He is not there.....for He Is Risen.... That line from a song has reverberated in my head for a few days during this Easter season. That empty tomb... as the ladies found it. Some regard the Garden Tomb as possibly the one referred to in the scripture.
Some question whether the Garden Tomb is the actual spot of Christ's entombment. But none can dispute the power of the message of hope conveyed by the symbol of this empty tomb.
It requires faith to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was resurrected following his brutal and inhumane execution. It requires faith to believe that his resurrection paved the way for humankind's immortality. But once that seed of faith is planted, the message of the empty tomb places significant requirements on us, requirements of hope and charity.
But because of what led to an empty tomb on that first Easter Sunday, all can have genuine hope that what has been lost in this world — even life itself — can be lustrously restored in a better world.
Some have felt that this transcendent message of hope, that the soul will live forever, can somehow justify mistreatment and exploitation in this life. What a strange contortion of the message.
If anything, the message of the empty tomb intensifies one's obligations to behave ethically by universalizing and making eternal the reverberating consequences of behavior here and now.
If existence ended with the natural biological span of the body then the span of ethical obligations would feel similarly truncated. Although it might make sense to improve the immediate material and moral conditions around oneself while the body lives, why think beyond immediate kin and community?
But Jesus Christ, understanding the immortality of the soul, taught that being a neighbor was not about the proximity of our dwellings, but about how we treat and care for one another. He taught that charity was not about community recognition, but instead about quiet genuine acts of love to the least among us, and even to enemies.
If the soul lives forever, then what genuinely matters is how souls relate to one another, not what they possess or command. If the soul lives forever, then not only might we have to account for our indifference to strangers or mistreatment of enemies, but we may actually have to interact with them as distinct beings, then with the recognition that they possess the same worth and dignity as friends and family.
I am left giving serious thought as to how I, as an individual, can move forward and live a life more actively engaged in love, faith, hope and charity.
*Excerpts from Deseret News, April 24, 2011
Message of Empty Tomb
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