Texts: John 20: 1-10; I Corinthians 1: 18-21, 26-31
The Doorway Out of the Tomb
There’s an opening in the tomb, but he can’t get to it. There’s an exit, but he’s unable to move toward it. He sits inside that enclosed space, the heavy walls reflecting all that is happening inside his own heart. Peter sits in the tomb, and he hasn’t yet come out.
Easter, like Christmas, presents a tableau, a kind of theatrical scene comprised of characters that we’re invited to consider year by year. Easter, like Christmas, is a staging of a recurring scene meant to dramatize some of the central features of what it is not to be religious, not to be spiritual, but rather what it is to be human. At Christmas, we attend to a moment when something divine, something powerfully good, is struggling to be born into the world, amidst all that would thwart or hinder that birth. There are some who are curious about what that would mean, and so they come to see it. There are some who can’t be bothered, so busy and full are their lives. There are some who actively seek to insure the birth never happens, so attached to their own reality that nothing new can be admitted. And there are some who, at great cost to themselves, bear the child, and nurture him into his fullness. Christmas is an invitation not so much to a sacred drama, but into a profoundly human drama, one that offers us possible roles to play as we seek to give birth to a promise, a hope, a passion, a vision, that has the ability to sustain our lives. Christmas is an invitation to a performance, and we are the players.
The same is true at Easter. We have before us another tableau, another scene, another cast of characters who stand in for each of us. Only now instead of trying to birth something unabashedly good, something wild and new and hopeful, the characters in the tableau are reeling, wondering how they’ll keep that hope alive. They had been witnesses to an execution, and it shattered them. It wasn’t simply the grotesque theater of the killing. It was everything within them that died when the man Jesus had died. They knew the world to be short, and sometimes cruel, but in his presence, something had opened within them. With him, they somehow trusted that there was more to their days than a succession of empty events. When he touched them, a feeling of well being came over them. When he listened, he did so intently, interested not only in what they were saying, but in who was saying it. When he spoke, his words reframed everything they had ever thought, charging the world with meaning, and magic. To be with him was to believe, almost against their better judgment, that God hadn’t forgotten them, that beauty still happened, that goodness was still possible. He let them see themselves, and they saw not the worst they were capable of becoming, but the best. And they loved him for it.
So you can imagine how that cast of characters was undone by the events of the previous week. Whatever had been awakened in them had been smothered. Whatever had opened had been resealed. Whatever they had trusted had been revealed as less than trustworthy. Whatever goodness they had sensed had been erased. The rug had been yanked out from under them, leaving them flat on their backs, staring at an empty sky. Consider them. There are the women, the first on the scene that Easter morning, carrying their grief, but attending to what needs to be done. There are tasks, and the tasks will get them through. There are the men, all those men, trapped and isolated in their private agony, walled up inside themselves as men so often are, afraid to venture outside. There is Mary Magdalene, the most deeply heartbroken of all, but also the most optimistic of all, for it is she who refuses to yield to fear, she who first ventures outside. There are those at the periphery of the story, whose lives were untouched by all that happened, and who simply carry on as before. There are the religious, the political, and the moral authorities, relieved at having quelled a rising social tide, one that might have capsized them. And then there is Peter, poor Peter, caught in a hell of his own making, one of boasting and violence, and finally of a lie meant to save his own skin. “I never knew the man,” Peter said.
Who might you be in such a tableau? What role might you occupy in such a scene? What role have you occupied when the world becomes fragile, when your life has come unmoored in the tiny crucifixions we all endure – the illnesses and the betrayals, the pain and the confusion? Who are you in this human scene called Easter Morning?
It’s up to you to say. But for our collective purposes this morning, it’s Peter’s movements that I wish to trace. Watch what he does when he arrives at the tomb. Watch how he behaves. He does not consider the scene from a calculated distance. He does not observe and then report back what he has seen. Instead, he bends down, and directs his gaze into that dark space. And then he does something more. He gets on his knees, for the entrance is low. And he goes inside the tomb, goes inside that claustrophobic space of death. As I imagine it, Peter stays there for a while. What happens to him once he’s inside? What’s he doing in there?
I’ve come to believe that Peter enters the tomb because in some way, he thinks he deserves to be there. I imagine that Peter goes inside because the tomb reflects where he himself most deeply is in that moment. Imagine him with me. It’s a claustrophobic and dark space, suitable for the placement of a body, but not suitable for the living. The air doesn’t circulate, the light is minimal, and the smell of something stale clings to the inside. Its walls and ceiling, such as they are, are jagged, rocks protruding, ready to scrape and cut whoever might draw near.
Peter remains there. He sits in the tomb, in that space of death, and I imagine a part of him wishes he could stay. The events of the previous three days must have been fresh in his memory, a judgment he himself rendered upon his conduct. Not only had his friend been executed. He, Peter, had failed miserably. It was he who boasted that he would never turn away in the face of danger. It was he who had proclaimed his steadiness and loyalty to all who would listen. It was he who had drawn a sword when the police arrived, falling back upon violent retaliation after years of instruction in its opposite. It was he who, in a moment of scrutiny, had renounced everything he had been, denying one that he cared about. And it was he who dissolved in a puddle of tears, realizing that he had renounced the most sacred and inviolable part of himself. It was from that puddle of shame and regret, presumably, that he watched his friend, the one in whom he had placed so much hope, meet such a cruel and bitter end.
