At Easter, the grave is empty!

What happens when the grave is empty?

All through the season of Lent, from Ash Wednesday (this year on February 17th until Holy Saturday (this year on April 3rd), we’ve been writing and praying laments. We’ve lamented our own deaths, our racial brokenness, this pandemic world, and those left out. As we began the process of praying and writing these laments, we’ve remembered that a lament is not a trip to the hosptial where you’re hoping for a healing. It’s a trip to the grave. We lament when things are hopeless and broken.

With Easter, we make that same trip to the grave, but the grave is empty!

Painting by blind artist, Ricky Trione, of his impression of what the empty tomb of Jesus might have looked like over 2,000 years ago.

The Kingdom of God isn’t a kingdom where Jesus shows up and conquers the bad guys and fulfills our deepest longings, it’s a kingdom where he empties himself of his power, joins us in our powerlessness, and brings about new life. Jesus goes through suffering and conquers death, so that now when we go to the broken and hopeless places in life, instead of hopelessness we find his hope! Instead of death we find life! Instead of brokenness we find healing!

With Easter, we make that same trip to the grave, but the grave is empty. Instead of writing and praying a lament, we write and pray a celebration!

Obviously, this doesn’t mean that we won’t suffer anymore, that we won’t experience brokenness anymore, or that we won’t die anymore.

We walk through Lent each and every year because life is hard and we feel the effects of sin and death each and every year. Our celebrations aren’t a celebration of bad things disappearing, but rather a celebration that one day they will disappear, and in the mean time Jesus can transform those places of brokenness into places of healing. The weak will become strong, the last will become first, the places of shame will become places of confidence, all because of what Jesus is doing in our midst. It’s an upside-down Kingdom of God, until we discover that the Kingdom of God is right-side up and world as we know it is upside-down. And so we walk through Easter and Eastertide every year, too!

So, since our new life emerges from the places that felt like graves to us, our celebrations during Eastertide will remain connected to the laments we wrote during Lent. With each service in Eastertide, we’re going to make the same trip to the same broken places, and discover how Jesus brings about new life, as the Big Idea graphic demonstrates:

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Easter is THE story that captures this tension, this surprise, this “we journey to the grave because things are hopeless and we discover new life” miracle:

Mark 16:1-8

And after the sabbath, Mary from Magdala and Mary the mother of James and Salume bought perfumes in order to go anoint him. Very early on Sunday morning, after the sun rose, they came to the tomb. And they were fretting, “Who will roll the stone away from the tomb for us?”
But they looked up, and the stone had been rolled away - it was a huge stone - and they walked right into the tomb. They saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white royal robe, and they were totally and completely floored. And he said the them, “Pick your jaws up off the floor! You’ve come for Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified; he is risen, he is not here, check it out! This is the place where he was laid. Now go tell his disciples and Peter, “He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just like he said he would.”

And they got out and fled from the tomb, they were gripped with wonder and fear. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

They still feel fear, they still feel overwhelmed, yet they also feel the awe and wonder of God doing something only God could do! And this is the story we’re invited to participate in!