We know the story. The religious authorities joined forces with the political superpower of the day to end what they saw as an offense against piety and an assault on the established order – in other words, to terminate a threat to the status quo. They acted decisively to stamp out the menace. And when they were done, they had stamped him into the ground, into a hole in the ground; and they buried him there. As far as they were concerned, the fire of extremism had been snuffed out.

But the combined forces of religion and politics buried more than a man in that tomb. They buried his followers’ joy, their hope, and their future. When we see those followers again, they are filled with despair: Peter weeping in the night, the Eleven, trembling with fear, hidden behind locked doors. You can hear the despair in the voices of the two on the road to Emmaus when they said: “We thought” – but alas, we were mistaken – “that he was the one who would redeem Israel.”

These people had staked their lives on Jesus. They had left everything, as Peter declared, to follow him: jobs and families, homes and security. Now what were they to do? Would they have jobs to go back to? Would their families take them in? Would their company be disbanded? These men and women were closer than family. Would the future tear them apart, leave them only memories? And even those memories were being pushed from their minds. Right now, all they could think about was their Master being dragged away, nailed down, strung up, and crying, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

A handful of women went to the tomb early on Sunday morning. They left from different parts of the city, but intended to meet there to properly finish the Jewish burial procedure. But as they approached the tomb, one of them suddenly remembered the great stone that sealed the entrance. “Who will roll the stone away?” they asked. It seemed an insurmountable obstacle. But heaven had solved that problem even before they had begun to worry about it! (I wonder how often that happens to us.) They arrived to find the stone already rolled away. They may have thought that Joseph, who owned the tomb, or Nicodemus who accompanied him, were acting on the same idea and were already inside, completing the burial rites.

Or perhaps something more nefarious. The stone rolled away, the Roman troops missing, the body gone—it all pointed to one thing. The authorities must have removed the body as a final humiliation. One of the women, who arrived at the tomb before most of her friends, turned and ran to tell the apostles. That was Mary Magdalene. She was out of breath when she reached them. Peter and John ran to the tomb to see what had happened, and she followed them, but she could only walk, panting.

By the time she got back, the men had already left. She stood there, crying at this final indignity. They (whoever they were) had committed one last sacrilege; they had desecrated his tomb and taken his body. They were probably doing unthinkable things to it right now, after which they would throw it on the garbage dump in the Hinnom valley, which is what happened to most execution victims.

This was too much. Not having slept for days, overcome with emotion, and finding herself all alone, she breaks into tears. When a couple of men there ask her, “Woman, why are you crying?” she bawls, “They have taken my Lord away and I don’t know where they have put him.” Even now, she doesn’t grasp of what has happened.

We can hardly blame her. The world has turned upside down and inside out. The prophet once said, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” But God had done just the opposite, had turned evil to good, put light for darkness, and transmuted unbearable bitterness into something unforgettably sweet.

Have you ever looked at something for a few seconds without really seeing it? Then suddenly it dawns on you what you are looking at? These people in the restaurant are your friends—this is a surprise party for your birthday! The face in the window isn’t your neighbor. It’s your oldest friend – you haven’t seen him in three years – and he’s laughing at you from the other side. Or this place … this is the town you stayed in thirty years ago, when you first got married. We’ve all had that experience, when things seen but not understood suddenly come into focus. For the Magdalene, everything came into focus at the sound of her name: Mary. Suddenly she knew the men to be angels, the Gardener to be her savior, and the Garden tomb a little bit of heaven.

Some of us have had a similar experience. We see the tomb with the stone tossed away. We believe the tidings of the apostles. And then God speaks our name. That’s when everything comes into focus. This, all of this, was also for you and me. The stone was not only rolled from the Garden tomb; it’s been rolled from our graves, as well.

If we listen, we may hear him speaking our name.