An Empty Tomb
An Easter Reflection on Gospel Accounts of That
Morning
April 10, 2004 (Easter Eve) and April 11, 2004 (The Sunday of the Resurrection: Easter Day)
By
The Rev. Benjamin J. Newland
(From The Lectionary Page)
They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body…“Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.”
Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
The Lord is Risen indeed! Alleluia!
In my almost four years of ordained ministry, I have never yet been privileged to preach a sermon on Easter Sunday. I have, however, been honored to preach on Good Friday each of the past three years. So when I sat down this year to write not a Good Friday sermon but an Easter Sunday sermon, I was prepared to write something completely different. I found instead that writing an Easter Sunday sermon is very nearly the same thing as writing a Good Friday sermon. This seems, I suppose, ridiculous. After all, much of the world divides history between pre-resurrection and post-resurrection. Yet I hope I’m not stretching things too much. After all, we use the same symbol, the cross, to serve both Good Friday and Easter Sunday. We are caught, even now in our joyous celebration, between Friday and Sunday, between Black and White, between Death and Resurrection.
This is not to say that Good Friday and Easter Sunday are the same thing, not at all. In a sense, they are exactly opposite things. Good Friday is the liturgical embodiment of utter despair. Easter Sunday is the liturgical essence of overwhelming joy. The distance in feeling between Good Friday and Easter Sunday is the entire distance of the Creation itself.
And yet I maintain that from the perspective of the Christian at worship Good Friday and Easter Sunday are very nearly the same thing, for each in its own manner embraces the entirety of the human experience of God. Good Friday encompasses such despair, and Easter Sunday such joy, that both pour over the embankments of our rational selves and flood into our souls with a rush and surge of spiritual power that leaves us drowning in in the wake of God’s love for us, the created.
To use a worn out metaphor, I could say that Good Friday and Easter Sunday are two sides of the same coin. The metaphor is well worn because it works in many cases, but for matters of such profound spiritual import as those with which we strive here and now, it is not sufficient. The two-sides-of-the-same-coin metaphor fails because while it implies that both sides are real, it prevents us from seeing both sides at the same time. It is a dichotomy: a representation of opposites; a thing of black and white.
A better metaphorical symbol is the Eastern icon of the Ying/Yang. While on the coin black and white were on opposite and non-touching sides, in the Ying/Yang black and white meet one another, curving around each other. Further, there is in black a small presence of white, and there is in white a small presence of black. And so we are closer to capturing the nature of our Good Friday/Easter Sunday mystery. For while Friday is definitely black, and Sunday most certainly white, they are not far apart from each other in meaning. Indeed, they touch one another, and in moments of spiritual clarity even seem to overlap.
It is, of course, the Episcopal way when faced with black and white to declare an answer of grey. “The Anglican Middle Way,” we call this concept, and it seems like great wisdom. For it is said that the world is not made of black and white, but of shades of grey, and this may well be true. Yet the richness of your grey is dependant on the blackness of your black, and the whiteness of your white. Good Friday is no shade of grey, but the deepest of light-swallowing black. Easter Sunday is no shade of grey, but the brightest of sun-blinding white.
How then are we to reconcile our black and our white? How are we to live in that terrible tension between Good Friday and Easter Sunday? It is not enough to say that Good Friday is past and Easter Sunday all that we need. Good Friday will come again, both liturgically in our church year and physically in our lives. Easter Sunday without Good Friday is not real. It is happiness without sadness, love without risk, grace without sacrifice. How can we claim the glorious triumph of Easter Sunday and the terrible despair of Good Friday?
It is a question we must answer, for we have one more set of opposites to reconcile before we are done: Death and Resurrection. And reconcile them we will, for they are not the opposites they seem, not the impossible dichotomy they appear. A dichotomy is only a paradox that has yet to grow up, and in Jesus the Christ the dichotomy of death and life become the paradox of grace and salvation. Ours is a God who has died. Ours is a God who lives. God is dead. Long live God.
Perhaps I have strayed too far from the Gospel text I began with for, as usual, the answer has been there all along. I quoted from Luke, but it makes little difference which one you read. None of the Gospel accounts of Easter morning narrate the resurrection itself. There is no discussion of how Jesus left the tomb: no spy-cam view of linen wrappings in the shape of a body slowly deflating, no artistically licensed description of a blinding flash of light. The Gospels describe only what the women found that morning. They didn’t witness a resurrection, they found an empty tomb. After all, I doubt the stone was rolled aside to let Jesus out. No, the stone was rolled aside to let the women in.
It’s too bad that an empty tomb wouldn’t make good jewelry. We have as our most enduring and powerful symbol the cross on which Christ died, which lends itself conveniently to artistic renderings and to being worn on a chain about the neck. An empty tomb will probably never catch on as a personal accessory, which is too bad I think, for the empty tomb is the other half of the story. Jesus died on a cross on Good Friday. Jesus rose from an empty tomb on Easter Sunday. Death and Resurrection. The paradox at the heart of our faith.
The story of death and resurrection encompasses the whole of our lives as children of God, and we partake of that story most particularly today. We are an integral part of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Christ’s death came through the cross, ours comes through baptism. Christ’s resurrection came through an empty tomb, our comes through an emptied life, which is paradoxically the fullest life possible. For long weeks of Lent we have emptied ourselves, and now we come to be filled. We are empty tombs: our old lives of separation from God-of Sin with a capital “S”-are gone. We are no longer here, we are with Christ. Why do you look for the living among the dead? You are not here. You are risen. AMEN. ALLELUIA.