itsawonderfilledlife

Someone has said,

“We are Easter people, living in a Good Friday world.”

It started with a “violent quaking” (Matthew 28:2). As if there had not already been enough violence, just days ago, now the earth seemed to join in with hot-tempered participation.

The women (the ‘Marys’) arrived to see a traumatized guard and an angel sitting on the stone that had been covering the entrance to the tomb. The angel said to them,

“Don’t be afraid!” he said. “I know you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead, just as he said would happen. Come, see where his body was lying.” (v. 5-6)

The news must have been almost too much to take in, for these women, still in the throws of new grief, still dealing with the trauma of the events of what had been done to their loved one, just days before.

This angelic being invited them into the tomb … into the place of death.

This invitation is for them, for us. For we, like the doubting disciple, need to see evidence. We need to enter into the place of death, to the place of hopeless darkness to see and know the miracle that has happened …

that death has been defeated!

We, who have grieved, who currently grieve, know the permanence of death … we have walked in the tomb of death. We know the darkness where grief resides. We know the sorrow that greets each new day. I think, in a way, grievers best understand this Easter Sunday message. This invitation to enter the tomb. To feel the cold, damp air. To hear nothing of life outside. To walk into the dark and imagine how much more dark it must have been with the stone over the entrance.

In his rising from death, in his dropping of his burial cloths, in the light pouring in, we can see hope in the midst of grief.

I love these words of Henri Nouwen:

“The resurrection does not solve our problems about dying and death. It is not the happy ending to our life’s struggle, nor is it the big surprise that God has kept in store for us. No, the resurrection is the expression of God’s faithfulness to Jesus and to all God’s children.”

Or, in the words of Jesus, to these same women, not long after their empty tomb tour:

“And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (v. 20)

Always.

He is with us … always.

He knows our sorrows (grief or otherwise).

He knows our struggles.

He knows our needs.

And that is

why he came.
why he dies.
why he rose.

Blessed are we who stretch out our hands to you
in doubt and grief,
in sickness of body and mind and spirit,
our prayers not fully realized,
rejoicing… anyway.

For that is what makes us Easter people:
carrying forth the realized hope of the Resurrected One,
singing our alleluias great and small,
while it is still dark.

Christ is risen. Christ will come again.

Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.

Kate Bowler