When I was a child there were certain things children were required to do. Now it may come as a surprise to the kids and youth here today but back in the last century, I was the one who had to take the garbage out every day. I was the one who had to cut the grass. I was the one who had to get myself back and forth to school if I missed the school bus. I don’t want to say to your young folks that things were more difficult for my generation, because I doubt that is true. But I can tell you this: There was instilled in us a different way of embracing responsibility. There was drilled into us a certain respect for our elders and a sense of veneration for those who had gone before us.
I don’t know how often it was, but on a regular scheduled day I and all my cousins were loaded up in the car. We drove out from where we lived to the Bethesda Methodist Church. Beside that church stretching for several acres was an old cemetery, and in that cemetery was buried my great grandfather and great grandmother, my great uncles and aunts and more cousins than I could ever recall the names. It was time to clean up Papa’s grave. The whole day would be spent in hoeing and cutting, in trimming and in pruning. Brushes were applied to the tombstones and they were cleaned and polished. Sometimes it seemed to me we gave more attention to Papa when he died that when he was alive.
I have to confess to you that most of that cleaning, and pruning, and trimming and cutting was not done by me. My cousins and I would start by helping our folks. But it was a mysterious place and there were shrubs and all these marble and granite markers. It called to us. Soon we would be running about the cemetery, darting in and out of the markers, playing hide and seek, and before the day was over we’d notice the tombstones were laid out in straight lines. Soon we’d be leapfrogging over the tombstones in a “Follow Me” game.
It was great fun. It was, that is, until we grew too old to play leap frog among the tombstones. When we were too old to leap frog any longer over and around the tombstone the regularly scheduled visits to tend to Papa’s grave became a chore.
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. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?”
They were not coming to dance among the tombstones. They were coming to take care of a chore, a terrible chore. They were at the bottom of despair. Their world had come to an end. What was the point in living? Jesus was dead. Jesus who held so much promise, Jesus the expected Messiah had been betrayed, beaten, crucified, buried. And now came the unpleasant but needed chore of tending to his dead body. There was going to be no skipping that day; there was going to be no playing among the shrubs and tombstones. This was dreadfully essential business they were about.
Here we are this morning, you and I, two thousand years this side of Jesus resurrection and going to the cemetery still holds the same dread and the same sense of a chore as it did for those women that first Easter morning. Have you ever noticed how we act when we’re at the cemetery? We walk slower; we’re careful where we step; there’s this sense of the unexplained, the unknowable, there are questions, there are fears; there are so many reminders of that one thing with which we all will some day become acquainted: death.
One of the games we used to play at the cemetery where lies Papa’s grave, was “Freeze”? Have you ever played “Freeze.” My cousins and I would runs about the graves, the tombstones and the markers until whoever was “it” would yell “Freeze.” Everyone then would freeze, remaining motionless exactly in the position we were in when “Freeze” was yelled. The first person to move or stumble was then “it” for the next round.
All of us have moments in our memory that seem to be frozen. For me there’s the moment of me and Papa feeding the chickens, the moment of me and Papa collecting the eggs from the chicken coop. Those moments are frozen in my memory. Papa pushing me about the driveway on my tricycle and Papa pulling me up the sidewalk in my red wagon are frozen in memory. In each case Papa was dressed in slacks, a white shirt, suspenders and a tie. But, you know what, Papa’s death is not frozen in my memory. I don’t remember Papa’s death. In my memory one day Papa and I were collecting eggs and the next I was tending Papa’s tombstone at the Bethesda Methodist Church graveyard.
But maybe that’s as it should be. A Sunday School teacher once related to the children in her class the events surrounding Jesus trial, crucifixion and burial. She told them about the stone being rolled in place to seal Jesus’ tomb. And then to build excitement she said in an excited voice to her students: “And what do you think were Jesus’ first words when he came bursting out of that tomb?”
“I know. I know,” shouted one child. “I know. I can tell you.”
“Okay, then,” said the teacher, “tell us.”
Extending her arms high in the air, she sang out, “TA - DA!”
