Tombstones - Who needs 'em?
By the Rev. Bob Colerick - First Christian Church
Friday, March 21, 2008
Scripture: John 20: 1-20
Here we are in Holy Week again. Most of us familiar with “church things” know that Holy Week has something to do with Easter.
As a teenager, I hopped a fence and joined a friend of mine and we would attend a small Southern Baptist Church nearby. We enjoyed the camaraderie, the cookies and Kool-aid, the Sunday School teachers who put up with our antics, and the pastor who incorporated us into a baseball team, known as the “Lakers,” not just because the church was located on Lakeview Street but mostly because whenever it rained, our entire neighborhood would become a shallow lake.
We would celebrate all the special times of the year at this little church but it wasn’t until I was much older that I gained some concept of what “Holy Week” was all about.
Now, Holy Week, to me, is what everything is all about. Nothing that happens in the world makes sense to me until I look at it through the “lens” of Holy Week. The major days of Holy Week are fairly well known:
- Palm Sunday (some traditions call it Passion Sunday), celebrates the triumphal entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem.
- Maundy Thursday (Holy Thursday for some) notes Jesus’ institution of Communion and His betrayal at the hand of Judas.
- Good Friday records the arrest, trial, agony, crucifixion, death, and burial of Jesus.
- Holy Saturday then recognizes the Sabbath on which Jesus rested in the grave.
Holy Week, then, becomes an essential part of the Christian faith, a time of ultimate meaning during which Christians remember, reenact, relive and, on a personal level, participate in the events of and leading up to the first Easter.
The Scripture noted above is one account of the wonderful events of the first Easter. There can be no greater triumph than the triumph of life over death. That Jesus accomplished this through the Will of His Father is of crucial and fundamental importance for you and me.
Jesus’ life and work finds fulfillment in Easter. This occurrence, foretold by Jesus Himself, has obvious implications for all of us, namely the assurance of a forgiven, reconciled eternal life with God after our earthly life is over. This is why nothing that happens in the world makes any sense unless and until it is interpreted in the light of Resurrection Day, Easter.
Lesslie Newbigin in his book “Journey Into Joy” puts it this way: “The cross [and Resurrection] is the ultimate protest against things as they are, in the name of what ought to be ... the world as it is is not God’s last word.”
Amen to that! Indeed, the world as it is is not the final world. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ stands in bold witness to declare that the forces of this world will not prevail but will eventually succumb to the grace of God.
Many years ago, my wife and I honeymooned near Glenwood Springs, Colo. Wouldn’t you know it that only two preachers, while hiking somewhere near Glenwood Springs, would stumble upon the grave and tombstone of John Henry “Doc” Holliday (one would have thought we would have better things to do).
Although there is some dissension on where, exactly, “Doc” Holliday’s remains are actually buried, we have proof, by means of a photograph that we did, at least, see his grave in Glenwood Springs, Colo., in August 1970. Regardless of this controversy, two young preachers now understand even better how our need for tombstones is a temporary need at best.
Easter, or Resurrection Day, as I prefer to call it, reminds us that our physical life on earth is temporary, like “Doc” Holliday’s — who died of tuberculosis at the age of 37. Our main life is yet to come.
Tombstones are good, they serve a purpose. But theologian Karl Barth in “The Epistle to the Romans,” quotes Nietzsche as saying:
“Only where graves are, is there resurrection.”
Thank God for Easter! And that is the last word.
F “Sunday Sermon” is a forum for Emporia area ministers to share their sermons, thoughts and observations. This week’s sermon is from the Rev. Bob Colerick, senior pastor at Emporia’s First Christian Church.