means to attest to a fact or event from personal knowledge. It’s not enough to just see something – to be a witness means you must also say something. So if we had to rely on the Markan account alone, we wouldn’t be able to refer to Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome as witnesses, because according to Mark, they disregarded the instructions of the young man in white: “They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
But fortunately, Mark’s account is not the only one we have to go on. Matthew 28 reports much the same scenario: Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” (he omits Salome) head to the tomb. Matthew doesn’t tell us that the women carried spices, either. They also encounter a young man in white, but he is described specifically as “an angel of the Lord,” and the women get to see him show up in a dramatic way. There’s an earthquake and the stone moves, and then there’s this guy, sitting on the stone. He tells the women, almost word for word, what the young man in Mark told them, but in Matthew, they follow instructions: “So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples.” On their way, they encounter Jesus himself.
Luke also names Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, and adds Joanna to the list; he also indicates that the women had prepared their spices before the Sabbath. In Luke, they encounter not one but two young men, in “dazzling” clothing, who give the ladies a little speech: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” In Luke, the women are not told specifically to go tell the men, but they do anyway – and the men do not believe them.
In John, Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb by herself, and when she finds the stone removed, she goes back to let Peter and John know. They return to the tomb with her, see that it’s empty, and leave again, but Mary hangs around. And there she encounters Jesus. After a tender interaction in which Mary at first does not recognize Jesus, she is commissioned, the same as the women in the other three gospels, to go tell the others.
So we have a core story that is roughly the same in all four gospels: Mary Magdalene goes to Jesus’s tomb early on the morning after the Sabbath. She may have taken some friends along; if just one friend, it was Mary, the mother of James; if two, we’re not sure whether the third woman was Salome or Joanna.. Or maybe it was four, and included both Salome and Joanna. At any rate, the woman or women took spices with them to complete the task of preparing Jesus’s body – or maybe they just went to mourn. When they got to the tomb, the stone was rolled away and the tomb was empty, and there was one young man in white hanging around with instructions for them, or maybe two men, or maybe Jesus himself, or maybe d) all of the above.
And the woman or women are told to go tell the others, or maybe they’re not told explicitly but they do, or maybe they are told and they don’t. And there’s our story.
What the accounts all agree on is that the first person or people to see Jesus’s empty tomb was a woman, Mary Magdalene, or more than one woman, Mary and one or two or three friends. And here’s where it gets interesting because in Jewish law, women were not allowed to be witnesses in legal proceedings, because their testimony was not considered reliable. In fact, in the nation of Israel, women were only granted the right to serve as witnesses in 1951!
And yet the four gospels all agree, that it was a woman – at least one – who first saw the empty tomb. None of the four male gospel writers attempt to elide this information, which, ironically enough, makes it all the more likely that this is what actually happened. The men were stuck with reporting that women were the first witnesses. There’s a quote about this from German theologian Jürgen Moltmann: “Without women preachers, we would have no knowledge of the resurrection.”
And here’s where it gets interesting again. The word in Greek that is translated as “witness” – is “martyr.” That’s right – in Greek, at least initially, the word “martyr” didn’t have the connotation of someone who is killed for telling what they have seen and experienced; it just meant someone who told what they had seen and experienced. Certain John Heinlein was not expecting to be killed for informing the authorities that there was an unattended bag on his bus. He wasn’t treated very kindly, but he lived to tell the tale.
And so did the women – or did they? The Roman Catholic tradition makes a big deal about what they call “apostolic succession” – and the word “apostle” means “messenger, one who is sent.” In three of the four gospels, we’re told that the women witnesses to the empty tomb were indeed sent, and yet they were not considered apostles, or at least not for long. St. Augustine, writing in the fourth century, referred to Mary Magdalene as “apostola apostolorum” – apostle to the apostles – but when it came to consecrating priests or even being a priest, that wasn’t good enough, not for the Catholics or indeed anyone else, for a very long time. Side note, that there is evidence that women in the early church served as deacons, priests, missionaries, and even bishops, but this evidence has been buried or ignored.
We’ve seen, throughout the scriptures, that God tends to call the very people whom the rest of humanity seems to think don’t have a lot to offer. Moses was a murderer with a stutter. David was the youngest of a big family of boys, considered good enough to watch the sheep but not much else. Gideon responded to God’s call by saying his clan was the weakest one in his tribe, and he was the least important member of his family. Jeremiah was just a kid. The disciples Jesus called were illiterate fishermen. And the first apostles and witnesses to the resurrection were women.
