Reflection for the Easter Season A friend sent this poem which provoked me to ponder a gift good friends give one another. It tells of a painting of Peter and John running to the tomb Easter morning.
These two men were of mixed mind about what an empty tomb might mean. Peter had denied even knowing Jesus-- three times, not to a soldier with a knife at his throat, but to a waitress. And on Good Friday night, Jesus had walked past and just...looked at him. Peter carried the burden of that denial and that look as he huffed his way along the path to what he hoped would be an empty tomb and prayed would not be. John had sworn to pay the price to sit with his brother on either side of Jesus in his Kingdom. And now, if the tomb was empty, he'd committed himself to drink death, which was what Jesus had meant all the time.
If this is really true, Peter wants desperately to say, "I'm sorry for what I said," and John wants desperately to say, "Can I reconsider what I said?" But if "the tomb is intact," they're both off the hook. So are we. We needn't wrestle with the sandpaper truth of what St. Paul dared us to face: "If Christ be not risen from the dead, then is our faith vain."
Nothing is more important than the resurrection. Not Christmas, not the beatitudes, not the miracles, not even the crucifixion. It makes a difference to us. Either Jesus rose (and we will, too) and we are immortal--right now; or we are just so much trash waiting to be wiped out by death, like a computer file in a power outage. Jesus' resurrection is the most important event--or non-event--in all human history.
But no one saw it happen. If the gospel writers had wanted to hoke up a real Spielberg scene, they could have done it up well: "The earth began to tremble, and the rocks shimmered with light; the rock covering the tomb cracked with a mighty roar, and Jesus came striding forth, blazing with light...." But they didn't. Which makes you wonder why they didn't. Why didn't they lie, when they easily could have?
What convinces me of the truth of the resurrection is that, on Good Friday, the disciples locked themselves in the Upper Room, quaking with fear they might be picked up, too. Yet, in less than two months, those same craven cowards were out in the streets shouting that they'd encountered Jesus alive. What a turnabout! And those same cowards went to horrifying deaths rather than deny they'd met Jesus alive again. They could have avoided that, just by saying, "All right. It was a hoax! We just wanted a little attention!" But they didn't. Every one of their deaths was a deathbed confession. I tend to believe those.
When we (sort of) "run" to the empty tomb this morning to remind ourselves what the resurrection means, what do we hope to find? The Good Shepherd who will pat our wooly heads and make everything "nice" again, who tells us to "be not afraid," who cherishes us without ever challenging us? What do we hope to find? The Vindicator who has paid our debts to a pawnbroker God and left us nothing more than our petty sins to atone for? Or do we go to find the God-Man who says, "Here! I've shown you how it's done. You attain new life only by climbing up the hill of Calvary. Come. Follow me, and I will give you...no, no, not rest! I will give you challenges, and more challenges, to know more and more, to love more and more, and never--ever--to stop learning and loving!"
Like Peter and John, when you come to the empty tomb, you may find something you really weren't planning on. |
