The Easter season is here and it is time to remember and celebrate the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, or in symbolic language, to honor the cross and empty tomb.
Now, we pretty much honor the cross year round.
Visit any Christian church and you will see the cross prominently displayed, on the steeple, as a sculpture in the front yard or in the place of highest honor in the sanctuary. I have visited churches that have a cross in every room, even the men’s room. (I can’t speak for the ladies room or the janitor’s closet).
As for the empty tomb, nada, zilch, nothing. I personally know of only one empty tomb, and that is right here in The Dalles, and it serves as a part of the wonderful Easter pageant sponsored by one of our local churches. That’s great, but I suspect that it originally served as a fruit cellar.
I wonder why there are so many crosses and so few empty tombs? Then I think of the world around us. There were two more crosses next to the one on which Jesus hung.
The cross was a common means of doing away with criminals and other undesirables. But that is only part of the story. For our purposes, here, let’s include, lynchings, beatings, drive by shooting, hate crimes, school shooting and on and on. So many crosses as symbols, so many crosses as ugly reality and so few empty tombs as symbols, so few empty tombs as blessed reality.
But, what has this got to do with God, or maybe, what has God got to do with it? Well, remember that it was Judas, not God, who betrayed Jesus with a kiss. God did not come in the middle of the night to arrest Jesus, the soldiers and temple guards did that. It was Peter who vowed to follow Jesus “Even unto death” and then denied him three times before the rooster crowed. God did not run away in terror. God did not convene an illegal kangaroo court or bear false witness. God did not wash his hands of the whole sordid affair. God did not mock Jesus or strip him naked or beat him or make him carry his own cross. God didn’t stand in the front row yelling, “Crucify him, Crucify him!” nor did He stand in the back row muttering, “If he really is the Christ, let him come down from there!” It was the soldiers, not God, that held him down and drove in the nails and cast lots for his clothing. It was not God. But then, the women went to the tomb to properly anoint the body, a real act of courage and kindness, and they found the tomb empty. He had risen! Now, not human being had anything to do with this. No human hands had touched the stone that had been rolled away nor did they touch the burial clothes that were so neatly folded. This was entirely the work of God. The shame of the cross belongs to mankind, but the glory of the empty tomb belongs entirely to the redeeming work of God through Jesus Christ. Maybe we should replace all our symbolic crosses with symbolic empty tombs, but I don’t think so.
The crosses are reminders of who we are and what we can do. Think about it. Any three of us could crucify another human being. Two of you could hold him down and I will drive in the nails. Now, I don’t want any part of such a thing, and neither do you, but the point is, we could do it.
On the other hand, ten thousand of us, all put together, could not resurrect someone from the dead to empty out a tomb.
If the cross is a prayer of confession, a symbol of what humankind is like, then the empty tomb is an assurance of pardon, a symbol of what God is like. It is the assurance that no matter how hard we try, we cannot destroy the love of God’s redemptive power.
Floyd Emerson is a retired pastor who served churches in California, Pennsylvania, Washington and Oregon. He grew up near The Dalles and was baptized, confirmed and ordained, in the U.C.C. Congregational Church of The Dalles.
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