An Empty Tomb, a New Creation and a New Heart: Easter

The Readings for the Easter Vigil

The big picture. Sometimes it is hard to see the big picture. We can get all caught up in the personally pleasing or dissatisfying and lose the big picture. The big picture is what is important for everyone, everywhere all the time. The big picture questions are who am I, where am I going, what do I need to do. Lots of answers to those questions, but only one big picture answer.

Easter refocuses us yearly on the big picture. Starting with the Easter Vigil, the readings from the Old Testament call us back to remember humanity’s beginning, a narrative telling of our true situation in life; the human condition.

In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters. Gen. 1:1

Before God brought order into the world, chaos existed; a wasteland, dark, a windswept abyss. As we live through the Coronavirus pandemic, the forces of chaos are once again nipping at our heels, trying to reclaim the order God brought into being. How fragile the global economy is. The economy is volatile and endangered because this virus entered humanity’s complacency through an animal host, perhaps a bat or pangolin. How easily and unexpectedly the human order is over-turned by nature. We all experienced the social chaos that erupted in the aisles of local supermarkets when people feared whether the grocery supply chains could feed us city dwellers. That social chaos was fed by the moral and existential disorder of American culture. We are autonomous, we can make up our own rules, do our own thing as long as everything goes right. A simple virus challenges our self-sufficiency. The closing of Churches for fear of spreading the disease has threatened, apparently, the faith of some.  Politically, the pandemic has decided the Democrats’ candidate, perhaps the election in one or the other. How will all this affect the course our country will choose in the Fall? Who knows? Will anything about human beings really change? Has it ever. Yes, once and for all time.

Creation: In the beginning
Creation is the constant battle between chaos and order. These are primordial realities that every culture must confront. Our sense of human autonomy is threatened when a little virus upends our plans, schemes and the stock market. Once again, we are confronted with the truth that we live in a world we cannot, in principle, completely and absolutely control. That is the thing about control; kind of being in control isn’t really control.  The human being is a limited creature, like all creatures. Cast into a sea of chaos, we paddle like mad to stay afloat. We do pretty well, in some respects. That gives us an unwarranted confidence in our own powers. The limitedness of human beings is confronted by the powers of primordial chaos.

Easter is about the God-man who confronted the power of chaos, sin and death. The Resurrection is God’s creative answer to the threat of chaos. This Easter, I invite you to look at your life and the world you live in through the lens of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ as described in the Gospel. This is Matthew’s recounting of that creative turning point in human history. A sinful woman, Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, went to the tomb. Finding it empty, an angel told her Jesus had risen and instructed them to tell the disciples who were in hiding. Rushing to do as the angel instructed they encountered the Risen Jesus.

“They approached, embraced his feet, and did him homage. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me”

The story of the Resurrection is told in all four gospel and in Paul’s letters where he says that Jesus appeared to 500 people at once. What does it mean to look at the world through the lens of the Resurrection? He is Risen! He is truly Risen!

1. It happened on the First Day of the Week because God is remaking the world.

The Sabbath is Saturday, not Sunday. The Jewish people observe the Torah correctly when they worship on Saturday, not Sunday. Why is it important for the Evangelists that Jesus rose on the First Day of the Week, that is, Sunday.  Because on the first day of the week in Creation, God created light, that is, wisdom, rationality, the logos. In the Resurrection God is recreating the world according to a Divine Order.  At the Easter Vigil, there are seven readings. A few touch on this aspect of Creation and the Resurrection.

The very first reading from Genesis said that on the first day

Then God said, “Let there be light," and there was light.  God saw how good the light was. God then separated the light from the darkness. God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." Thus, evening came, and morning followed—the first day.

God created light on the first day, but the sun, moon and stars on the fourth day. Genesis teaches that the creation of light is the creation of illumination, wisdom, intelligibility and understanding. John’s Gospel, which we read at Christmas, underscores this in the first chapter, first verse, when it proclaims that Jesus is the Logos, a Greek word meaning word, rationality, and intelligibility.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.  All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.  What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Jesus is divine wisdom that became human. The Eucharist is wisdom’s feast. The reading from Isaiah at the Easter Vigil, touches again on the Logos, Divine Wisdom.

