Standing before Easter's empty tomb
"... there was a great earthquake; for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, approached, rolled back the stone, and sat upon it."
Matthew 28:1-10
We've all beheld the dawn. A sudden ray of light breaks through the darkness of our personal struggles, our fear, our grief. And we're able to put the night behind us and face the new day.
We've all experienced that earthquake when a new understanding, a new revelation, rocked our world, and released us from the "tomb" we didn't realize we had dug for ourselves.
We all have confronted that stone: the regret and grief, fear and anxiety that block where we need to go or what we need to do. But, that God-given gift of our compassion somehow dislodges that mass of rock and we find our way around it.
At those dawns, in the broken earth of those quakes, in the stones that we manage to roll away, we find ourselves standing before Easter's empty tomb.
It's a little unsettling at first, but Easter is not about safety. It's about freedom. Because of the Risen Christ in the faithfulness of a friend, we made it through the night. Because of the Risen Christ in a wise teacher or mentor who reached out to us, our world broke open and set us on a new path. Because of the Risen Christ in the generosity of a fellow brother or community, we managed to roll away the stone.
Easter is not about the past in Jerusalem, but the hope that awaits in Galilee.
My dear brothers, the darkness before dawn, the trembling of the ground under us, the insurmountable stone we find a way to move, all bring us to the Easter mystery. And we discover that Easter is filled with the promise of new things that can be realized only through love, compassion, forgiveness, reconciliation, justice and peace.
The empty tomb is the sign of perfect hope: that in Christ all things are possible; that we can live our lives with meaning and purpose; that we can become the people God created us to be.
May we not fear or shrink from Easter's first morning light and fallen-away stones. May we instead embrace the light and hope it promises in the Risen One who is forever in our midst.
Happy Easter, brothers!
