41 2018 | Easter
A friend of mine who is a bit cynical and has a sarcastic sense of humor sent me a text on this April Fools’ Day that said, “Christ is risen…April Fools’.” Of course, the resurrection of Christ is no joke, and as the psalmist says, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1; 53:2). The Resurrection is the most real, life-changing thing there is.
This is what the women at the empty tomb will come to know and perceive…something not foolish or empty of meaning, but rather something whose emptiness—after all, the tomb is empty—is full of life-altering, transformative meaning. We first meet Mary Magdalene, Mary—the mother of James and Joses, and Salome at a distance from the cross. Unlike the male disciples, who had all fled in fear and showed themselves to be failures, the women, though not necessarily close to the cross, nevertheless, had not fled and had watched from a distance. They were there at least. And they saw where Jesus’ body was laid. That, they thought, was it. He was dead. They can perform the requisite obsequies and burial customs, but death has had its way.
So, when they approach the tomb with the spices necessary for the rites regarding the body, death was all that was in their minds. After all, they lived—as we think we do too—in the dominion of death. So much do they live in the dominion of death that as they approached the tomb, the wonder—very humanly—how they were going to move the large stone that sealed the tomb to get to the body. But human strength cannot overcome death. Death saps human beings of all their strength and ability. The stone stands as a marker between the world of the living and the world of the dead. Only a strength greater than death can move the stone, and indeed, that is the case.
When they cross the threshold of the barrier between life and death, they are overwhelmed to find that the realm of death is bursting with life. The tomb/grave is alive. In fact, it is empty of death. It is alive with life. The body of Jesus is not there. They are greeted with a tender admonishment by the white-clothed young man who says to them: “Do not be amazed! You seek Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Behold the place where they laid him. But go and tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you’” (Mark 16:6-7). The women, who from a distance witnessed crucifixion and death, came bearing the oils of death, because they thought that Jesus who had been crucified was dead. After all, they saw the place where he had been laid in the tomb. This was supposed to be the place of death.
Thus, the white-clothed young man acknowledges how and why they came to the tomb: “You seek Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified.” The crucified—the way in which they saw him die. This was supposedly the last chapter of his life—crucifixion. Pope Francis in his Easter homily of 2017 (last year) said:
“The faces of those women mirror many other faces too, including perhaps yours and mine. Like them, we can feel driven to keep walking and not resign ourselves to the fact that things have to end this way. True, we carry within us a promise and the certainty of God’s faithfulness. But our faces also bear the mark of wounds, of so many acts of infidelity, our own and those of others, of efforts made and battles lost. In our hearts, we know that things can be different but, almost without noticing it, we can grow accustomed to living with the tomb, living with frustration. Worse, we can even convince ourselves that this is the law of life, and blunt our consciences with forms of escape that only serve to dampen the hope that God has entrusted to us. So often we walk as those women did, poised between the desire of God and bleak resignation. Not only does the Master die, but our hope dies with him” (Pope Francis, Homily, April 15, 2017).
But, the white-clothed young man gives the women news: crucifixion and death and burial are not the end of the story. They do not have to continue in bleak and hopeless resignation, believing the taunt of the fool who says in his heart that there is no God (cf. Psalm 14:1; 53:2). We know that as poetry bends language to say something new, so the Resurrection bends death to affirm that “Christ is alive.” Thus, the poet Mary Oliver in her poem When Death Comes, writes, “When it’s over, I want to say: all my life/ I was a bride married to amazement./ I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.” And so the young man tells them, “He has been raised; he is not here. Behold, the place where they laid him.” Resurrection is the continuation of the story. It is the life of God which conquers death that writes the story now. The grave has become the domain of life even in death. They are not to seek Jesus of Nazareth as only crucified and dead, but as risen and alive. That is the life-altering, reality-transforming news with which their own hearts are anointed. The ointment bearers who were going to anoint the crucified and dead body of Jesus are themselves anointed with the words of the white-clothed young man sitting in the abode of death and blessing them with news of risen life. Pope Francis even makes this point in his Easter homily of 2015, when he says that “[the women] did not remain prisoners of fear and sadness, but at the first light of dawn they went out carrying their ointments, their hearts anointed with love” (Pope Francis, Homily, April 4, 2015).
It is at first light that the women go to the tomb, on the first day of the week. That is not the Sabbath (the day of rest), but, theologically, it corresponds to the first day of creation, the day when God created light. So, though the women go to the tomb still under the dominion of death—thinking that Jesus was crucified and dead and going to perform the necessary customs for a dead body—they go, however, in the moment that most corresponds to creation, the antithesis of death, destruction, decay, darkness and chaos: “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3). Pope emeritus Benedict XVI comments upon this powerfully in his Easter homily of 2012. He says:
“At Easter, on the morning of the first day of the week, God said once again: ‘Let there be light’. The night on the Mount of Olives, the solar eclipse of Jesus’ passion and death, the night of the grave had all passed. Now it is the first day once again – creation is beginning anew. ‘Let there be light’, says God, ‘and there was light’: Jesus rises from the grave. Life is stronger than death. Good is stronger than evil. Love is stronger than hate. Truth is stronger than lies. The darkness of the previous days is driven away the moment Jesus rises from the grave and himself becomes God’s pure light. But this applies not only to him, not only to the darkness of those days. With the resurrection of Jesus, light itself is created anew. He draws all of us after him into the new light of the resurrection and he conquers all darkness. He is God’s new day, new for all of us” (Pope Benedict XVI, Homily, April 7, 2012).
“This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad,” the psalmist sings. This is the day, this is the day! This is God’s new day, new for all of us. This day the women at the empty tomb and we ourselves are granted to feel once again the heartbeat of the Risen Lord, the heartbeat which pulsates momentously through all creation (cf. Pope Francis, Homily, April 15, 2017). And we feel our own hearts pulsating, beating, with Jesus’ own heart. We hear the white-clothed young man tell us as he told the women: “You seek Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Behold the place where they laid him.”