Giving Up - Death | John 20:1-11
A few weeks ago, my 100-year-old grandmother passed away. She wasn’t just my paternal grandmother—she was one of the top ten most influential people in my life.
She taught me how to cook (yes, that peach cobbler I make? That’s her recipe). She taught me how to give great hugs. More than anything, she taught me how to love people, even when they didn’t deserve it. She taught me to serve others and, in her own quiet way, how to be cool. She was stylish, confident, kind—one of a kind.
One of my favorite memories is from elementary school. Every year for Grandparents Day, she’d pull up in her black and gray Cadillac DeVille, dressed to the nines, with that tire on the back like it was straight out of a movie. She’d spend the whole day with me at school, including in my English class. One year, I was panicking because I knew a bad quiz grade was coming back—like, D or F level bad. And sure enough, when the teacher handed it to me, my armpits were sweating all the way to my socks. But you know what my grandmother did?
Nothing. She didn’t say a word about it. That’s love. Love sometimes is not saying something even when you could.
Fast forward 20 years, and I found myself standing by her casket instead of watching her step out of a Cadillac. That was hard. Death is hard. It’s inevitable. And honestly, we don’t like talking about it. We prefer birth over death, Easter over Good Friday, life over loss. But the truth is, we often live in the space between Friday and Sunday—between death and resurrection.
That’s exactly where we find Mary Magdalene in John 20. She comes to Jesus’ tomb on Sunday morning—not with hope for resurrection, but with oils and spices to embalm His body. She was carrying more than just her supplies; she was carrying the weight of grief, sadness, fear, and hopelessness.
And let’s be real—some of us are there, too. We’re carrying our own versions of those same weights, wondering if resurrection is even possible in our situation.
The text tells us Mary finds the tomb empty. But instead of shouting “He is risen!” she assumes the worst. “They’ve taken the Lord, and we don’t know where they’ve put Him,” she says. Resurrection wasn’t even on her radar. And honestly, for many of us, it’s easier to believe in death than in resurrection. Death is predictable. Resurrection? That feels impossible.
But here’s the turning point: Jesus meets her there.
Just like the unnamed disciple who finally steps into the tomb and believes—not because he had all the answers, but because he showed up and entered in—Mary encounters the risen Jesus not while she was full of faith, but while she was full of doubt and grief. Jesus comes to her. He meets her right where she is. And her response? “I have seen the Lord.”
That’s the Gospel.
We serve a God who meets us in our grief, our doubt, and our hopelessness. We serve a God who doesn't wait for us to get it all together, but who steps into the tombs of our lives and brings resurrection with Him. What is impossible for man is possible for God.
So maybe you’re living in a Good Friday world. Maybe you're stuck between what was and what could be. Maybe you’re not sure if hope is still an option.
But remember this: Sunday is coming. Resurrection is real. And Jesus is willing to meet you in the middle.
