Dec 27: The Empty Tomb

Christoph Weigel: The Empty Tomb
Biblia ectypa: Bildnussen aus Heiliger Schrifft Alt und Neuen Testaments, 1695

Gospel: Jn 20:1a and 2-8
Feast of Saint John, Apostle and evangelist

Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed (NRSV, Jn 20:8).

Father, we know well that you are unchanging, that you just are. But we your children do change. We have a story each one of us and your people taken together have a history. Much of our individual lives, Lord, and much of our history as your people has been in coming to know you better and to respond more fully to your gift of yourself to us.

Your presence in our lives, Lord, because you are unchanging, is constant. Like your being itself it just is, always the same, an expression of your ever-present now. Not only do we, your created children, however, change in every moment, but there even seems to be certain moments for us, in our individual lives and our history, that are decisive.

For the disciples of Jesus, and indeed for all of us who have come after them, such a decisive moment occurred early in the morning on the first day of the week following the crucifixion and death of Jesus. Holy women, visiting Jesus’ tomb, discovered it to be empty. The sequence of events and the details of exactly what happened are not clear. Each of your evangelists, Lord, records the occurrence with significant variations. But all agree: there was at first confusion which then gave way to new understanding and belief. Appearances of Jesus, not restored to life, but resurrected into a new life, appearances that were made from the world to come, confirmed what the disciples had concluded from the empty tomb.

Lord, you meet us all in the first moment of our existence in the womb and in every moment after that but your presence, the Word that you speak, is not easily grasped and understood. Many persons go through their whole lives searching for you without ever realizing that you are ever there, if only they would look within themselves and listen more carefully. Oh, so many, many embrace the gift of your life that is your Word and then live it out intensely, yet with no conscious knowledge of who you are.

Still, there are moments in our individual lives and in the lives of the people when suddenly it becomes clearer if still not fully understood. The experience of your people coming out of slavery in Egypt and their dramatic encounter with you at Mt. Sinai is one of these moments. Even before Exodus, Abraham’s decisive experience which led him to abandon his homeland in search of you is another.

The experience of the empty tomb on Easter morning and the subsequent resurrection appearances of Jesus, more than any other series of events in the history of salvation, radically changed our understanding of you, Lord, and our relationship with you.

From Exodus and Mt. Sinai on, we had realized that you are one God, that you care for your people, that you challenge us to lead lives of love in obedience to you, that you are calling us to a future destiny.

But from Easter morning on, we came to a much deeper understanding. We learned that you not only care for us, you share your very life with us; that you love us so much that you have become one of us, your Word has become a human being; that our destiny is not the land at all, as had been thought, but life with you forever in the world to come. And we have realized that all who have ever lived, in every time and place, are called to this destiny.

Father, It did not take Peter and John long to conclude that Jesus had not really been taken from them by death, that he was still with them more powerfully present than ever before. They realized that he is truly Messiah, that he is your Son and that his Holy Spirit, your Spirit, had been poured out on humankind.

Father, we thank you for the gift of the Church, the gathering of those who believe and who wait, the Church which came into existence around the empty tomb, because it is the Church, in its preaching and worship, that announces your Word to us and to the world. And we know that this Word is true, because once having heard it spoken, turning inward, we finally recognize that it has in fact been taught to us, in the Spirit, from the beginning.

Alleluia. Amen.