God in a Tomb

Jesus was dead. They heard Him speak His last words, saw Him take His last breath. His lifeless body lingered too long on the cross and yet they couldn’t look away. They stood paralyzed in their helplessness and disbelief, as if waiting for someone to come shake them awake to say this had all been a horrible nightmare. They weren’t dreaming. The crowds had lined the streets in celebration as Jesus rode into Jerusalem only a few days before. How did so much change so quickly? How could He really be gone? They watched mesmerized as Joseph and Nicodemus took Him down. The men gently wrapped His bloodied body and laid it on the cold rock floor of the tomb. Then they left Him. They couldn’t stay. What would be the point? They rolled a heavy boulder into place to seal the mouth of the tomb and the women turned to leave alone. This is what hopelessness feels like, to know that you will never hear His voice again, never feel His touch again, never see that smile that overtook His face like a wave sweeps over the sand. His kindness was so unusual. His words, indisputable, were swallowed up by the deafening silence. Where do you go when you’ve just left your God in a tomb?

The women went home. They went through the motions. The day of Sabbath rest came but who could rest? All they did was toss and turn and wait for the morning. They started their journey in the dark. They couldn’t see what was up ahead, didn’t know who or what would be waiting in that garden. They only hoped for someone to do what seemed impossible, roll that stone out of the way so that they could say one last “Goodbye.” They carried what they could, the spices and the ointments and the truth of who they were in that moment. He had never asked them to be anything else and He wouldn’t want them to start pretending now. They were dreamers who had stopped dreaming, followers who didn’t know where else to go, friends who had lost the One Friend who made them all feel like family, His family. All they could do was put one foot in front of the other as they walk through the pitch black darkness of devastating disappointment to the place where they had laid Him down.

God let them take that walk, let them feel all that sadness, ask the questions, shed the tears. He didn’t try to fill that space up in a hurry, or spare them the grief that they needed to feel. Sometimes He just wants us to feel the thing without numbing ourselves to the pain of it, without running away from the gnawing ache of an empty soul who has spent the night crying. Sometimes He wants us to remember what it means to be human, and fragile, and desperately in need. Sometimes He takes us to places where we stare a death in the face, convinced that we can’t get through it alone, so that we won’t try.

So the women left home in the dark, just as we do. We look through a mirror darkened by what we cannot see on the other side. We start our journey just as they did, in the darkness of not knowing, in the weariness of circumstances that drain us, carrying the burden of what we can’t make sense of and desperately aware of our need. As they walked through the dark He was waiting, a Voice that spoke their names like no other, a Force that could chase away their fears, a Light that consumed the darkness, a God Who would not stay in the tomb.