The empty tomb is the great symbol of change. To proclaim the good news, we have to confront the truth. That we don’t hate change, we’re afraid of something else.
Why we need the empty tomb
The Great Vigil of Easter | Mark 16:1-8
“I hate change!”
That’s what people tell me. Every day I hear from people
“I hate change!”
And no amount of saying
“You eat the same exact food for every meal of every day?”
Gets the point across.
Whenever I hear someone exclaim
“I hate change!”
I want to prove them wrong, like the teacher who responds to the simple request “Can I go to the bathroom?” with the predictable
“I don’t know. Can you?”
They say
“I hate change!”
And I say
“You’re not wearing the same clothes I saw yesterday.”
Like the snarky teacher, I’m trying to get to the real question, the truth behind the ridiculous statement. But unlike the pedantic need to criticize grammar, I’m trying to get at the root. We make this statement about change on purpose.
Because we’re actively trying to avoid the truth.
We don’t hate change.
We don’t hate change. Any of us can disprove that notion with a little thinking it through.
What we hate is uncertainty and the unknown.
Well, that’s not really it either. Because people play the lottery certain they won’t win but for that feeling of unknown — will we? This time?
It’s more like the interplay between the unknown and the known which makes us uncomfortable, perhaps even unsafe.
We don’t hate change on Christmas morning when Santa delivers the most wonderful toys, but we do when we realize we wanted something else.
Change Over Time
I thought about change a lot this week. When we were up at the cathedral on Tuesday, I was looking at pictures from the last 150 years. They were labeled so you can see what the nave looked like in different eras.
Before 1900, the cathedral nave looked like a pretty traditional 19th Century Episcopal church building. The front wall behind the altar was flat with three narrow stained glass windows. The front archway was open and an ambo stood just off-center on the platform to serve as lectern and pulpit.
The picture next to it said 1900-1908. And in it, much had changed. The front wall was angled, like half an octagon. The stained glass windows were replaced with wider ones, one for each angled wall. Instead of the ambo, there was a separate pulpit and lectern on each side. And a rood screen was erected.
Several later pictures displayed other changes over the life of the congregation.
I was struck, when we went back into the nave that those windows behind the altar were no longer there. And I wondered how the people felt about all of that change.
I’m sure someone got mad each time.
And I’m sure someone who got mad one time, got made later when it was changed to something else.
Changes have a way of becoming things which have always been that way.
Beauty In Change
It’s odd that we would claim to hate change. It doesn’t square very well with the following of a messiah whose main themes were change, stop being afraid, and love the people you don’t want to.
When we claim to hate the things Jesus is pretty clear on, we sound like my son when he’s sleepy. Cranky and frustrating. I can barely carry him to the bathroom to brush his teeth. I’m not carrying you!
But there’s something about that refusal to see the beauty in change which should halt us. Not as yet another opportunity for those of us who embrace opportunities to drag people along…again. But to recognize what’s missing.
How the life of the congregation is lived by each generation. Each one working together to contribute to the ongoing and ever-present beauty of the church. Not like a museum, but a home always designed to serve the people who are there now.
The Lesson of Holy Week
There are many lessons from Holy Week which we miss. And one of those is the deep need which energizes the theme of Maundy Thursday: our fear of intimacy.
We fear to expose our feet to washing and expose our authority to put ourselves on our knees to wash others. Our reluctance exposes our true fear: not of change, but of intimacy.
We could be wrong! Or judged. Turned into a commodity, packaged, and sold.
We could risk! Our safety and security! That sense of superiority or inferiority which protects our delicate egos!
We could be found out! That we’re all frauds! Sinners! Terribly imperfect Christians who don’t pray enough and sometimes experience road rage!
Yes! All of this! Our fear is intimacy. Our fear is knowing others. And being known to them.
And the stuff around us is a security blanket against the fear we refuse to confront. So we invest our hearts and souls into maintaining the order and the sanctity and the justifications for why WE must have it the way WE want it!
And meanwhile, Jesus is trying to feed us and remind us to feed each other. He washes our feet. Accepts the betrayal, the arrest, and the long march to Golgotha. Jesus accepts his death, the bitter wine, and breathes his last.
While we’re bickering about change, God is once again changing the world.
The Empty Tomb is the Ultimate Change
This is why I love the empty tomb. And why I particularly love this story of the empty tomb. That it ends with “terror and amazement”. It ends with the women running away.
I bet they told each other that they fear change.
Even as they longed for Jesus not to die. How they must have prayed that he would come down from that cross and prove the authorities wrong. And when they followed Joseph to the tomb, they would come and see that Jesus was alive again.
And when they actually get their wish?
They run.
Because this isn’t an easy change to accept. But it isn’t really about change. It’s about their relationship with God. It changed. And that freaks them out!
It changed because we all need to change in all those ways Jesus explored this whole week. In our sense of authority. Our love of certainty and power. And in our fear of intimacy, generosity, and hope.
We’re afraid to be good Christians!
Because the empty tomb is the certainty. The church’s existence is proof that Mary left there in terror, but arrived to preach the first Easter sermon anyway.
She is our proof! Not because it’s written on the page, but written in our presence here tonight!
And we are called, in light of all of our own terror and amazement to make the next move and change the script. Change it from hiding or lashing out — from fight or flight — to embrace and share and praise God for changing the world, for giving us a risen Christ.
These tired scripts can change!
Praise God! Hallelujah!