Of course they remember, they remember it all, this reminder bringing it all back. But still, it couldn’t be true, either way; it doesn’t work like that.
Remembering Jesus through the empty tomb
Great Vigil C | Luke 24:1-12
Symbols
After working our way through the great symbols of Holy Week: the palms and the Triumphal Entry on Sunday; the shutting down of the Temple on Monday and Teaching there Tuesday; the anointing of Jesus and the betrayal plans of Judas on Wednesday; the Last Supper and the washing of feet on Thursday; the Cross and the Crucifixion on Friday: this week full of symbols, overwhelming in its scope, and full of rollercoastering drama and unrelenting emotion, we arrive every year, in every gospel, at the same place.
At this single, final symbol: the empty tomb.
Our greatest moment, our greatest symbol is nothing where something was supposed to be. It is air. It is absence. It is the sign in abstract, the proof in the negative. We see the glory of GOD by not seeing anything at all.
And what is it that they don’t see?
Death itself. – The body of their beloved, motionless, flesh loosened and the blood gone from his face. The translucent skin and the ashen flesh. A man of dust returning to it.
And they don’t see the images as juxtaposed; the images of the stilled storm and the healed demoniac; the fed multitudes and the girl brought back from the dead. Those images of power; of life itself, fully-embodied; against the decaying form of their beloved messiah. The one who was to lead them. Protect them. Liberate them from these systems of oppression.
They don’t see death at all. It is gone.
The sign of his death and the end of the movement are not there. They have gone away. So this is not the end.
Remember
It must have been strange to see them, these two men appear out of nowhere. [Who are they?] Stranger are their words:
“Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.”
How did they hear them? He isn’t among the dead, but has risen?
But worse, how did these two men know what Jesus had told them? “Remember how he told you…” Remember…remember…he told you…he was still here…handed over…crucified…and on the third day rise again. Remember?
Of course they remember, they remember it all, this reminder bringing it all back. But still, it couldn’t be true, either way; it doesn’t work like that.
But still nagging at them: how did they know?
Yet they did remember and they told the apostles.
Peter and the Women
Certainly the church struggled with the women and this story.
That women funded Jesus’s ministry and supported him along the way. That women were there until the end when the men had all abandoned him, like Peter, always taking his lead. Even in denial.
They couldn’t handle that women followed Jesus, women taught, performed miracles. There to witness to the absence, the sign of life in the absence of death. The presence of these angels, telling them remember?
They couldn’t believe these women. Women who had been with them. Women who had supported Jesus. Better have one of the men. Peter. We’ll listen to him.
So Peter the Denier goes to the Empty Tomb and he is amazed.
Does he remember Jesus’s words:
‘Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.’
Or was he not even listening:
And he said to him, ‘Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death!’ Jesus said, ‘I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day, until you have denied three times that you know me.’
Does he remember, now that he has turned back, that he will strengthen his brothers?
Do we remember?
Do we remember? What Jesus said, what he promised?
Do we remember how he called us to eat together and to serve one another?
Do we remember how he called us to love and work toward building GOD’s different world?
Do we remember all those moments of power when Jesus overcame fear and the darkness?
Do we remember the times Jesus showed mercy to those his followers scorn?
Do we remember the calls to justice and making the world different: so that the weak are not exploited, the poor are empowered, and the sick are given new life?
Do we remember the invitations to change and become something new: that we are not stuck in the mode of dysfunction and sickness?
Do we remember that Jesus invited us to live? To really live a vibrant and transformed life?
Do we remember how Jesus attended to the outcast and the weak and promised that our attending to them means we’re attending to him?
Do we remember?
When the angels say to Mary Magdalene and the other women do you remember it is because he isn’t dead; he is risen!
Remember what he said because Jesus is with us. Remember what he called us to do because the world was changed, the world is changing, the world will be changed. This is not the end. It is not finished. The story keeps going. We’re in the middle of everything!
It keeps going with us. It keeps going with our love and our hope and our work.
Remember Jesus’s conversation with the lawyer in Luke 10:
‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’
He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’
He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.’
And he said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’
Do this, and we will live. Amen.
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