Seasons of the Spirit ~ SeasonsFUSION
Lectionary resources for worship, faith formation, and service
Easter Day
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No resurrection!
That’s not a comment on my own particular theological beliefs. It’s a statement about the Easter Day reading from Luke: no resurrection. There’s an empty tomb but there is no body, saviour or person who has been resurrected, just the emptiness.
When you find yourself in the void of an empty tomb, faith calls us to do now what the disciples did then: believe into the void by recalling all that Jesus had said of himself and trust that they are true.
Resurrection is surely that kind of faith: to find yourself in the emptiness of suffering, or grief, or pain, or loneliness and believe the justice, the life, the hope, the healing Jesus spoke of is still true. When you believe into the empty tomb, by trusting what Jesus had said about love, then there is the birth of new life. Everything becomes possible again and death isn’t the end of things.
I like the story in Luke for the very reason there is no body to find, just a set of amazed disciples who began to believe again, who found themselves in the void and chose to believe that this is about life and not death, what Jesus said hasn’t died but is still true. Justice is still true, hope is still here, healing is still possible, life is still present.
The faith that Luke speaks through, of Peter standing in the empty tomb and in that void choosing to believe everything Jesus spoke of, without seeing a risen saviour, is living resurrection.
May we choose, as a faith community, to live within it too.
When the alleluias fall silent
and the story comes to a stop
and the words fade out mid sentence
and even the stones keep quiet
and those who still find there is something to say
shout for the wrong side
then you know
the Lord of Life
has finished the parable
with one final sentence
‘It is finished’
and the tragedy bows its final bow in the world
and is entombed
all that remains
is the fear
that we may never find our voices again
and we will forget
how to speak of love
now the word
has been silenced
and the story
run out of endings