Listen to The Saturday Stoke
Welcome to this week’s Saturday Stoke, a short inspirational podcast designed to encourage and challenge you on the path ahead—it’s a place where, if I’m doing my job right, I’m spurring us all on toward love and good deeds.
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Let’s get to it.
I want to recall a story with you about a woman with whom many of us are familiar. She was a disciple of Jesus from Nazareth. It’s the end of her recorded story, but the beginning of the rest of her new life. The short snippet goes like this.
Mary walked in darkness to the tomb of her teacher to mourn his death. Memories of the recent events flooded her mind.
The moment she first heard the rabbi from Nazareth called Jesus speak to her remained vivid in her memory. He spoke against the demons that tortured her mind and heart. His words, that’s all it took, and she was healed. He somehow spoke words of new life. After Jesus cast her demons out, Mary followed him with deep devotion.
His words. Do you remember how John’s account of Jesus’s life begins with the Word? That unique life-giving Word that existed before the universe was created? Remember how it went out into the darkness and brought light and seas and land and the sky and the hippopotamus and the eagle and the great sea monsters into existence? How it brought a man and a woman to life out of the ground? How it brought beauty from chaos?
Now this man Jesus, the cosmic Word itself, walked among the people of the earth, just as God the Father had done so long ago in the Garden of Eden. And this man Jesus spoke words of life to strangers and friends, misfits and leaders. His invitation to Mary was like a small return to Eden: “Come with me, and I will give you rest.” God, it seems, is constantly inviting us into this place called rest.
Now, on the day after his death, the Word again went out, and plunged into chaos. But this time, the Word was remaking the world, not by wiping it away with a flood, but by taking on Death itself. This time, the Word dove into darkness to retrieve his love.
Now, back to Mary. She rose before the other disciples so that she could be near the tomb, to grieve. She remembered how Jesus often rose early or would steal away and pray on the mountain, in the twilight, alone.
“I call you friends, he said,” that’s what John told her. That night of Passover when the twelve met in the upper room of a guest house. John recounted to the others Jesus’s last teaching.
“That’s what he told us,” John said to Mary, “just before he broke the bread and divided it amongst us. He called us friends and passed the bread around. He said it was his body, broken for us.”
John had told the rest of them so many things about that final night. How Peter confronted Jesus when he stood up from eating, took off his clothes, and began to wash his feet.
“No!’ Peter, yelled. “You are our teacher! You will not touch my feet. You already refuse to sit at the head of the table—now this?.”
“The rest of us sat in silence, embarrassed by Jesus’s act,” John said. “Peter spoke what we all were thinking. We didn’t know. How were we to know?”
So much mystery cloaked those last few hours of Jesus’s life. He gathered his friends for Passover, but instead of a servant of the house washing the feet of the teacher and his disciples, the teacher himself performed the customary washing. He undressed and served.
Do you remember the story of creation and then God dressed his children, Adam and Eve, before sending them into the wilderness. But now, in order to renew creation, he undressed himself in order to show his children the way home.
In the prelude to his death, Jesus sensed the hour of sorrow he knew he must endure. But he also sensed the loving hand of his Father. Do you know how sometimes you can just tell when a moment is upon you? It comes unexpected and it gives you goosebumps, or you feel the sensation of butterflies flying in your stomach, and you just know. So, you seize the moment and you take in every last second you can before it passes. That’s how Jesus felt in the guest room with his disciples. He looked wide-eyed upon the future he knew was his, and his alone. Can imagine the feelings that stirred in his heart at that moment. The human and divine affection for his friends mixing with the utterly divine knowledge of what he must do and where he must go.
“Was it so surprising,” Mary thought as she envisioned Jesus washing Peter’s feet even as Peter protested? “He told us—how many times did he tell us!—that he came to be among us as one who serves. But we were too dull to understand. And now, it’s too late to argue about what he meant.”
Finally, Mary reached the tomb. She knew where they’d laid Jesus—how could she forget. She was on Golgotha Hill when Joseph of Arimathea came with Nicodemus, the Pharisee, to take his body off of the cross. Joseph, was part of the Jewish Council, called the Sanhedrin, that sentenced Jesus to death. But he had disagreed with the Council on the fate of Jesus—he was a good man. No one knew he secretly followed Jesus.
The Sabbath was fast approaching, which meant Joseph and Nicodemus had to make all the preparations for burial beforehand. They had to be quick about it.
Mary saw them remove the mock-crown of tangled thorns from his head, and watched the Roman legionnaire pry the nails from his lifeless wrists. She saw Joseph prepare Jesus’ body for burial, wrapping his face in a cloth and his body in the new linens purchased by Joseph. They placed Jesus’s body in Joseph’s family tomb, which was near the hill, in a garden, and sealed the tomb with a giant round boulder. It took several men to roll it in front of the opening.
