The tomb is empty. Jesus stands, living.....
Easter Sunday
Year C
Luke 24:1-12
When you
wake "at early dawn" there's nothing there. Grief returns in bits and pieces as memories reestablish their foothold one by
one. The day stretches out like a blank
canvas. The two women, walking to the
tomb of their friend, arrange the painful events of the last two days in such a
way that they can conserve the strength they require to undertake their duties.
Like the
Emmaus disciples in another of of Luke's stories, the women are good stewards
of their inner resources. They attempt
to achieve a degree of what we might call "closure". They fall back
on their practical duties, as women of their age and time, whose role it was to
anoint the dead body as an act of respect.
The two men, in the later Emmaus story, attempt to draw a line under
their life by going over the events of the previous years in detail - trying to
isolate what the nature of their hope had been and to salvage some good out of
a desperately sad and painful story. It's what human beings have always done.
Luke writes
in a kindly fashion of these two clutches of humanity doing their very best in
difficult circumstances without ever lending them control of the story.
The
Gospels have never been an account of human ingenuity or the sufficiency of the
human spirit. They are an account of God
doing what men and women cannot do. The
hold of sin and death is too strong even among the best of people. Christ's tomb is found here empty. Christ is
light in the darkness, he is the Word spoken into the silence, he is life in
the midst of death.
The
Gospel writers want you to listen to the events which they recount and which
will be retold in the coming weeks under different guises because they make all
the difference to how life is lived - not the lives of ancient men and women
but your lives and the lives of those you love.
Unlock the cupboard where your have put away your hopes. The tomb is empty. Jesus stands, living, in the midst of those
who loved him.
