“He has been raised; he is not here.
Look, there is the place they laid him.”
Mark 16:6
“He is not here.” What a strange way to begin the Easter story! Especially when the absence of the one at the center of the story had promised his followers that he would be with them always. The close, dim, quiet, cool, and empty space where his body once was, is not the image we normally associate with Easter. Both the secular Easter celebration that is painted in yellow, green, and purple pastels and adorned with images of bunnies and chicks, and the religious celebration that is accented with lilies, bright white paraments and accompanied by trumpets seem to have little relationship with this proclamation of his absence. The emptiness of the tomb doesn’t inspire a song so much as it just raises a question: Well then, where is he?
In fairness to Gospel writer Mark, I hasten to point out that he does not begin with this negative statement. He begins with the announcement, “He has been raised.” But it too occasions questions. Raised to where? Raised for what? Will we see, touch, taste, hear and smell his presence again? What does this crazy story we’ve all just been through mean? How do we go forward from here? We can’t ignore the life changing impact he has had on us, but with his death and his physical absence we’re now just left wondering about what’s next.
Something earth shattering and life changing has happened. But what do we do with that, because he’s not here? He has risen. So now what? This discomfort and the unknowns of all of this are perhaps the reason why we have come to prefer pomp and pageantry and trumpets on this day. Maybe it’s also the reason that we came to pair the day with Northern European pagan fertility celebrations of spring and new life. They are, after all, a lot more fun. The greeting “Happy Easter” is a lot lighter than the invitation to contemplate the puzzling disappearance of a body.
But I must confess, the Easter hype has never attracted me much. Having to be a part of the production crew that puts on the show is something I find fatiguing. I’m kind of an austere Puritan at heart. Or maybe a Benedictine monk. A quiet, unadorned room with a wooden cross or a simple bench on a hillside overlooking the waters of Puget Sound are my favorite sanctuaries. At a dinner with friends last week I heard stories of a rented Donkey making an appearance at one Palm Sunday service and of children dressed in their Cherub Choir robes having sword fights with their palm fronds, and I quietly thanked God for the absence of these things in my life. I don’t much like being the one who has to “cue the balloons” and frankly I’m kind of grateful for COVID’s interruption in our Easter expectations of a big event. During our pandemic isolation the unadorned Easter was the rule and the pressure to “up our game” was removed.
So, I take some solace in the truth that the first “Easter” was nothing of the sort. It was instead an encouragement to not be too quick to sound the trumpets or participate in all the flamboyance. For everything and nothing had changed. There was a call to live into a brand-new reality in what appeared to be the same old place. There was a strange invitation to be quiet and settle into that unadorned and frankly creepy, empty tomb for a while and contemplate this re-ordering of things.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with big celebrations. We need them. We should have them. But the real point of the resurrection is not that everything will now be OK and that it’s all trumpets from here on out. To proclaim the resurrection is also a kind of quiet realization: O my, he’s gone; he’s alive; what does that mean for my life? If he is alive and holds all things together (Col 1:15-20), how will I look to him to hold me together? How will I reflect my belief in this truth to the world around me in all that I am and all that I do? How will I live in hope that he is doing the same for others and go looking for and choose to participate in this this work?
He is risen. It’s true every day. So please join us at Emmanuel today for a somewhat unadorned service of worship as we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
David Rohrer
04/17/2022