The first day of the week extended from 6pm on
Saturday to 6pm on Sunday which approximates closely to the Jewish first day of
the week today. The scene of our story in Luke's gospel is set when it was
still dark just before dawn, the time our hens are most vulnerable to the fox!
The women came to the tomb in order to embalm the
body, something we are totally unused to in our present society, and yet a
vital part of the mourning process. A Latin American theologian Rubem
Alves, has written a story about a group of villagers who find a body washed up
on their beach and how as they embalmed it they recreated the personality of
the body. They saw that the stone had been removed and may have suspected
action on the part of the enemies of Jesus or tomb robbers who were common at
the time.
The women went back and told the disciples and
Peter (not Simon as chapter 22) ran to the tomb. The tomb was built into the
ground with a low door so that the disciple had to bend down, and then look
down into it. Peter went into the tomb and saw the linen cloths.
This story is so well known, so powerful, that we
forget its dilemmas. For many today it is a pleasant story and nothing else. For others it is a story constructed retrospectively to explain
the death of Christ. For others still it portrays as accurately as possible
eyewitness accounts of some very strange events including angels and a man who
is risen from the dead and very soon after disappears.
There remains the problem of the body...if he just
died where was the body? In close knit communities bodies just don't
disappear. (Who rolled the stone away?) And there is the problem of
history...the story has been powerful enough to inspire belief for nearly two
thousand years.
In our own lives we experience the mystery of life
and death regularly and we are grown accustomed to suspend questions on
existence and meaning. Occasionally however our delicate lives are shaken and
the big questions come to the surface, questions about the meaning of life and
death and life after death. To accept that life is a mystery, to believe in God
in any way however small is to entertain resurrection. We can look at the night
sky and realize how little we know. How can we know about the journey our soul
takes after death?
Life is not predictable, though our biggest sin is
that we think it is and that we can control it.
There are possibilities, hopes. Life is like the
empty tomb, with potential. We do not live in a box, a closed system, but one
which is charged with possibility because there is a another dimension that we
know little about. This is what the Christian life is like. It is full of
possibility of resurrection...
The empty tomb gives us no neat answers. It left
the disciples with a giant question mark. Soon after they were confronted with
the disturbing reality of a risen Jesus before them with a gaping hole in his
side, a ghost that ate fish. Can you imagine how they must have felt! No wonder
Thomas wants to put his head in his hands and say "I don't believe
it."
We do not have their experience. We have their
story and our own experiences. We can walk a tight rope between talking
jibberish and acknowledging what is true for us concerning the resurrection.
As for me, I know enough to just keep me
going...enough to believe the story.
