The Women At The Tomb  

Kittye Mosimann

Holy Week 2020


Many pastors these days are focused on the importance of us believing what God's word says about us as believers. Certainly, it is a fact that we must be able to believe what God says about us is true, but it seems to me that before we can do that, we must believe that what He tells us about Himself is true. All power, all creation, the entirety of everything we know flows from Him. Without believing fully everything that He tells us about Himself, we cannot possibly fathom everything that manifests itself in us that comes from Him and our relationship with Jesus.
What we believe can be influenced by many things: our experiences, feelings, emotions, and our circumstances. It affects every decision we make and every action we take, whether we are aware of it or not. The problem is that our experiences, feelings, and circumstances may not line up with reality because we perceive those things from our own limited perspective. God and His word however, are the truth because God is the creator of everything that is real. He views this world and everything in it from a perspective that sees all time, and all events, both supernatural and natural.
I was thinking about that this week as I reread the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ crucifixion. In all four Gospels, we are told that the women who loved Jesus and were His followers were there at the cross at the time of His crucifixion. (See Matt. 27:55; Mark 15:40-41,47; Luke 23:49,55-56; John 19:25-27). It made me wonder why more of his disciples weren't named as being present at that pivotal moment in history. Jesus, who had blessed, healed, taught, and loved so many people during His ministry, had few people that He knew loved Him close to Him as He suffered. And I realized that the answer to why many of His closest followers weren’t there must lie in what they believed. Apparently, many of them believed it was too dangerous to be there with Him. The Sanhedrin and others were determined to punish any who followed Jesus. The disciples believed what they were seeing and experiencing and the emotions that were produced by the circumstances they saw, rather than believing whom they knew Jesus to be.
Certainly what all of the witnesses of Jesus’ trial and crucifixion saw was brutally horrific, especially for those who loved Him. It is hard to imagine what emotions they must have felt - helplessness, fear, anger, confusion, hopelessness, horror....
So what was it about those women that gave them the courage to be at the cross in spite of the danger associated with it? It’s clear from the account of the woman caught in adultery described in John 8 that women were not exempt from capital punishment. In fact, stoning to death was the gruesome punishment often prescribed for women who were deemed guilty of crimes, yet scripture says these women defied the danger of being seen at the cross. Why were they there?
John’s gospel names Mary, the mother of Jesus, at the foot of the cross with the other women. I was reminded that she would have heard a prediction of what she was witnessing about her baby boy three decades earlier: “Behold, this Child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel,...and a sword will pierce even your own soul...” (Luke 2:34-35). But Mary also heard other prophecies spoken over Him, such as the ones declared by Simeon and Anna in the Temple. And Mary was not only the first one to ever witness Jesus performing a miracle, she was the one who actually encouraged Him to perform that first miracle when He turned water into wine at a wedding feast. The scriptures say that “...His mother kept all these things in her heart” (Luke 2:51).
This made me wonder - is there a difference between knowing about Jesus, hearing about Jesus, even believing in Jesus - and keeping all those things you know about Him ‘in your heart’?

Our thoughts are important, but as most of us will confess, they aren’t what generates love, the kind of love that drives us to actions above thought and reason. Right or wrong, most of us attribute love to being a product of the heart - of course not the heart in the physical sense of the muscle that pumps blood through our bodies- but the spiritual heart that provides our spiritual lifeblood, what C.S. Lewis called “Love Himself working in a man”.
We all know that courage isn’t doing something in the absence of fear, rather courage is acting in spite of fear. Courage is possible when we act on beliefs that work intrinsically within us rather than on what our senses perceive. Scripture says that it is “perfect love” that “casts out fear” (1 John 4:18), and who is perfect in love if not Jesus Christ?
Later, it was the women who found the stone rolled away from the entrance to the tomb where Jesus had been laid. Matthew’s gospel says they went to see the tomb. Mark’s gospel says they went there to anoint Jesus’ dead body with spices to prepare Him for burial according to Jewish custom. Either way, it was a grim mission. I can’t imagine the feelings they were experiencing, believing they would be handling Jesus’ corpse. Imagine that if you can. These women had to mentally and emotionally prepare themselves to see and touch Jesus’ mutilated body. According to Jewish law, handling of a corpse made a person unclean, and a ritual of purification would have been required. The paradox is that Jesus’ death on the cross was the only thing that would purify them for once and for all.
It appears that everything they had seen and experienced had finally convinced them; they thought they were going to the tomb to see death. But what they found was completely contrary to thought and reason. Guards- fierce, highly-trained professional soldiers- perhaps of the Roman army that was feared by all, fainting in fear at the sight of angels. (Angels of the same sort, by the way, that encamp all around us and have been given charge over us!). A boulder big enough to block a doorway, rock solid and immoveable, simply rolled aside, so that they could see the impossible made possible within. An earthquake, usually associated with destruction, instead shaking the world to produce God’s purposes. Where their experiences, their thoughts and reason, everything they had heard and seen, even logic, told them they would see the end of what they had believed, they saw a beginning. Where they expected to see death, they found new life. The cruelest thing they had ever seen was revealed to them to be the greatest act of righteousness and mercy in history. What they believed to be the end of life with Jesus was actually the beginning of a new life with Him just as He had promised. God still works this way. What appears to be the worst we have seen, God can and will use for a new beginning and for something better.
Back to my original question; why were they there? The answer came to me, simple but powerful: They were still seeking Him. In love, fear, courage or despair, they simply kept following Him. No matter what they saw or heard or felt, they wanted to be close to Him. And because of that, they witnessed the greatest miracle in the history of the world.
Perhaps I am pondering these things because of the situation we currently find ourselves in; we have just gone through this year’s Passover, as the Jews in Egypt did, under a command to stay isolated in our homes, relying on God’s goodness, provision, mercy, and the blood of our Sacrificial Lamb over us for deliverance. The apostles were also sequestered after their Passover with The Lamb and after His sacrifice. It was those women who went to the tomb - not the religious leaders, not the apostles - who were the first to speak the ‘good news’ that would change the world. Why? Perhaps because they were the only ones who, in spite of everything, were still seeking Jesus.
Here is what I am ‘keeping in my heart’ this particular resurrection season and sharing because I hope it encourages you: Nothing that occurs in this world is as powerful, nor as big, as God and the supernatural power He displayed when Jesus was resurrected from the dead. What

appears to be the worst thing ever to us...God can use even that for good if we will keep seeking Jesus through it all.