(Preached on Easter Sunday, April 4, 2010)
For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. - Isaiah 65:17
Inside the tomb there was a dim shaft of light where the stone did not fit tightly. The tomb was filled with shadow and darkness. The sounds of the outer world, the world of the streets, were muffled. Inside, the air was still, damp with the spring rains, cool from the rocky cavern. In the darkness lay Jesus’ body. It was wrapped tightly so that you could see the head and feet, see the lump where his hands folded over his thighs. Many thought this was the end of the story, a white-wrapped body of a young man who had been executed.
As horrible as death and separation are, they are things we can deal with as human beings. After all, death is part of our reality. We may hate death. We may hate the separation it causes. We may hate the finality of it. But we know it to be the reality of this world and we know there is not much we can do about that fact. So the women went to the tomb that first Easter Sunday knowing Jesus was dead, hurting and sorrowful, but accepting that this was reality. They went to the tomb knowing that there was one last thing they could do for this man who had meant so much to them when he was alive, and that was to provide final care for his body, anointing it and wrapping it properly.
But when they got to the tomb, death is not what they found. Emptiness is what they found. The stone was rolled away, and the tomb was empty. Emptiness strikes deeper fear into our hearts and souls than death. To death they knew how to respond: with weeping and wailing, with burial wrappings and spices, with funeral processions and eulogies. But emptiness … responding to emptiness is much more difficult. When emptiness takes over, the core of one’s humanity disintegrates. One is no longer capable even of despair, for despair implies the presence of enough hope to feel its loss. Emptiness is the ultimate threat to religious faith.
The women at the tomb faced it, if only for a fleeting moment. The empty tomb represents the absolute and utter loss of the one who had been the center of all love and meaning for these women. This is also what frightens the disciples when they hear this news. This is why they consider the tale the women told them an “idle tale.” It was nonsense, the ranting of grief stricken women. This is why Peter goes to the tomb and then wanders away puzzled and confused: because as painful as death is to deal with, emptiness is even harder.
We hate emptiness so much today that we have tried to banish it from our daily existence. Try to find a silent moment. It is nearly impossible. Our mechanized world is filled with the sound of running motors: the refrigerator, the air conditioner, the pool pump, all our automobiles, airplanes and trains. We fill our ears with sound: radios and TVs, CDs and ipods. We fill our space with things and our time with activities.
Our world is filled with “empty tombs” – the losses and disappointments, heartbreaks and failures, tragic deaths and prolonged illnesses, loneliness and despair. Empty tombs are all those things in our world to which we don’t know how to respond or how to cope, so we try to avoid them.
But here the women were confronted with one. But, this emptiness was not the emptiness worse than death, though they didn’t realize that at first. This emptiness was the encompassing of death in the transcendent wholeness of God’s life. In his book The Everlasting Man, G.K. Chesterton wrote that when the women came early in the morning to anoint the body, not even they realized that it was really the world that had died in the night. The resurrection of Jesus means the death of all the ways in which the world has traditionally worked, the death of all the values in terms of which the world has lived. Easter is the first day of a whole new creation.
By raising Jesus from the dead God was finally doing what the prophet Isaiah had promised God would do several hundred years before Jesus lived: For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth … where no more shall be heard the sound of weeping and the cry of distress. No more shall there be an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not fill out his days… This is what the women encountered in the empty tomb that day. Not the fulfillment of this promise, but the first taste of it. They were getting the first taste of that new heaven and new earth. As biblical scholar N.T. Wright says: Easter Sunday was “the first day of God’s new week, the moment of sunrise after the long night, the time of new meetings, new meals, of reconciliation and new commissioning. It was the beginning of the new creation. It was, therefore, the sign of hope for the future, not only for individuals but for the whole world.” In other words, this isn’t just about “my own personal life after death.” It is about that, but it is about so much more. It is about God’s new creation, God’s new age, an age and a way of being that continually calls us to the table where all are fed and all are welcome as equals. It calls us to reconciliation and healing, between loved ones who love imperfectly and enemies who never seem to find common ground. It calls us to compassion and justice, for the least and the weakest in our midst. It calls us to participation in the wonders of God’s new age, God’s new earth.
Sometimes it is the simple little things, the simple little words that make us stop and think, and maybe point us to something we might otherwise miss. For example, did you happen to notice how many times the Gospel writer Luke uses the word “but” in this morning’s telling of the Easter story? (To help you, they were highlighted in bold print.) But: such a simple little three-letter word, but so important in the telling of this story. Theologians and Bible scholars for 2000 years have written books and books, sermons and sermons on the resurrection and what it means. However, one of my favorite reflections on this text was one I read a few years ago by a writer who focused on that one little word, “but,” the one that keeps bringing us up short throughout this passage, “grabbing us by the lapels, stopping us in our tracks and forcing us to understand that no matter what we’ve heard, we haven’t heard the whole story yet.” (Theodore Wardlaw, The Christian Century March 20, 2007) He called the word “but” a “defiant conjunction” that gets in the face of every cynical, hopeless, harsh evaluation of the state of things – in the state of the world, and in the state of our lives, yours and mine, every doomsday prediction and pessimistic riff on the meaning of our lives, the value of our actions and the validity of our hope. This little word continues the conversation, continues the line of thought, but changes the direction of things, dramatically, changes our perspective and maybe our attitude, says that God isn’t through with things yet. God hasn’t spoken the last word, not yet, not in the situation we find ourselves in anymore than God had spoken the last word on Good Friday long ago.
And because of that one little word, “but,” this story isn’t just about things that happened a long time ago, and far away to people we’ll never know and can’t relate to, Isaiah and Mary Magdalene and Peter … no, this “but” is active here in our lives, too, right here and now. Isn’t this really why we’re here this morning? Don’t we come here from our problems and struggles and hope to hear a Word, a “but” from God? Doesn’t that Word from God sustain us in hospital beds and waiting rooms alike, at gravesites and in the longest night of deep agony, doesn’t this Word comfort us and challenge us, guide us and surprise us and delight us?
And so, instead of being the end of the story, Easter is the beginning of a new age in which we live, an age that has begun but has not come in all its fullness. Still, the people suffer. Still, the people make war. Still, our hearts are torn and our health worries us, our loved ones die and our doubts trouble us within. But, (there’s that word again), “Jesus was dead, but he lives.” The tomb is empty, but filled with angels. Dead, but… Empty, but… There is always that “but,” and it carries us through every suffering, every loss, every Friday experience, knowing that hope in the end will triumph and the God of life will have the last word. “He is not here, BUT has risen!” Alleluia!