Sermon Tone Analysis

The Temple of the Tomb

Intro

Mark 16:

You ever have one those days?

You know the days.

Those days when absolutely nothing seems to go right.

Its like the whole regular order of the world is all out of whack!

Like we are out of sync with reality maybe.

You drive to work.

You just barely miss hitting someone running out into the road.

While you were recovering from that little scare you get shocked awake by the honks of the person behind you, waiting for you to notice the light turned green at least a second or two ago.

Then you get to work, ready for another long week.

You turn off the car and get out, being sure to lock the door with the little switch on the arm rest.

And then, as you turn to head inside, a panic strikes you.

“Where are my keys?”

You locked the keys in the car.

You pat your pockets, and look through your purse, ladies, and sure enough, they aren’t there.

Just one of those days, right?

You can feel that frustration boil up in your chest, and you put your hands to your mouth to scream, and what do you know?

There are your keys.

In your hand.

Right where you left them.

That’s a good way to turn a bad start into a good day!

That happens all the time, doesn’t it?

We think we lose something, and then we turn the house upside down, we dig holes, we do everything except set fire to our homes to find that thing we lost, only to realize they were right where we last remembered leaving them.

Or for glasses, right on top of our heads.

There can be frustration when things aren’t where we put them, right?

We want things to be orderly, just like we left them.

At the very least, we want to control our surrounding, even our faith, so that we know what is what, and where everything is.

[picture of women at tomb]

It is no different for the women in our text today.

You see, when they last saw Jesus, the one in whom they had placed their complete trust, their entire confidence, every portion of their souls and lives - when they last saw Him, they were taking His lifeless body from the cross to this tomb.

This was to be His final resting place.

The marker of all that He was on this earth.

That isn’t different from us, really.

We still commemorate the lives of those we love with markers of their final resting places.

For those very important figures in history, we may even erect a monument, or perhaps a plague.

And those markers, or memorials, they become sacred don’t they?

If you have ever been to Washington DC you know this is true.

The reverence at the Vietnam memorial wall, or Lincoln’s monument, or the overwhelming solemnity of Arlington National Cemetery can be tangible.

[picture of tomb of the unknown soldier]

I remember going to Washington while I was in the military.

We went to visit all those places, but the one I remember the most vividly is Arlington.

As far as the eye could see, church, stood these perfectly white symbols of those who died for our freedom, for our lives.

There they stand almost as if they are still in formation, still standing watch over this land we love so dearly.

As I stood there, in the midst of the overwhelming cost of my life, I was overcome by a feeling of gratitude, and awe, and reverence.

It was a deep emotion, unlike any I had really felt before.

It was primal.

It hurt.

It inspired.

It was sacred.

You see, there in that place, I found peace in pain.

I found reverence in the blades of green grass set against the pure white stones that dotted the hillsides.

It became to me, in that moment, a temple of sorts.

[picture of temples?]

You see, temples aren’t just temples.

If you have been following Jesus’ path in this text since January, you can say with certainty that wherever Jesus found Himself, a temple was maid!

The people following became the first church of the lake, or of Olivet; wherever they found Jesus, there church was held and a makeshift temple was made!

This culminates for us in the bread and the cup that we have taken this very day.

Even here in this wonderful house of worship, how much more reverent and meaningful is this one event that Christ Himself set aside for us all!

We make a temple out of it.

We make it into a worshipful moment, a commemoration of the one who died for our freedom.

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That was this tomb for these women.

That is the feeling they must have had when they approached this sacred spot; the final resting place of the Messiah.

[picture of church of the sepulcher]

Even today, people come there, to what they think was the tomb.

A church was even build on one of those sites, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

And people go there, every single day, in the hopes of experiencing Jesus in some tangible way.

They even strain themselves for just a moment, just the small chance of even touching what MIGHT be some stone that COULD have touched the flesh of Christ.

They have come to the tomb in the hopes of finding something Holy.

And make no mistake, that is where these women are too.

Here you have [short write up about the women…make sure to end with “a mother torn with grief, who has come to care for her child one final time, hoping beyond hope, I am sure, that her faith is proved right in some moment of miraculous power!

That is why they have come.

Why have we come, though?

Why do we come to this place, or other temple’s in our lives?

What do we give weight to in our lives that becomes holy; a temple of sorts.

Some of those might be good, other’s maybe not.

But whether good or bad, right or wrong, why do we go to those temples?

I think we go to places like this, and to whatever temples we might have in our lives to feel something, something we are missing.

Some piece of us that is gone, or we might never have if we just didn’t go there to see it.

And to be honest, that is why these women go there.

These women, all connected by either family, in the case of Mary and Salome (Mary mother of James the lesser and Salome the mother of Zebedee aka sons of thunder), or devotion to Christ, in the case of Mary Magdalene.

They had a dog in this fight.

They were invested.

Understand, anything we hold as reverent or holy or special can be for us a temple of sorts.

Sometimes in a good way, sometimes not.

Why do we go to those temples in our lives?

They were grieving that life would never be the same.

[pic of temple]

That’s why we go to ours too, if we are being honest.

We lack something, or at least we think we lack something, so we ascribe some extra reverence, some extra weight, to some things that don’t really need it!

Is God more present in that rock at the Church of the Sepulcher, whether it is real or not?

Is God only in the National cemetery and not every other?

Of course not.

But we, like these women, give this weight to these places because we are desperate to find Jesus, to find God, any way we can.

But the truth of the matter is this - these temples will always fall short.

Our temples are just markers for the real temple that Christ tried to prepare for us all; the temple of faith.

[move toward the reality of our temples…they fall short…our temples are just markers for the real temple of faith.

When we go to those temples if we could just open the door, if we could pull back the curtain to see what lies behind those things that we give so much reverence and power to, we would find them empty!