No one thought about Isaiah, the messenger of God during Israel’s exile in Babylon, who wrote, “He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death.” No one recognized the moment as the body of Jesus came off the wicked cross and was laid in the tomb of a rich man.
But the stone wasn’t enough for the Jewish Council. They asked Pilate to station a Roman guard in front of the tomb and to seal it with a Roman seal. They were afraid the disciples would try to steal the body and claim Jesus had risen, as he said he would.
Thoughts and feelings stirred Mary to tears even as she walked in the waning darkness. And then, there in the twilight Mary thought she saw the stone, but it had been moved.
The tomb was open.
“Someone has taken the body,” she thought. “Where are the guards?”
When she looked in the tomb, her suspicions were confirmed. It was empty!
She ran back into town to tell the others.
“They’ve taken him,” she said to Peter. “Someone has taken the Lord.”
Peter took off for the tomb, followed by John and Mary. John outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He looked in and saw the linen wrappings, but no body. When Peter reached the tomb, he continued straight into it. He too saw the linen strips that covered Jesus’ body and the cloth that covered his face. Then John stepped inside, joining Peter in the tomb for a closer look. Neither spoke. They inspected the tomb in shocked silence and confusion. Peter tried to make sense of it all.
“What did this mean? Where is the body?” he thought.
The Roman cross left no doubt in their minds. Jesus was dead. Many of them watched from a distance as Jesus was beaten with the cat of nine tails—that brutal instrument of torture the centurions used to shred the backs of their prisoners. By the time Jesus had reached Golgotha, his body was a bloody pulp. The savage end to Jesus’ life tore the disciple’s faith and love apart. How could such a time as the years they spent with Jesus, so filled with wonder and goodness, end in such darkness and despair? Peter remembered Cana, when Jesus’s mother asked him to intervene when the wedding celebration ran out of wine. Without so much as lifting a finger, Jesus turned massive jars of purifying water into the best wine money could buy. He remembered the joy and the hope he felt. “Things were about to change,” he thought as he sipped the new wine. And they did.
“Lazarus—now that was something,” Peter thought. “That was the sign of all signs. Raising someone from the dead? God was making his presence known once again to Israel.”
“Hosanna!” the crowd yelled, as they laid palm branches in front of Jesus as he and his followers entered Jerusalem. The news of Lazarus spread quickly during the time of Passover. To think, that the week started with crowds heralding a new King of the Jews, only to end with his vicious execution.
The sudden turn of events that led to the bitter end to their time together sent Peter and many of the other followers into grief and confusion. Jesus raised Lazarus, but who was left to raise Jesus?
But when John saw the linens and the face-cloth close up, belief burned inside of him.
“How can this be?” John thought to himself. “Is it really true? He’s come back to life?” Then he remembered the words Jesus spoke to the temple officials.
“Destroy this temple,” Jesus said to them, “and I will raise it up in three days.”
“Three days,” John whispered to himself. "Three days. He is risen.”
The two men returned to the others, one believing, one still confused. But Mary remained at the tomb, cut to the heart.
“What have they done with my Lord?” she thought, as she wept beside the tomb entrance, her body heaving with grief. Through her tears she looked up and into the tomb and saw two men sitting where Jesus’ body should have been.
“Woman,” said the man sitting next to the head cloth of Jesus. “Why are you crying?”
“They’ve taken Jesus—they’ve taken my Lord away, and I don’t know where they’ve put him.”
In her grief, Mary still believed that someone had broken into the tomb and stolen the body of Jesus. But then, a voice called from behind her. She turned to see who it was. It was Jesus. But Mary did not recognize him.
“Woman, why are you crying?”
“Look,” she said pointing to the tomb and the two men. “Someone has stolen Jesus’ body!” And for a moment, Mary thought this person—the gardener or whomever—might be the culprit. But as Mary directed the gardener’s gaze to the heap of linens, the gardener spoke to her again.
“Mary,” he said to her.
At once she recognized the voice of her Teacher and fell at his feet, clinging to him.
“Rabbi,” she whispered through tears of joy. A joy erasing all grief for all time.
~
Many years later, after Jesus finally left the earth and ascended back to heaven, he appeared once more to John in a vision and said to him:
“Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. For behold, I am making all things new.”
Jesus continued, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son.”
Mary’s story is my story. And it’s your story. He sees you, my friend. And calls you by name. He’s made you new. And he offers you rest. For he is risen. Hallelujah.
Stay stoked my friends.
The Saturday Stoke #31