Sometimes we think we need to get everything just right, and have it all together, before we approach God. Or we think we should only do some spiritual activity if we can do it perfectly. But while God is calling us to be perfected by His grace, He knows how imperfect we are. As we said last Sunday, we are all wounded - man is one, massive wound; and Christ comes to be wounded in order to heal our wound. God knows our wounded-ness; He doesn’t want us to try to get healed and then come to Him; He wants us to run to Him as soon as we realize we’re wounded.

Today we remember the Myrrh-bearing women, and along with them, Ss. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. None of these were perfect, sinless people when they encountered the Lord. All of them had weaknesses and were sinful. Joseph and Nicodemus were fearful, afraid of what the other pharisees would think if they knew that they believed in Jesus. Mary Magdalene, one of the myrrh-bearing women, had been possessed by 7 demons. All of them, however, were changed by their encounter with Christ.

And so St. Mary Magdalene not only was freed of her demons; she became one of the first eyewitnesses and proclaimers of the Resurrection. She brought word to the cowering disciples as they were in hiding; she became an apostle to them. Eventually she traveled the world preaching the gospel, even telling the Emperor Tiberius Caesar the good news of the resurrection, and presenting to him an egg that miraculously turned red as proof that Christ was risen. She’s given the title “Equal to the Apostles.”

Joseph of Arimathea likewise went from being a secret disciple because of fear, to being a bold proclaimer of the Gospel. Eventually he traveled as far as England, bringing the Christian faith to the people there.

We could even mention the Apostle Mark whose Gospel we heard today; he went from being a frightened kid who ran away naked from the garden of Gethsemane when the Lord was seized by the soldiers there, to being an Evangelist and the first bishop of Alexandria in Egypt.

According to one of the hymns for today, God delights in bringing joy out of mourning, and making the place of brokenness and wounded-ness the very place where healing comes forth. “Hear the voice of gladness, O women…for I desire that joy shall break forth thence upon My creation, whence first came forth sorrow.” In other words, because sorrow first came into the world through the voice of Eve when she spoke to Adam about tasting the forbidden fruit, God also wants joy to come into the world through the voice of the women. Another one of today’s hymns says that Eve’s wailing and lamentation stopped when the Lord exclaimed “rejoice!” to the myrrh-bearing women.

What this tells us is that the Lord loves to use precisely the point of our weakness, the place where our wound is, and turn that into the place of strength and healing. That’s why we don’t have to try to fix ourselves and then present ourselves to the Lord having already gotten it all together. Rather, we should run to Him as soon as we discover our wound and with tears beg for healing. Our weakest point may become the means of not only our own healing, but of the proclamation of healing to others, but only if we let Christ in to that weakest point.

In this healing process, we may consider the events of today’s Gospel as a parable for us. First we discover with great sadness that our sin has put Christ to death. The only response is, like Joseph of Arimathea, to bury Christ. Not to bury Him so we don’t have to see Him, but to bury Him within us. Just as our hearts become the cave in which He is to be born at Christmas-time, now they become the cave in which the Lord is buried as we enter deeply into the reality of His death for us. We must receive His word deeply and richly within ourselves, receive His precious Body and Blood into our being, and let Him accomplish His work within us. We do so with full awareness of our unworthiness and imperfection, and asking for His forgiveness and mercy.

Then, like the myrrh-bearing women we mourn and lament, our hearts are filled with sadness, and yet we can’t help but approach that place of sadness and mourning with a certain trembling anticipation. Is it possible that God will indeed heal us? Is it possible that He will overcome all and bring life to us and joy in place of sadness? Our life is full of this anticipation and trembling hope.

But there are doubts of all kinds, as the women had when they wondered “who will roll the stone away for us?” Humanly speaking, there are insurmountable obstacles. Our faith is weak.

But if in spite of all that we come as it were to anoint His Body early in the morning; if in other words, being with Him is our greatest delight, then the miracle happens. Then we find that without understanding how exactly, the stone is already rolled away, and the dead Body of Christ is no longer there. The word of God announces the truth of the resurrection to us, like a shining angel. And then we meet the Lord Himself, who says, “rejoice!” and our sadness really does turn into joy. And our fear is healed, the place of our weakness and brokenness becomes precisely the place of strength and health. And we, too, by God’s grace, may become apostles, sent by God to share the joy of the resurrection with others.

This is what “Christ is risen” means for us: that healing and restoration are possible even for us who are weak and wounded and even dead in sin. The grave cannot contain Christ, and our weakness and wounded-ness cannot prevent Him from making us His disciples and apostles, like Ss. Joseph and Mary Magdalene and all the others, if only we will give our hearts to Him. Christ is risen!