“For they did not yet understand… that he had to rise from the dead.”
13.8 billion years ago, in the Big Bang, both time and space were issued forth into existence. Spreading outward and forward following light, the universe in all its wonder and mystery bolted into being! Along its path, history was marked in time, dropping galaxies and planets along the way to swirl in their own movements, though mysteriously always drawn into connection with the great Force of origination – becoming ever more complex and even personal. And as the first light to escape traveled ever further and deeper into the void, a modest blue planet that we call earth was born. And the “we” that call this planet home have been graced with a consciousness to reflect on in our lives and appreciate the great hope and place that we have in the heart and mind of God. This is the Christ! The Rising Christ!
I wonder what it was like to have entered that tomb early on the first day of the week before the light of day! Full of grief and anxiety, yet perhaps with anticipation about something that I could not yet understand or fathom! I would be afraid, at least somewhat. Perhaps like Mary Magdalen, seeing the boulder pulled away from the entrance would have been enough to send me off running to the other disciples to at least get some “reinforcement,” before entering into the cave to see what was there. I like to think that I would eventually chance entry into the tomb, hopefully with another, or perhaps many others – all curious, hopeful, yet somewhat frightened at the unknown. It would be exciting in both a terrifying yet also motivating way. In grief over what my expectations may have been, all the misunderstandings and confusion, I still feel called to enter the tomb, even though it’s just now becoming light. Perhaps a hand reaches out to me, or I find another in the dawn light. And we go in together… What is there?
I imagine a place where the time and space of our universe has paused, in “held breath.” The One who brought us forth into this consciousness of life is Here! But where? There is a feeling of space, a GREAT SPACE that is a strange feeling but also familiar, like a childhood memory that comes to you suddenly out of nowhere, borne upon a fragrance or a sound. There is emptiness, because it is space. I feel lonely, sad, but also my body senses there is something else, something so new that it makes the hairs on my skin tingle. I breathe in the cool fresh pre-dawn air that is here in the space of this tomb. It is a place where death has been, but there is something MORE. I breathe slowly, deliberately, trying to let my mind rest, and just feel this hopeful excitement, that is not quite visible, but I know in my heart it is there. The emptiness… the space… seems to welcome me with a piercing grasp that startles as much as soothes. It is strange…and I don’t understand. I look for those who have come with me into the cave. I cannot see them, but I know they are here also! In this Space, this grand opportunity to discover Who is looking for me, for all of us, everywhere!
Life never stops – it goes on, no matter what happens! Sometimes this can be frustrating and offensive, especially when we feel we have lost something or someone. Why doesn’t anyone see the LOSS that is here, why can’t anyone acknowledge what has happened? There is grief…, do we see it? Do we feel it? Do we let it find us and touch us? Do we let the possibility of emptiness brush up against us so that we can see that the emptiness is actually a Fullness, a Newness waiting to happen, waiting to be embraced, wanting to be held, needing to be healed, dying to be Loved!
Jesus the Christ from before all time comes looking for us from within an empty tomb, as many have said….a “womb,” waiting to be lifted up in our lives. Christ comes in the darkness, the confusion, the lonely eyes that gaze at us in our world and in our mirrors. Christ is space…the space of our lives…the ordinariness of what we experience…just waiting to RISE into something NEW and transforming. I pray that I, that all of us will go into the empty tomb for even just a little while, to breathe the SPACE that our Christ has breathed into our Universe and continues to do so in every Moment!
Peace
Thomas