It took the Brethren something like one and a quarter centuries to decide it was okay for women to preach the Good News. Do you all know how that happened? It came to the attention of the leadership that a woman named Sarah Righter Major was preaching in churches around her home in Germantown in northwest Philadelphia. The leadership sent two messengers to go ask Sarah to stop because of course, the Bible asserts that women aren’t allowed to teach men. Being good Brethren, the two men decided to at least listen to Sarah preach before they delivered their message. But after they’d heard her, they could no longer carry out their mission – because she was good. She clearly had the Holy Spirit with her – she clearly had been called to preach, not on her own, but by God.
And so were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Salome, and Joanna. Catholic tradition states that all of the male apostles went out preaching the good news of Jesus Christ across the known world – Simon Zelotes, for example, went to Egypt, and Thomas went to India.
And Mary Magdalene is believed to have continued her work as an apostle, also. Legend says that she and her companions, fleeing persecution, got into a boat with neither rudder nor sail and landed in the south of France. Mary preached to the folks she met in Marseille and managed to convert all of Provence. Then she decided to retire and became a solitary monk living in a cave at a place called Sainte-Baume, where she was visited by angels every day for the next thirty years until she died. She wasn’t a martyr, in the sense of having been killed for sharing her testimony, But she was an apostle.
And so are each and every one of you, and so am I. Can you bear witness to the resurrection – have you experienced Jesus’s life-giving and transforming power in your life? Then I am here to tell you, beloved church, that you are a witness, you are a martyr, and you are called to be an apostle. You don’t need a special commission from the bishop – in fact, the Brethren don’t have bishops – or even the general secretary, moderator, or district executive. All you need is a story, and the willingness to tell it.
A few years ago, a friend wrote a beautiful letter to her church, which she shared with me: “In this season of Lent we are reminded to cleanse our hearts and lives to prepare the fertile places for the arrival of the saving work of the cross with the redeeming power of the resurrection. We often find ourselves on the dark place of the hopelessness of the crucifixion Friday only to be unexpectedly and undeservedly amazed and graced beyond measure by the resurrection exchange; the profound life-changing gift of his Sunday morning empty tomb.”
That’s powerful. It’s beautiful poetry and good theology – and it’s apostolic martyr and witness testimony. Reading those lines, I sensed that my friend wasn’t talking about “the dark place of hopelessness” in an abstract fashion – it’s something she’s experienced directly, likely many times in her life. And so have we all.
Hopelessness is a sad fact of human life. There are so many situations that will come up that can make us feel hopeless. I remember when I was eight years old and my grandmother’s dog killed my kitten. That was the same year that my beloved grandfather died of a heart attack, and I watched my mom sink to the floor as she received the news of her father’s death on the telephone. People we love get sick and die – or just die, suddenly and unexpectedly and unfairly. We lose things: jobs, friends, marriages, homes, money, health, children, freedom. Conflicts and crises can eat away at us until it feels like all hope is gone, there is nothing left to live for.
I think the timing of Holy Week is absolutely crucial. On Maundy Thursday, Jesus gathers with his closest friends – and I am convinced that both Marys, as well as his mom, and Salome and Joanna and probably some other women were there as well, not as serving maids, but as part of the group. Jesus washes his friends’ feet. They eat a last meal together, and Jesus gives them another ritual to help them remember him: the Lord’s Supper, communion, Eucharist, which we will celebrate together here in a few moments. Then he takes his besties and goes to a nearby garden to pray.
And then he’s arrested, put on trial before both the Jewish Sanhedrin and the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate, tortured, and sentenced to death. He is executed, publicly, on a cross, and after several hours dies in agonizing pain. And because the Sabbath is about to begin, Jesus is taken down from the cross and buried pretty hastily in a donated tomb.
But his women friends – Mary Magdalene, Mary James, Salome, Joanna – are not about to leave their job undone for their beloved Teacher. They gather up their spices and go, early Sunday morning, to go complete their task.
If Jesus had been executed on any other day of the week, it’s possible that no one would have gone to the tomb again after he had been buried. Maybe a year later, as in modern-day Jewish tradition, but not right away. And even given the timing of events, the men would not have gone back – they had no further business with the body; preparing bodies for burial was women’s work. And the women were determined to complete their work.
So they got to be the first witnesses. The first martyrs. The first apostles. The apostles to the apostles. Just women, ordinary women. Women who couldn’t even give legal testimony. And yet. They were called. And even though Mark tells us that the women were too afraid to say anything, that can’t have been the end of the story, or we wouldn’t know the end of the story. We wouldn’t be part of the story as it continues to unfold in our own lives.
Bobbi Dykema is currently serving as pastor at First Church of the Brethren in Springfield, Illinois. She is also on the pastoral team of the Living Stream online Church of the Brethren and serves on the steering committee of the Womaen’s Caucus. Bobbi is passionate about racial and gender justice, beauty and the arts, and reading scripture as a living document.
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