I don’t want to sound disrespectful of the dead this morning, but the little girl in the Sunday School class has a much better perspective on death than do we. What about you? Can you look at the inevitability of death, your own or the death of one you love, and say with all the conviction of a child, “TA - DA!”?
Years ago I was riding somewhere with Ansley, my granddaughter. She must have been four or five years old. I don’t know where we were going or where we’d been, but I realized we were just a short distance from that cemetery that holds Papa’s grave. It was probably guilt that led me there. Since my grandparent’s death my cousins and I stopped visiting Papa’s grave. I expected to see it covered in brush with moss covering the markers. I was surprised when I got there. Atlanta had expanded to Bethesda Methodist Church. The once white frame church was not a massive brick complex. The cemetery was immaculate. Obviously, the once struggling church had contracted with a landscaping company to maintain the graves. Papa’s marker was clean. Papa’s grave was cut and trimmed.
I stood there looking at the grave, reading the inscriptions and remembering my forebears. I was thinking about the chicken coop, the little red wagon, the memories of Papa. And then out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of my granddaughter. She was standing on top of one of the tombstones. She saw me looking and cried, “Watch!” And she jumped from the top of one of the tombstones to the top of another. She looked at me and smiled. “TA - DA!”
When I was a child, you see, before my faith got complicated by all this adult stuff, the cemetery was a place of joy and a place of play. It was where my cousins and I laughed and danced and leap frogged over one tombstone to another. Death held no fear for us. Death just resided at this cool place where we remembered Papa and played and laughed and chased the woes of this life away.
On that first Easter morning, the women went to the place of burial to perform the tasks that death required. Their responsibility was to prepare the body of the Lord according to the tenants of their faith. They were doing their duty. But Jesus is not there. The tomb is empty. Something has changed. The place of burial is no longer something of awe and fear, a place where we need to be afraid, to be intimidated. Jesus is no longer there. He has risen.
I love the way Matthew tells it. In his gospel they run to tell the disciples. They are filled with an eagerness to let others know that death has been defeated. In Matthew’s gospel there’s an energy about it. There’s a spontaneousness about it. There’s a celebration about it. Death is defeated. Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed!
A boy named Mark was not quite four years old when his lizard died. His grandmother realizing that this was the child’s first brush with death thought it might be appropriate to hold a funeral for the pet. She explained to Mark what a funeral was and suggested he could invite a couple of his friends to attend the funeral. When the time came Mark and his friends stood beside the hole grandmother had dug. His grandmother stood on the other side of the hole with a shoe box in her hand in which Mark had placed his lizard. The grandmother said a few things, placed the shoebox in the hole, and then she asked if Mark would like to have a prayer. He said he would but wanted his grandmother to pray. She did. And then she said, “Would you like to sing a song now?”
Mark bowed his head. He folded his hands in front. There were tears in his eyes as he belted out, “Hit the road, Jack...”
“Hit the road, Jack, and don’t you come back no more, no more.” Please don’t think that sacrilege. In my mind it’s an anthem. For since Jesus rose from dead, we have the promise that death is not the answer. There is something beyond. There is something more.
After I took Ansley home that day when she leapt from one tombstone to the other, I came back and put some flowers on Papa’s grave. But, you know, not that I think about it, I wish I hadn’t done that. I wish that day when Ansley cried to me “Watch!” and leaped from one tombstone to the other I had cried back to her, “I used to do that, too. When my faith was young and unencumbered with all this adult stuff I could dance, and laugh, and play, and leap and dance among the tombstones.” And having said that I wish I could have dragged my fragile body up on that tombstone and cried to her “Watch me!” and leapt from one tombstone to another, honoring the memory of my Papa and living the faith of my Papa by dancing in the presence of death.
They did their worst to my Lord. But in the end my Lord leap frogged from death into eternal life.
They cut me down and I leapt up high
I am the life that will never, never die.
I’ll live in you if you’ll live in me
I am the Lord of the dance, said he.
If you come looking for me next week and can’t find me, you might check with the pastor of the Bethesda United Methodist Church. Ask him to look out his window and see if there’s an old preacher out in the cemetery leap frogging among the tombstones. I just may be there, because Christ has risen and I can dance in the face of death.
Graphic by Church Art Pro
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