One of the most impressive features about the window of the resurrection is something that is not there. Look for a moment and you will see in the foreground the Risen Jesus and the women at his feet. In the background there is the open tomb with the angel sitting on the stone. But nowhere do you see the large amount of spices the women were carrying to anoint the body of Jesus for permanent burial. There is something of vast significance in that absence. The women had spent a great sum of money on those spices. They had carefully collected them and brought them to the tomb. But spices are for the dead—and Jesus was alive. The spices, absent from the picture, were unused and unnecessary because life had conquered death and the grave could not hold its prey.

Examine the window for a moment. In the background there is the empty tomb with the stone rolled to one side. Seated upon that stone is the messenger of the best and most surprising news ever announced to human ears. The foreground pictures two women, falling on their knees in surprise and joy at the resurrection. Left unattended by the entrance to the tomb are their unused and discarded spices, bought to anoint a dead body; now, no longer needed. The centerpiece of the window is the risen, triumphant Christ, holding a staff topped with a cross from which flows a banner emblazoned with a cross. The cross, cruel symbol of death, has now become the emblem of Christ's eternal victory over death.

Four women have come to the tomb on this eventful morning. They are Mary Magdelene; Mary, the mother of James and Joses; Joanna, wife of Herod's steward, Cuza; and Salome, mother of James and John and wife of Zebedee. Mary Magdelene has rushed back to tell Peter the unbelievable news; one of the other women has gone on ahead, leaving the two we see in the window to witness for themselves the Risen Christ. This particular scene is based on Matthew 28:8-10:

``So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them. `Greetings,' he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, `Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.'''

Four important truths are reflected in this marvelous scene of the resurrection on this Easter morning.

There was first a feeling. The four women who had come to the tomb at great risk to their own safety loved Jesus deeply and unqualifiedly. Each of them owed Jesus a great debt for what he had done for her. Out of Mary Magdelene, he had cast seven demons; Joanna, he had healed from a distressing infirmity; both Mary and Salome may have been Jesus' aunts. These women had stood by the cross on that black afternoon, when almost all others had deserted Jesus, and wept silent tears for his pain.

Our relationship to Jesus must also be on a personal level. In the final analysis, we can no more come to Jesus with our minds only than we can fall in love by pure reason. Our emotions are inextricably bound up with our relationship to Jesus. He must win our hearts or he cannot win us at all. We can, and indeed we must, feel deep emotion when we come to Jesus.

Then there was an act. The four women translated their feelings into action. Mark and Luke tell us that these women loved not just in word, but in deed as well. Hear the touching description of their actions given by these two different writers:

``When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body.'' Mark 16:1

``The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee followed Joseph and saw the tomb and how his body was laid in it. Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes. But they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment.'' Luke 23:55-56

They had done all they could for Jesus in life, and now, in death, they were continuing their deeds of love.

We must always act out our love for Jesus. We find it so easy to say we love Jesus. Actions must ever accompany words and feelings, clothing them with flesh. Jesus himself has given us the acid test for true love in unequivocal terms:

``If you love me, keep my commandments.''

How wonderfully these simple women demonstrated their love by spending their own meager funds to buy spices to anoint Jesus' body. So must we ever translate our feelings about Jesus into actions of love.

There was, next, a discovery. The four women discovered an empty tomb. Look for a moment at the empty tomb in the background of the window. Imagine, if you will, the utter shock and surprise these women must have felt when they found the tomb empty. What were they to think? What emotions did they feel—fear, anger, surprise, even a tinge of hope—all crowding in, one after the other?

We, too, will discover a mystery about Jesus. What would we feel if we, like these four women, came face to face with the enormous reality of the resurrection? A humorous incident recorded in a recent issue of Reader's Digest provides us with a hint of just how drastic our reaction might be. Christine Fodera of Louisville, Kentucky wrote of her experience with her husband in a cathedral. The priest had asked her husband, Sam, to do some rewiring in the confessionals. The only access to the wiring was by going up into the ceiling and climbing across the rafters. Christine accompanied her husband on the job and sat waiting for him in the pews below. Unseen by her, some of the other parishioners were gathering in the vestibule. They paid very little attention to her until, becoming anxious about her husband, she looked up at the ceiling and called out, ``Sam, Sam—are you up there? Did you make it okay?'' Their surprise at her words was nothing compared to their absolute shock when, from the upper regions, a voice answered back: ``Yes, I made it up here just fine!'' Death is life's deepest mystery and, in Jesus, we catch a glimmer of the solution to that mystery. When we let ourselves think about the reality of the resurrection apart from Sunday School organizations, committee meetings, worship services and all the rest of the necessary things that go into carrying out the work of the church, we suddenly find that we are in the presence of the most startling and important truth ever known.

Finally, there was a Presence. The four women met the living Christ on their way back from the tomb. The empty tomb alone would have been enough to create surprise and, perhaps, even hope. But the living Presence of the risen Jesus left no room for doubt or speculation. Look once again at the marvelous scene portrayed in stained-glass—take in its details. The empty tomb stands in the distance, grim reminder of the end of all life; yet there sits upon the stone God's messenger in clothes that flash like lightning, having fulfilled his duty; next, there are the two women who have met the Risen Christ, their faces turned adoringly and unbelievingly toward him, their unused spices cast aside now in the joy of new truth; and, finally, there is the Risen Lord, resplendent in his glorious victory over the forces of sin and death, the cross now a banner of conquest rather than a symbol of shame. This beautiful window captures the very moment in the lives of these two women when faith becomes reality; when hope becomes sight.

The living Christ demonstrates the victory of life over death. So often have we heard of the stone rolled away that we have allowed our senses to become dulled to the absolute wonder of its meaning. Without the reality of what is portrayed so beautifully in that lovely window, your life and mine are absolutely meaningless; there is no hope, no point to living, no reason for being. With it, everything about us takes on a new and vital meaning and we realize the truth of what Longfellow so ably wrote:

Eugene O'Neill, in his play Lazarus Laughed, put the same thought in simpler, briefer words:

The great Scottish scholar James S. Stewart wrote: ``Not one line of the New Testament was written.....not one sentence, whether of Gospels, Epistles, Acts or Apocalypse, was penned apart from the conviction that He of whom these things were being written had conquered death and was alive forevermore.''

I think that the thing which most captures my imagination about this story is the unused spices. It is interesting that something insignificant in itself can become the symbol of an event vastly more important. How carefully these women had purchased the finest and most expensive spices to prepare a dead body. Jesus was dead and, in spite of everything they had heard him say, the idea that he might rise again never entered their minds. But now, on this joyous day, they have discarded their unused spices, symbol of death, for the living presence of the Risen Lord. Have you really allowed the true meaning of Easter to invade your soul this morning? Have you allowed heaven to become more than a fanciful place you sing about on a Sunday morning? When the lay author, C.S. Lewis, lost his dear friend, Charles Williams, he wrote something he never thought he would or could write. He abhorred sentimental cliches about spiritual realities but he was moved to write that, since Charles Williams died, heaven was no longer a strange, far-off place to him. Why? Because his friend was there. Later, when his beloved wife Joy died, he said the same thing. Heaven was closer still, for Joy was there. That is the true message of Easter—the knowledge that we will one day join those we love so much, who have died before us, in a heaven that is as real as this morning's sunrise. Realize, this very Easter morning, the message of the unused spices and let the reality of a living Christ help you look on death in a wonderful new way.

Harold L. McDonald
First Baptist Church
Albemarle, N.C.

March 31, 1991