For just as from the heavens the rain and snow come down and do not return there till they have watered the earth, making it fertile and fruitful, giving seed to the one who sows and bread to the one who eats, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; my word shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it. (Is. 55:1-11)

The reading from Baruch also describes the wisdom of scripture as feminine, who

… appeared on earth and moved among people. She is the book of the precepts of God, the law that endures forever; all who cling to her will live, but those will die who forsake her. Turn, O Jacob, and receive her: walk by her light toward splendor. (Baruch 3:9-15; 32, 4:4)

The world has an intelligible order as describe in scripture. So how do we enter into this Sacred Order?
Remember, that in Genesis, on the Second Day, God separated the waters and named the dome of the “sky.” He then began to populate the world on the third day with the land and the sea, and plants, the fourth day with the sun, moon and stars, the fifth day with living creatures and the sixth day with us. The new Creation ushered in by the Resurrection, begins with what God accomplished on the sixth day. God separated the waters of chaos to make room for life. He still does.
 

2. Baptism: once again God uses water to make room of new life.

The Empty Tomb, the ultimate sign of the limitedness of human life. Death wins, in human terms, 100% of the time. Not in God’s world, though. In God’s world, life wins, 100% of the time. The tomb cannot contain the creative power of God. Think about this in the Old Testament readings from the Easter Vigil.
 
The second Old Testament reading at the Easter Vigil recalls Abraham’s sacrifice of his only Son, Isaac in Gen. 22.  In that reading, if you remember, Abraham is commanded to sacrifice his son to God. At the last minute, God’s angel intervenes. In Old Testament terms, it illustrates the importance of obeying God’s command, but also teaching that God does not require human sacrifice, the dark side of religion, or the sacrifice of our children. This is the exchange between Abraham and Isaac as they walk up the mountain to sacrifice:

As the two walked on together, Isaac spoke to his father Abraham: "Father!" Isaac said. "Yes, son, " he replied. Isaac continued, "Here are the fire and the wood, but where is the sheep for the holocaust?" "Son," Abraham answered, "God himself will provide the sheep for the holocaust."

God does, in fact, provide the sacrifice in Genesis, but also in the story of Our Lord’s crucifixion and death. In the Gospel of John, the Evangelist, an eye witness, says that water flowed from the side of the crucified Christ. This links these stories to baptism.
 
The next reading makes the baptismal link more apparent. Moses lead the people in their escape from slavery in Egypt. God parted the waters of the Red Sea, as he parted the waters of creation, and the people following Moses crossed safely, just before the waters closed over Pharaoh, his chariots and charioteers. (Ex. 14:1-15:1) The enemy is swallowed up in death, but the people find new life in the Exodus to the promised land. It is a forerunner of baptism.
 
The prophet Ezekiel also describes the power of the cleansing with water. In Ezekiel, 36,

I will sprinkle clean water upon you to cleanse you from all your impurities, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you, taking from your bodies your stony hearts and giving you natural hearts. I will put my spirit within you and make you live by my statutes, careful to observe my decrees.

Like Pharaoh’s chariots, sin is swallowed up in baptism. Like the cleansing from sin described by Ezekiel, our sins are cleansed in the water that flows from the side of the crucified Christ.
 
St. Paul, in the reading from his letter to the

Brothers and sisters: Are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.  For if we have grown into union with him through a death like his, we shall also be united with him in the resurrection. We know that our old self was crucified with him, so that our sinful body might be done away with, that we might no longer be in slavery to sin.  Romans 6:3-11

The new creation is made present sacramentally in the sign of water. Baptism is the thread that binds all the readings of the Resurrection and the Old Testament together.

 
A sacrifice turns into a wedding
Thinking of the story of Israel and the story of Christ, there is one element of the Resurrection that has to be mentioned in conclusion. Have you noticed that in the story of the Resurrection, that it is a woman who is the first witness? In Genesis, it is the woman who first falls to Satan and takes the contagion of sin to her husband. In the New Testament it is the woman who first encounters the risen Christ, believes and takes the message to the disciples. But there is something more about that story.
 
In the Gospel, Jesus refers to himself and is referred to as the Bridegroom. That God, again according to the Old Testament, is going to marry his people. Why? Because in Genesis, sin begins in the rupture of the relationship between man and woman. Mary Magdalene, who goes to Christ’s tomb on the first day of the week, is a sinner. Yes, she is a real person, but for the Evangelists, she also represents the Church in her sinfulness encountering the Risen Lord and taking his Gospel to the nations. In the cemetery of the dead, the sinful woman encounters the Risen Lord and, at least in one account, mistakes him for the gardener. In Genesis, God placed man and woman into a Garden. Our sin turned a Garden into a cemetery. The wedding of God and his people, the bride cleansed in the waters of baptism remakes the cemetery into the gate back to Paradise.
 
Happy Easter season. Easter is a season, not just a day. Salvation is eternal life, not just a moment. Baptism is the door to life in Christ! The begining of the New Creation.