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Early on when I was in middle school/high school some of the best fencing tournaments were in Atlanta. There was a huge pool of very talented fencers to compete with. These tournaments mostly went by unnoticed by my club in Birmingham, which meant I could avoid all the rivalries and strife from my teammates. These tournaments were also always on Sunday.
My Faith, my relationship with God, has been tremendously important to me, even from a young age. So I made sure I could do both. Even before I could drive, my mom and I would get a good night’s rest, wake up in time for the 7:30 AM service at our church where we got the stink-eye by our fellow worshipers if we were even slightly enthusiastic with the Peace. Then we’d hop in the car, take a 2 hour drive to a different timezone, get out, and get ready for me to fence in the tournament.
There was a sacrifice. I never got to do the better of the two foil events. But that was okay. I still got to advance in my fencing and I still go to keep developing my relationship with God, even though it was very early in the morning.
It’s not the case for everyone that you can be up bright and early ready to get closer to God. I certainly wouldn’t have back then except I wanted to fence and be with God. Even in Scripture, we don’t see a lot of people, not even the Disciples, making their way to see Jesus in the Tomb. Only a few people would do that.
We hear of two of those people today: Mary Magdalene and the woman known only as “the other Mary”. This journey was not without sacrifice. All throughout the Passion story, we hear tales of how Jesus’ trial and execution were carefully orchestrated around the Passover. To celebrate Passover, you had to be ritually clean, and to be ritually clean as a Jew, you could not go into the home of a Gentile or touch a dead body. Hence Pilate made concessions like meeting the people outside his house and moving things quickly so the dead bodies of Jesus and the others were removed well before Passover was celebrated.
This is not to mention where the Disciples were. They were holed-up in a small room in the city, fearful that if they left or were caught, they too might be executed like Jesus was.
Yet for Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, their relationship with Jesus was more important. It was more important that Jesus’ body be properly prepared than the threat of the Roman and religious authorities. Even though this is after the Passover and Sabbath, touching Jesus’ dead body would still make them ritually unclean. This is not to mention that they are doing all this just before the crack of dawn when they were probably tired and couldn’t see very well. Yet with everything before them, they went anyways. They went because their relationship with the Lord was important and important to them.
They are rewarded for nurturing this relationship. They get to see the Empty Tomb. They get to see the Angel. They get to see the risen Lord before anyone else does. All their sacrifices, in the end, are worth it just to see Jesus.
My hope is that your relationship with God is just as important to you as it was to Mary Magdalene and Mary. My hope is that you do not come here merely out of duty but out of a deep and abiding desire to come closer to our Lord. It’s not that doing so is not without sacrifices, even if it is just being tired instead of energetic while you are here. Yet everything we give to be here is worth it. Everything we give just to be closer to Jesus is worth it.