The Greatest Day in History - John 20:1-18

  To see the full message, scroll to the bottom.   

The greatest day began not with a bang... but with a whisper. 

The greatest and best day in history dawned in silence. 

 

In an unremarkable galaxy, on a small blue planet, on a tiny continent, outside a little human city, amid the trees and herbs of a garden, tucked into one corner, carved into a wall of stone there was cave. In that cave lay the body of a man wrapped in a linen shroud. 

 

Outside shone the full moon of Passover, silvering the leaves and the ground where the light fell. But none entered the cave. The moonlight slid off the great wheel of stone that covered its mouth, bounced off the Imperial Roman clay seal pressed into place to make clear to anyone who had any ideas what the penalty would be for moving that stone. 

 

Inside the cave, it was dark as pitch. On the greatest day in history. 

 

This ordinary cave had been slowly formed over the long years by water running through the limestone. It was tooled and shaped by human hands into a tomb. A place for a body to rest at the end of life. Dampness seeped through the rough stone walls and ceiling. Every now and then a drip would fall to the floor. The only sound. On the greatest day in history. 

 

Outside the cave, the world was not yet wallpapered (as ours is) with traffic noise. Inside the cave, no fridges and fans going off and on. 6 stone walls kept away the voices of birds, the sound of wind from the man who lay beyond hearing them anyway. He lay surrounded by the kind of silence we, in our automotive, cellphone world can only imagine. 

  

He’d lain for an evening and a night and a morning, an evening and a night and a morning... through three days of silence... awaiting the greatest day in history. 

 

If we had been there that day, if we had witnessed the moment, we might have missed it. The first sound to break. A sound we hear every moment of every day without hearing it... the sound of a human heart beat. A rush of blood through veins. 

 

Then the next sound... louder, audible ... a breath. Air drawn in past vocal cords, and into lungs... hinting at a voice that had been silenced, but not for much longer. 

 

Then through the dark, the sound of movement... A hand shifting, fingers flexing, to free itself from its wrapping of linen, pushing aside the shroud, then reaching to free the other hand. 

 

Then arms reaching up to unwind the cloth wrapped around his head. 

 

Then blinking eyes, opening. (Can you hear a blink?) The rustle of the turn of his head. 

 

He looks around. Sees the dark. So this is where they brought him after... he takes a deeper breath, remembering. 

 

The last thing these eyes had seen before the bruised and swollen eyelids closed in death was a different darkness. The sun gone out. Torches illuminating the faces looking up at his face. The air between them vibrating with each other’s pain. 

 

He smiles in the darkness because he knows what happens next. (Can you hear a smile? This one would have sounded like every symphony ever written.) The first smile in the world made new. On the greatest day in history. 

 

He sits up, places his feet on the ground for the first time in 4 days. There is no pain. It's too dark to see the scars. But he knows they're there. Carved in his body for eternity, like the hieroglyph for “FREEDOM.” 

 

He stands. 

 

After lying unmoving for so long, before he might have been stiff and stretching out the kinks. But not today; today his body is strong and whole. His thoughts clear. Both perfected. 

 

He reaches up above his head, and feels the cool of the stone ceiling. He lifts to his face the cloth that had been around his head and smells the faintest memory of dried blood and tears and sweat. He sees around the great stone the shape of a lesser darkness. He hears his own breathing and the voice of the Spirit. On the greatest day in history. 

 

There comes a sound that's impossible to miss. Like the tearing of a curtain. Like an army’s HOORAH of victory—the sound of stone on stone, scraping, complaining, as the great grave stone begins to roll. Again He smiles, picturing what it would look like to someone out there, this massive thing simply getting itself out of the way. Making a path. 

 

A sliver of moonlight breaks in on the floor, and grows and grows and grows to a great circle. The damp stone smell of the cave is flooded with the fragrances of leaf and bark and soil. The cave walls echo the birdsong and the breeze. 

 

He ducks through, taking his first steps into a world that didn't know it was waiting for this... the greatest day in history. 

 

He feels underfoot the clay fragments of the Emperor’s great seal, shattered now and powerless. 

 

He looks around. The garden doesn't look familiar. But they put him here. They know where he is. They will come. He will wait. On the greatest day in history. 

 

He walks the ground of this world he made. Touching the leaves of the herbs he made. Smelling the fragrance they shed on the tips of these fingers he made. He looks through eyes he made, up at the night sky he made. It’s dark there, too, but not silent. Not empty. 

 

Filled with light and life, with the power of the Father. The breath of the Spirit. The joy of the Son. Resounding with the voice of Creation itself, singing after having held its breath. Voices of the past crying Hosanna “O save us!” Voices of the future singing Hallelujah “Salvation is from our God.”  On the greatest day in history. 

 

Out of long human habit, he closes his eyes. And he prays. (Can we imagine how God prays to God?) 

 

Time passes. The moon moves across the sky. The black shifts to deep blue. The stars begin to fade. 

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. - John 20:1 

The next sound he hears is the whisper of sandalled feet in the grass, walking tired, lightly stumbling as though toward an unwelcome task. 3 women who have work to do, whispering their questions to each other. 

  

He steps back into the shadows. 

 

He sees them enter the glade and stop short, taken by surprise. The stone! It’s not where it ought to be. 

 

He watches as Mary and Salome cautiously step into the cave he had just left. He sees them silhouetted by a flare of light from within. He sees his daughters backing out into the moonlight, shaken... and he sees them hurry away. 

 

And he sees Mary of Magdala stay. Looking for answers. 

 

He sees his child. She sees her Rabbi. On the greatest day in history. 

 

Finally he speaks. The air flows out over those reborn vocal cords: the voice of the One who said, “Let there be Light” today speaking not a command, but an empathetic question. 

“Woman, why are you weeping?” Jesus asked. “Whom are you seeking?” 

Thinking He was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried Him off, tell me where you have put Him, and I will get Him.” 

Jesus said to her, “Mary.”  She turned and said to Him in Hebrew, “Rabboni!” (which means “My Teacher”).  

“Do not cling to Me,” Jesus said, “for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go and tell My brothers, ‘I am ascending to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God.’”

Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them what He had said to her. - John 20:15-18 

To hear the full message: