In 1906, something momentous happened in the world of American football.  The first legal forward pass was thrown during a game between St. Louis University and Carol College.  It’s important to those of us whose blood runs Carolina blue that I should point that that was the first legal pass.  We here in North Carolina know that a year earlier in 1905 one of the Tarheels threw the ball forward for a completion to break a tie between Carolina and the University of Georgia winning the game 6-0.  Sadly, the toss was overturned, we lost the appeal and the forfeited the game a few months later.  I don’t know for sure but it might have been the last time the Tarheels beat the Bulldogs like EVER.  As you may well imagine, the forward pass changed everything in the game of football.  First of all, it likely saved the sport.  Prior to the legalization of forward passing, 1905 had been a bloody year in the game.  No less 18 deaths had occurred and over 159 players seriously injured during games in 1905.  In fact, things had become so violent, that moves were being made to abolish the sport altogether.  I was quickly becoming a more violent variation of rugby and we all know how boring rugby can be, don’t we?  Believe it or not, it took the intervention President Teddy Roosevelt himself, to save the game of football by pushing for the forward pass to be legalized.  In that one act he thereby saved Saturday and Sunday afternoons for generations of Americans as well as proved the bane of pastors across the land.  Can you even imagine January without the College National Championship Game or February with the juggernaut that the Super Bowl has become?  The forward pass is just one example of a game changer from the world of sports.  If we look closely, there are so many advancements that have been game changers during the last 100 years.  Would eating dinner be quite as easy if it weren’t for the microwave?  Would giving tests to kids be nearly as simple were it not for the invention of the copier machine, a vast improvement over the old mimeograph?  No, of course not.  Things come along and the alter the way that we do things.  They’re game changers.  But one thing is certain – Game changers always upend the status quo.  They quickly and radically alter the way we do things.  They change our tastes and proclivities until we can only barely remember life before they came along.

  This morning, is of course, Easter morning, a day in which we put on our finest clothes and huddle together in the pews to celebrate the greatest game changer of all time, an Easter Sunday over two thousand years ago that began just like any other day.  John’s Gospel records that it began for Mary Magdalene just like any other day in which a loved one had died.  You see, since no work was allowed on the Sabbath which, at the time, was on a Saturday, Mary Magdalene wanted and come to Jesus’ tomb to do her duty early.  At the time, burial practices being what they were, the dead body would lie in-state until someone, some member of the family or friend, could come and anoint them with herbs and spices.  This was generally done to hold down the decay of death until the bones of the deceased could be placed in an ossuary.  An ossuary was meant to be a final resting place.  As we all know, dead men tell no tales but their bones need someplace special to be stored.  Typically, this storage was done in a family cave.  There, as soon as the decay of death had ended, Jesus would be placed in box besides His ancestors.  Over time, He, like those others in the cave with Him would gradually be forgotten.    

  So, Mary, no doubt saddened by the events of the previous day came to do her duty.  But then, as she arrived at the tomb, something was amiss.  As we know from the Gospels, Jesus’ brother Joseph, had collected Jesus’ dead body from the Cross, and placed Him in that cave.  At this point, a roughhewn stone was placed in front of the entrance.  Not only that, Pilate, worried about Jesus’ followers stealing the body commanded guards to go and secure the tomb until the third day, just to make sure no shenanigans were done with His corpse.  But on the third day, the centurions had fulfilled their duties and well, dead is dead, so they left their post with the rock safely securing the door behind His corpse.  If Jesus hadn’t knocked on the door for three long days, hadn’t stirred from His eternal slumber to ask for a drink of water, what was there to worry about after all?  So off they went to the warm campfires of their companions.  On the third day they left.  Their orders followed to the letter, no worry of reprisal from superior officers.  No, it was time to eat and forget all about this trouble making Nazarene with his Galilean rabble.  Who cared if one of His followers came and performed his last rites?