The Symbols of Holy Week: The Empty Tomb

The Symbols of Holy Week:  The Empty Tomb

An Easter Meditation

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

April 16, 2017

Scripture:  John 20:1-18

Let us pray:  May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.

He wasn’t there.  The tomb was empty.  He had been there, but the tomb was empty.  He was dead, there was no doubt about that; but the tomb was empty.  Mary Magdalene, Jesus’ faithful disciple, had gone to the tomb to do what was customary for one who had died.  She went to put spices on the body, a sign of respect perhaps; or in Mary’s case perhaps an act of deep love.  But she couldn’t do it, because the tomb was empty.  Mary came to the only conclusion she could, that grave robbers must have taken Jesus’ body.  “They,” as John puts it, had taken his body; but surely Mary knew that that didn’t really make sense.  Jesus’ grave cloths were still there.  They were of linen, and they were valuable.  Surely grave robbers would have taken the cloth, which was the only thing of any monetary value in the tomb.  Beyond that, there was the matter of the stone.  There had been a great stone closing off the entrance to the tomb.  It would have taken more than a grave robber or two to move it.  Yet it was moved, and the tomb was empty.

That empty tomb is the central symbol of Easter.  On one level of course, on the level of the story the Gospels tell, the empty tomb is simply a fact.  Jesus’ tomb was a physical place.  It was probably a cave, a hole in very physical rock.  Yet like the other central symbols of Holy Week that are also physical objects—the donkey, the table, the cross—the empty tomb is so much more than a mere physical object.  It is a symbol.  As a symbol it points beyond itself to profound truth, truth about Jesus, truth about God, and truth about us.

The empty tomb is a symbol that points beyond itself to profound truth, yes; but what profound truth does it point to?  To get at an answer to that question let’s take a look at what we know happened as a matter of history before and after the Romans crucified Jesus.  We know that Jesus started a movement among the people of Galilee.  He had a following.  He was inspiring people.  He was exciting people.  Some of them proclaimed him as the long-expected Messiah.  Now, Jesus was and is unique for us Christians in many ways, but he was not unique in that way.  Galilee and Judea, the homeland of the Jews, had seen many charismatic leaders who started popular movements.  John the Baptist was one.  There were others too. The Romans and their collaborators among the Jewish leadership didn’t like these popular movements; and they had a way to deal with them, a very effective way to deal with them actually.  They killed the charismatic leader, and every time they did that leader’s movement died with him.  Even if the Romans didn’t kill all of the leader’s followers, the followers disbanded anyway.  They went home, like Peter and the beloved disciple in John’s story of the empty tomb.  Their movements came to a dead end, disappeared, and were never heard of again.  That’s what the Romans and the Jewish temple authorities were sure would happen with the Jesus movement too.  Publicly execute Jesus in the most cruel and brutal way, and his followers would disperse.  They would go home, figuring that they had been wrong about Jesus.  That would be the end of it.

Only that wasn’t the end of it.  The death of Jesus should have been the end of him.  It wasn’t.  His message about the Kingdom of God should have died with him.  It didn’t.  The community he created should have dissolved.  It wouldn’t.  Jesus died, that’s for sure.  As the coroner Munchkin says of the Wicked Witch on whom the house fell in the Wizard of Oz, he was “not merely dead, but really and sincerely dead.”  He was dead, and yet his followers knew that somehow he wasn’t.  He died yet he lived.  He died, but his truth kept marching on.  He died, but his community of followers lived on.  Death couldn’t hold him.  Death couldn’t defeat him.  For him, for his truth, and for his community death was most definitely not the end. The tomb was empty. Thanks be to God!

Here is one truth to which the empty tomb points.  God raised Jesus from the dead.  God emptied Jesus’ tomb so that we would know that he and his truth are eternal.  He appeared to his disciples to that they would know that his death wasn’t the end, so that they would stay together and continue to proclaim him and his truth even though the Romans really had killed him.  That’s a truth to which the empty tomb points for them, for his first disciples.

For them, yes: but what about for us?  The empty tomb isn’t really symbol of anything for us if it points only to a truth for them.  It isn’t even a real symbol for us at all if it points only to a truth about Jesus.  For the empty tomb really to be a meaningful symbol for us it has to point to a truth for us, and indeed it does.  The empty tomb points to the truth for us that with God death is not the end, and there are a couple of aspects to that truth.  One is that for God our physical deaths are not the end of us any more than Jesus’ physical death was the end of him.  Paul calls Jesus the “first fruits of the resurrection,” which means that resurrection is first of all for him but not only for him.  The empty tomb of Easter is God’s sign and seal that death does not have the last word, mortality does not have the final say.  With God life is eternal, even our lives are eternal. As the scholar John Dominic Crossan says, we don’t die to nothingness. We die to God. Jesus’ tomb was empty. Thanks be to God!

A second aspect of the truth for us to which the empty tomb points is just as important.  We all have, or if we haven’t we will, experience little deaths, metaphorical deaths in our lives.  Illness, despair, addiction, and depression are little deaths that we all, or most of us at least, experience in life.  We all experience loss, loss of love and relationship through death or separation.  There are other little deaths in this life too—loneliness, a sense of meaninglessness, a sense of purposelessness.  If we are honest I think that all of us who have lived any significant number of years have to admit that we have experienced some of those little deaths in our lives.  And we know that we will probably experience others before our earthly life comes to an end.

The empty tomb points to a profound truth about those little deaths.  It says they aren’t the end.  It points to life beyond those little deaths.  It gives us hope in those little deaths.  It says that God wants to and can sustain us in those deaths.  It says that God wants to and can lead us out of those little deaths just as Jesus walked out of that tomb and left it empty.

The empty tomb of Jesus Christ speaks to us.  It speaks truth to us.  It speaks divine truth to us.  It says death is not the end, not for Jesus, not for his first disciples, not for us.  It says that death is not the end both in this life and beyond this life.  That is truth we can cling to, truth that can sustain us, truth that leads us out of death and into abundant life, indeed into eternal life. That’s why Jesus’ Resurrection is the best news there ever was or ever could be. The tomb was empty. Death was not the end. Death is not the end.

The tomb was empty. The tomb is empty!  Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Amen.