Resurrection is scary especially if we’re not prepared for it. In Mark’s version, nobody is prepared for it, not even Jesus. His only spoken line toward the end is “My god, my god, why have you forsaken me?” Hardly the words of someone with complete faith in new life. We witness Spring arise again, the blade of grass breaking through the devil strip, and we wonder what does this have to do with me? Especially as our hair grows grey and our days grow shorter, we wonder if it’s too late. We wonder if it’s time to put the dreams of our youth to bed, to make peace with the life we’ve lived, not the life we prepared to live. We learned through wisdom and experience to brace ourselves for tragedy, for the worst possible case scenario. We’ve learned to live without the possibility of angels. We’ve learned to accept that the boulder that covers the tomb will stay closed forever. There is no possible way we could budge it – we know that.
The women don’t know how they will move the boulder either. It’s so heavy. Without a plan of how they will move it, they go anyway to where Jesus is buried. With surprise, they find the stone has been moved for them. They are preparing to see Jesus who is now a corpse, a dead body.
They are expecting he will smell, beginning to rot. They are prepared to face the facts of life, the fact of how temporary we all are. They come with spices, ready to anoint Jesus. By anointing his body, they show their honor, honor for him – including his suffering. They know anointing him with spices is a way to make peace with what happened, not to change it. They know they cannot bring Jesus back – he’s gone. When they arrive in the tomb, they discover that he is truly gone. There is no sign of his corpse. There is no smell. In case there was any doubt about what happened, an angel clothed in white waits for them and tells them point blank – he’s not here. They do what I would do if I walked into a dark tomb and encountered a strange angel – they run screaming. This was not what they prepared for.
Many of us house our losses in a tomb. We learn to bury them. It makes sense. It’s what we do with persons and things that die. We bury them. In the tomb are possibilities for the kind of relationships we hoped to have, the kind of love we hope we would have experienced, or been able to hold onto. Maybe there are dreams for the kind of life we could have led if circumstances would have been a little different, if we would have been a little different.
These kinds of wonderings lead us inside the tomb, and that’s no good for most practical people like us. Most of us find it wise to let the past be the past, and not put too much energy into things that can’t be changed. So we leave the tomb alone. We don’t approach it. We stay home – we live the life we have, not the life we wish we could have.
This is a mature and noble choice, and it has its limitations. The tomb remains, waiting. The angel remains inside, waiting. The boulder in our mind looms so large dividing our life from the life we hoped for, that we know there is no use in even going there. Not now, not ever. The root of our grief and thus the root of our love waits for a visit.
The possibility of new life is there every single day. It is not a miracle, it is not supernatural, it is not rare. What is rare is our ability to see it up close, to let it in, to move us to the point of terror and amazement.
The beginning of resurrection is never death. Death is commonplace. And it touches us deeply, but it is not the beginning of resurrection. The beginning of resurrection is honor. Like the women bringing spices, ready to anoint Jesus, we must be willing to honor our losses, to honor the life we had and what could have been.
We go to the tomb not knowing how we will ever manage it. The emotions and experience is visceral. We expect to smell rot and to see ghastly sights, and we don’t know how we will deal with it. We don’t even know if we’ll be able to get inside. But we go anyway, not knowing how we will get in, not knowing how we will manage.
We enter the tomb and we discover a startling fact – it’s empty. There are no skeletons in there, no painful memories or secrets. There is literally no substance to our deepest fears and deepest griefs. It’s empty. ‘Where is it? We cry out I left everything right here last year, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. Now it’s gone.’ Where did it all go? We’re not prepared for what we find – nothing
In that moment you discover the life you have lived is much bigger than you ever imagined. All your grief, all your love, all your hope, all your fear – it’s not hidden in some tomb. No boulder could keep it out. it’s all alive and out in the world right now, everywhere, part of you, every single moment. It’s in the valley, in the grass, in Galilee, waiting. Your heart beats out of control and your blood rushes as you run out of the tomb, and as you run as fast as you can, you notice something – you’re alive.
Your life has opened up through terror and amazement. In fully expecting to see only death, you have felt the rush of life. You’re alive and you’re free, and as you run maybe you start to giggle. You’ve finally witnessed face to face something that happens every day – resurrection. Happy Easter.
