Easter 2020: The Empty Tomb
“They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him” —John 20:2
By Anne-Sophie Olsen
Lord, where are You?
The world we live in is fraught with absence. Loved ones have died and left us empty, friendships that were once thriving have thinned, relationships have frayed into nothing. At times, curled in the shelter of its own darkness, the battered heart clings to this loneliness. How could it not? All things must come to an end.
From this open wound, the suffering heart cries out— why have you forsaken me?
Who are we asking? Family members, friends, the loves that have left us, certainly. But when whatever absence we grieve takes up a life of its own, too piercing or dull or chronic to be soothed by whoever created it, we have to direct our questioning elsewhere. My God, asks the heart from the very pit of itself, Why have you forsaken me?
In the days preceding Easter Sunday, we honor and remember Jesus’ Passion and Crucifixion: the suffering He underwent at the hands of friends and enemies, and His death upon the Cross. The Gospel of Matthew tells us that in the midst of His agony, Jesus spoke the very words our own hearts cry out: “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, ‘Eli, Eli, la'ma sabach-tha’ni?' that is, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’” [1] Though He had been hounded by accusers, whipped and publicly humiliated, and betrayed and abandoned by those who called themselves His friends, His questioning and lament were ultimately directed, not at any of these, but at God. On the Cross, Jesus was utterly alone.
As though this agony of absence weren’t enough to persuade us of God’s neglect, Jesus’ suffering and death are followed by yet another bewildering punch to the gut: when Mary Magdalene, one of the women faithful to Jesus, goes to the tomb to anoint His body, she finds that the body is gone. Her confusion and loss are apparent: “We do not know where they have laid him.”
How could this happen?
We know the rest of the story, of course. Jesus had not been taken from the tomb, but rather, He had resurrected. In so doing, He conquered humanity’s ultimate enemy, Death. He has set in motion the Redemption of the world, by which He will “make all things new.” [2] Meaning, all of creation can now be reunited with its Creator, not through a reversion to pre-sinful innocence, but through a transformation into forgiven and glorified immortality. The wearied soul, broken by its losses and injuries, is given a chance at eternal life: a life lived in the presence of its God.
The gravitas of this revelation is sometimes too easy to diminish. Swept up in the joy of the Resurrection, we can too quickly forget the pain that is woven into the story, and thus diminish the reality of suffering.
How often have I responded to another’s pain with glib appeasements? “God loves you,” and “You have so much to be grateful for.” I sense in myself a fear, an unwillingness, to look into the heart of suffering.
Yes! God is good! The Lord has risen! But before we knew of His Resurrection, we knew, keenly, His absence. "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”
In His own suffering, Jesus dove deeply into the experience of human pain, in order to offer His suffering as antidote. On the Cross, He experienced God’s absence.
What does this tell us about our Maker? If Jesus is fully God, then He could not possibly have been devoid of God on the Cross. But, being also fully human, He somehow physically, psychologically, and spiritually experienced the agony of separation from God.
On the Cross, God was apart from God.
By taking on this experience, Jesus shows us that the keenest, fiercest suffering that exists is the rift between creation and Creator, between human being and God. He also shows us that God’s response to our suffering is not to eradicate it, but to enter into it:
“Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” [3]
God’s absence, then, is not neglect— or if it is, it is only a necessary one, an essential pain in which God also has a share. As much as we suffer our distances from God, God suffers, and has suffered, them too. Absence, far from being abandonment, is the crucible of love, the separation that sweetens the long-awaited reunion.
And so, from the agony of suffering and death, there came the impossible Resurrection. This Easter Sunday, let us remember that the dark tomb of absence points us toward the reclamation of Life. Whatever sorrows, whatever loneliness we endure, let us remember that our Maker endures them with us, in order to transform and resurrect us through them.
“Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.” [4]
Whatever darknesses we endure this Easter, let them be signs of a hope that is sure, and a joy that is to come.
SOURCES
1. Matthew 27:46 RSV
Jesus is evoking Psalm 22, which begins with the lines “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” and ends in triumph: “Posterity shall serve him; men shall tell of the Lord to the coming generation, and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, that he has wrought it.”
2. Revelation 21: 5 RSV
3. John 15:13 RSV
4. John 20:1 RSV