For this Sunday after Easter, we chose to honor the Myrrhbearing Women. The tradition of Myrrhbearers’ Sunday comes from the Orthodox tradition. You can read more about it here.
During our service, we divided our encounter with the myrrhbearing women into two parts: how the women enter the story, and how the women proclaim the story. Much of the service involved a variety of Scripture readings and a couple of reflections.
How the Women Enter the Story:
Luke 23:50-56 (because Joseph of Arimathea is also traditionally considered one of the myrrhbearers)
1st Reflection:
The women came from all walks of life and had all sorts of relationships to Jesus. One was his own mother – that beloved Mary who’s initial “yes” to God’s seemingly-ludicrous plan was now reverberating throughout the towns and villages as God’s Son … her son … taught and healed and loved, as God’s Son … her son … gasped and bled and died. Others were the mothers of some of his closest followers. Some of the women were sisters of Jesus’ dearest friend – friends of the Messiah in their own right … in their own special way – while others were women whose lives had been changed by the words and actions of this Jesus of Nazareth, this itinerant rabbi who taught people and healed people and loved people in a way no one had ever seen before.
None of them loved Jesus better than another, but they all loved him in their own special ways. None of them followed Jesus more faithfully than another, but they all followed Jesus faithfully, even unto Jesus’ last gut-wrenching, heartbreaking moments and beyond. When things got dark and difficult, their devotion to him – their faith – remained. Even after all the others had betrayed him … had denied him … had deserted the pain and shame of the cross, these women stayed. They stayed in the midst of utter grief – stayed long enough to water the foot of the cross with their tears … stayed long enough to see Jesus’ broken, lifeless body taken down from that cross … stayed long enough to begin the ritual preparations for the dead before the beginning of the Sabbath.
And not only did they stay, but after the Sabbath, they came back. They returned to that place of grief … of hopelessness … of trauma thinking not of themselves and their own discomfort and agony, but of what they could still do for their beloved Teacher: give him the ritual burial that they thought he deserved.
Friends, things in our world are seldom as perfect and rosy and easy as we would like them to be. Our world is broken and flawed because humans are broken and flawed, and sometimes that makes it so incredibly hard to do what needs to be done. We are afraid. We are weary. We are wrung out in body, mind, and soul … just as those myrrhbearing women surely were. In the face of that physical, emotional, and spiritual exhaustion, those women let their love for Jesus lead them to the next step … and the next step … and the next step. It didn’t require an elaborate plan or a false smile or the impression that they had everything together. It just required their presence and their devotion to the one they had grown to love: Jesus, the Christ.
How the Women Proclaim the Story:
2nd Reflection:
So what’s the second lesson we can learn from the Myrrhbearers? They took the good news of the gospel OUT!! They proclaimed a resurrected Christ! They ministered! They didn’t let anything get in their way: fear of repercussions from the Romans who had just crucified their beloved Teacher; the disbelief of others … even some as powerful and influential as Peter … as some as intimate as themselves; not even societal expectations related to their gender and their abilities. I’ve said it before, friends … I just said it to my kids as we were hiking in the beautiful weather yesterday … and I’ll say it again and again and again: never, ever forget that the very first people to preach the gospel were women. And don’t let anyone else tell you different either.
There are a lot of things in the world that try to get in the way of us living and sharing our faith. And there are a lot of things inside us that try to get in the way of living and sharing our faith. Sometimes we’re afraid. Sometimes we’re uncertain. Sometimes we’re intimidated or we think that we won’t find the right words … the perfect words … the “faith-i-est,” “holy enough” words. And as Mark’s account showed us last week, it’s okay to be in those moments of hesitation. Fear and uncertainty and even doubt are not markers of an inadequate faith. Fear and uncertainty and even doubt do not make you a bad person or a bad Christian. Even Jesus feared. Even Jesus experienced uncertainty and doubt in the Garden of Gethsemane on the cusp of his arrest. But 2000 years later, we are still telling the story of that Resurrection Morning … so somewhere along the line, we know that the strength of their faith and the power of the good news of a Risen Christ spurred the women to overcome their fear and uncertainty. Eventually, they told their story … a story we still get to tell today.
No matter how they eventually came to it, the women ended up finding the words that morning – perfectly right and perfectly simple and perfectly faithful: “Christ is risen!” Sounds like a pretty good place to begin, don’t you think?
Christ is risen!
Fearfully and Wonderfully Made 