In the part of the South where I grew up, visiting our departed loved ones at the cemetery was a regularly engaged in and often anticipated activity. And because the women on both sides of my family were in turns strong enough and ornery enough to outlive anybody and everybody they possibly could – just as we read in this evening’s gospel -- the women in my family were the ones to make the trips to the cemetery to visit the graves of those who had gone on before us.
I don’t know how many times I went with my grandmother, Mama Robbins, to visit the grave of her son, my Uncle Buddy, at the National Cemetery in Memphis, Tennessee. She went every Saturday, and if my grandfather was busy in his woodshop, she’d call my mom, and we’d pile into the car and pick her up and take her to the cemetery. We might be in shorts and t-shirts, but she’d always be in a dress and her Sunday shoes. She’d take some flowers cut from the yard -- around this time of year there’d be red azaleas and forsythia which she couldn’t pronounce easily, so she just called them ‘yellow bells’.
Later in the year, she’d take some blooms from the climbing rose that grew along the fence, wrap their stems in a wetted paper towel that was then wrapped in aluminum foil, and off we’d go on a Saturday to lay these homegrown floral tributes on the green grass that covered over those we’d loved and lost.
When I was old enough to drive, I’d be drafted for cemetery duty. I know Mama Robbins wasn’t all that confident in my Volkswagen beetle’s capabilities – she was always asking if I was sure it would get us there -- but nonetheless she’d climb in with her wet bundle of flowers and off we go – at this point to Uncle Buddy’s grave and then to her husband and my grandfather’s grave.
Mama Collins, my other grandmother, was a cemetery regular as well. She’d drive the pick-up truck up the Mississippi red dirt hill that led to Concord Baptist Church. My cousins and I would sit in the back with our feet hanging over the tail gate just inches above the rocky, gravel road. The graveyard in back of Concord is next to a cow pasture, and whenever more plots are needed, the fence would be moved to take in a little more cow pasture. You claimed your plot by staking out enough space for your and yours with rocks or tree limbs, and once you’d staked your claim you could rest assured that you would have a spot in which to rest in peace. The best time to visit the cemetery was in the late afternoon on the day of the funeral. Then the grave would be filled in and the red dirt mound covered with the wilting floral tributes from the funeral.
There seemed to be something important about visiting the grave then, when it was new. Maybe it was a way of acknowledging the fact that your loved one was now most certainly part of the larger life. I remember when Mama Collins’s sister, Aunt Cosby died. She used to live in California with her son, my cousin Henry Glen, but she'd come home to Mississippi not long before she died, so she was buried behind Concord. We came back to the cemetery in the late afternoon when the grave had been filled in. And I remember hearing Mama Collins say to no one in particular as we strolled around the cemetery under the shade trees, “Lord” she said. “I just can’t stop thinking about poor Cosby.” I must have been ten or so at the time, and I thought to myself, “Well, yeah. We just spent all day at the funeral and now we’re back at the graveyard. None of us is thinking about anything else but poor Aunt Cosby!
But of course, that’s not what she meant. I know now that what she meant was that she couldn’t yet stop grieving and hadn’t yet stop loving her sister Cosby, and that in fact, she probably never would.
Some of the scholars look at the scene described by Matthew in this evening’s gospel with a question as to why the women are at the tomb of Jesus. Matthew doesn’t say that they have come to anoint the body as the other gospels do. But it’s not a question for me. The women at the tomb of Jesus are there because, well, that’s just what you do. You go back, in the evening of the day of the funeral or the next day to see the red dirt mound and the wilting flowers. And if you were Mama Robbins, you’d be back the next Saturday and the Saturday after that with a handful of whatever was in bloom wrapped in a wetted paper towel.
But the women at the tomb in this evening’s gospel from Matthew have a decidedly unexpected experience at the tomb of Jesus. An earthquake occurs and then an angel appears. And then the angel tells the women what they most need to know, what we most need to know. The Angel says, “He has gone before you…”
As so the story begun in Bethlehem comes not to its end, but rather to a new beginning. This Incarnate God of ours in Jesus Christ became human, just like us. He knew all the joys and trials of human life. He’d been a precocious child, a sometimes difficult son and brother. He’d known the companionship of friends and disciples. He’d known what it is like to lose one of those friends when he wept for Lazarus. He’d known what it’s like to be let down by those you depended on, as with Peter in the court of the high priest’s house. He’d faced tough times. He’d been homeless and jobless. He’d been ridiculed, and misunderstood. He’d been falsely accused and convicted, and finally executed in the most ignoble manner known to his day.
No, there’s no part of life, no trial in life in which we can say that our Lord has not gone before us. And as many of you well know, when we face these same joys, and these same trials, we often, so often, find him there in those places, quick to comfort and console. Our God has gone before us through all of life, but what is special about tonight is that we, along with the women at the tomb, learn something astounding. That our God has gone before us all the way through this life and into the next.
And that is, after all, the real message of Easter. The God that goes ever before us has gone before us into the grave – and out again, into the life eternal. No longer subject to the grave, no longer trapped in the past. But before us in the future that is eternal.
And we follow, we take up the cross he offers and follow him into death and into a sure future, one in which he awaits us. And so our savior is not one who we visit on Saturdays with a bunch of flowers wrapped in wetted paper towel.
Though I have to say, that on this Saturday, the azaleas and the yellow bell, and the lilies and tulips in our church look wonderful. Mama Robbins would be well pleased.
But this savior we celebrate tonight is before us, calling us forward into a future that is rife with opportunities for service and struggle, and glory and pain, and death and yes, the promise of resurrection. He goes and we follow forever, and it will only end in eternal life – our ending is that which never ends.
So, rejoice. The life laid down for us is the life restored, and our Lord and Savior goes on before us into the future where our life and his love for us goes on forever.
Amen+
© The Rev. Mark R. Collins
1 comment:
Mark, I found my way here via collars and starch, but want to thank you for this sermon. It's exactly what we do, the image of the red dirt so evocative.
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