There’s an opening in the tomb, but he can’t reach it. There’s an exit, with light streaming in, but he can’t seem to find his way out. I wonder if that’s why the unnamed disciple, the one who accompanies Peter to the tomb, ventures in after him. I wonder if his friend followed Peter inside not only to satisfy his own curiosity, but to retrieve Peter. I like to believe that that friend was the agent of Peter’s own resurrection, the way the angel who removed the stone was the agent of Jesus’s resurrection.
I wonder what tombs you have known. I wonder about the enclosed and claustrophobic spaces that you have inhabited in your life. And I wonder about those who sought you out when you were trapped there. How did it feel when you sat in that closed and empty space? Oh, I know, your story might not be as dramatic as Peter’s, but we’ve all found ourselves within that space. When we’re filled with shame over a mistake we’ve made. When a diagnosis reveals that we’re not destined to live forever. When a parent or a child or a friend is yanked from our lives. When a relationship falls apart, or a friend breaks our trust. When we betray our consciences, when we stay silent in the face of injustice and cruelty, when we abdicate our responsibility before that which we claim to love. To be alive, I suspect, is to find ourselves in the tomb with Peter from time to time. But it is also to realize that friends and guides have been given to us, to help us get out of those spaces.
That was true for me some years ago. When I finished my doctoral work, I wanted to get out of my head, and to get back in touch with my heart. And so I went to work as a hospital chaplain in Bridgeport, where I learned an awful lot, an experience for which ultimately, I’m grateful. But it wasn’t long before I found myself in my own kind of tomb. The pay was abysmal, and we sank into debt. The hours were long, and I often spent nights away from my family. We had two children, and already struggled to make ends meet – but then we found out we would soon have a third. Add to it all that day by grinding day, all the miniature crucifixions that people routinely experience in America were routinely playing out before my eyes. I wish I could tell you that I greeted that moment with an attitude of faith, and of clear resolve. Instead, I just felt lost, isolated in a kind of tomb, unable to imagine a viable future.
But then something happened. I was invited to perform the wedding ceremony for my cousin, who was marrying a woman from Brazil. My parents helped Rachael and I to get there, while her parents stayed with our kids for the five or so days we were away. And for a brief instant, we just got to be, Rachael and I, and we were able to take stock of who we were, and who we still wished to be. The way was still unclear. But in that moment, a light shone through the entrance of the tomb that I was trapped within. I don’t remember crawling out. I can only say that at a certain moment I was inside of something that felt overwhelming and claustrophobic. And then I wasn’t. Something, or Someone, came to find me there, showing me the way through the opening.
What I want to say to you this morning, what I want you to know, is that the opening in the door of the tomb is there for you. The stone has been rolled away – for you. It’s hard to get out of that space, but the good news of Easter is that the door of the tomb has been opened. As Peter sits there with his friend, I like to believe that a gentle presence comes upon them both, a stirring within them that seems to say, in hushed tones, “I know what you’ve been through. I know what it has cost you. But I’m still with you. I still love you. What you took to be true hasn’t failed. The goodness you saw in me wasn’t a figment. The work we did together still needs doing, and it needs you. I need you. Can you trust that? Trust that.”
Those are words for Peter, but they’re for you as well. “I know what you’ve been through. I’m still with you. I still love you. And I need you. Can you trust that? Trust that.”
I want to push this metaphor in one more direction before I’m through. Because the drama of Easter morning extends far beyond our personal lives. I believe the story has a public significance, as well as a private one. Because there are moments in our collective lives when it can feel as though we’re living in a tomb, wondering if there’s a way out. That’s been true of many of us who are deeply concerned about the policies and ideologies shaping our national life, and not only our own: the cultural isolation, the fear-mongering, the paranoia, the xenophobia, the exclusion, the white supremacy, the greed, the insults, the threats of violence, the deceit – to trade in such practices is to create a tomb, a shrine to the power of death, and it is to compel others, whether of their own volition or not, to dwell within that same claustrophobic space. The good news of Easter is that the stone has been rolled away. We do not have to stay in that tomb. We do not have to remain there forever. There is a world beyond that sealed off tomb, and it beckons to us all.
It is a world of empathy, where we’re given to imagine the lives of those from different life circumstances. It is a world of generosity, where we seek to share what we have, rather than hoard it. It is a world of vulnerability and humility, where we recognize our profound shortcomings, and learn to openly confess them. It is a world of awe, as we marvel at the splendor and complexity of nature, of the sciences, of human ingenuity. It is a world of joy, where laughter still happens, even if we’ve known its opposite. It is a world of beauty, where colors, green, red, purple and azure blue startle us awake, startle us into wonder. There is an exit, there is a door, and Someone, Someone just beyond the door, is beckoning us to leave.
There is a door, an exit, and Peter found his way out. He did so with the help of a friend, and with the assurance of a gentle and forgiving presence that called him forth. Whatever tombs we find ourselves in, that same opening is given to us. And call it what you will – a Presence, a Someone, A Gracious Spirit, a Powerful Energy, the Resurrected Jesus – call it what you will, but that same insistent Presence is given to us all, beckoning you, beckoning me, to come on out. The world of Easter awaits, in all of its fragile vulnerability, in all of its radiant beauty. The opening is there. It’s time to get up. It’s time to go.
