On our walk this Lent we have followed Jesus from Pilate’s Palace in Jerusalem to the cross on Golgotha. We have watched Him resolutely rise when He fell, over and over again, under the burden of the cross and the heartbreak of carrying the sin He bore.

A precious few showed Him compassion, like His steadfast, courageous mother, Mary, who stayed with Him to the end. We saw someone called Veronica offer Him the simple, but comforting, gift of cool water and a cloth to wipe away His bloody face and tear-stained eyes. We saw a man called Simon forced, willingly or unwillingly, to help Him when he shouldered the cross with Jesus.

Now it is over. He died. He said He was a king, but He died as a criminal. He inaugurated a kingdom, but He died with few followers who were loyal to Him. The crowds taunted Him to avoid the suffering He endured, but He remained nailed to the awful cross rather than put limits on the amazing love of God. But they did not understand that. They couldn’t. Yet.

After nightfall, when Joseph of Arimathea had removed Jesus’ body from the cross, they wrapped it in a linen cloth and took Him to a borrowed grave, which had never been used before. This sounds like a strange thing- using graves more than once? After 1000 of years of living in Jerusalem, the number of Jews who had died far outnumbered the availability of gravesites. For this reason, the deceased were buried in a “family grave“ and allowed to dry in the hot desert climate until skeletal. Then they were removed and placed in ossuaries which took up much less space, then the grave was used again and again. But the grave Joseph of Arimathea secured for Jesus was special and rare; a grave that had never seen death before. In the end, though he had not publicly supported Him, Joseph did what he could do for Jesus.

They placed Him in that cold, dark tomb and rolled the heavy stone across it, and many thought that was the end of this Galilean imposter. But not everyone thought that. There were still some who at least wanted to believe. They cowered in fear in the Upper Room in Jerusalem, terrified that the Temple police would be coming for them next. Too afraid to go out, and too faith-full to leave, they huddled together and waited for Jesus to keep His promises, though they could not imagine how that would happen because, face it, He was dead! No one had risen before!

With regard to our faith, many of us are waiting, too. Like those gathered in the Upper Room, we may want to believe that “Nothing is impossible with God,” (see Mt. 19:26, Luke 1:37) but we look around at our fractured world and we find it hard to believe.

Even God can’t heal the divisions in our society, our country, our politics, even our religion!

We lose loved ones to cancer, or covid, or addictions or divorce and we pray and pray, but they are still dead! And, like the people at Jesus’ tomb, we can’t understand! Not yet.

We can’t understand until we know that, as impossible as it seemed,
that borrowed tomb, on Easter Sunday, was empty!
That pierced body rose!
Jesus came to them once again alive, as they sat in the Upper Room!
He would breathe into them His Holy Spirit so that they could experience Him in a new way and be strengthened and transformed. At the end of the Way of the Cross is not a dead man in a cold, dark tomb. It is a risen Lord and a message of hope!

Today, it may seem unlikely, or impossible for us to understand or believe in a better life, here or the hereafter, especially when we endure rejection, pain or suffering. But things are not always what they seem.

The cross, starkly standing on Golgotha, would seem to indicate failure. It does not. The cross was not a sacrifice TO God, it was the sacrifice OF God for His own.

The tomb where Jesus is buried would seem to signal the end of life. It does not. It signals the possibility of a new beginning following this life.

Despite all the depressing certainties of our fractured world today, the empty tomb sings of Jesus’ resurrection, and His resurrection makes possible our own resurrection, because He was the ‘firstborn from the dead” see Col 1:18. He was first, so now we can follow!

We are EASTER people and so we sing Hallelujah! Amen

May the Lord of the empty tomb, the conqueror of gloom, come to you.

May the Lord in the garden walking, the Lord to Mary talking, come to you.
May the Lord in the Upper Room, dispelling gloom, come to you.
May the Lord on the road to Emmaus, the Lord giving hope to Thomas, come to you.
May the Lord appearing on the shore, giving us life forevermore, come to you.
Amen.

Anonymous

I hope you have enjoyed these reflections as much as I have enjoyed writing them.
I leave you for now with a Biblical blessing:
May the Lord bless you. May He make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you.
And may the Lord be with you until we meet again.

Happy Easter!
Susan