It is almost always the same. When I attend a funeral as a mourner or lead a funeral as a pastor, I hear all the things people say about the one who has died. They tell stories about how this person changed their lives. They speak about the qualities of this person with emotion – wonder, pride. There is always some humor mixed in with it all, because how can there not be when you are speaking about love?
I love listening to the stories, whether it is someone I knew well or very little, at some point I find myself feeling a kind of holy amazement and inspiration. I walk away from there thinking, “What a wonderful life! And then I think, “Goodness gracious – what the heck have I been doing with one precious wonderful life?”
When someone dies, there is always grief. But there is also love. It is the love that keeps us moving forward.
Moving forward is what the women did. After Jesus died, as they stood at a distance and watched. While Joseph of Arimathea made arrangements for the body of Jesus to be taken down from the cross, wrapped in a linen cloth, and carried to a tomb, the women were there too. In their grief, love carried them forward.
As the sun set, the sabbath day began, and the women carried out their duties according to the law of Moses, their grief was with them. They knew that, after the sabbath, they would return to the tomb to care for his body in the tender ways they had not been able to do the day before. They prepared the spices and ointments they would take with them – talking about their plans as they worked. Talking about Jesus, talking about the events of the past few days, but then going back to the little things they recalled. Remembering how he liked this particular dish they made him. Remembering something he had once said to them, or the way he had stood up for them when they needed it. The women, no doubt, talked as they worked.
Then in the morning, in the early dawn, they walked back to the tomb, still talking. As they got closer, their talk would have turned to some logistical matters. Who will roll that big stone away? Do you think we’ll need some help?
I imagine they were still talking when they approached the tomb – and when they looked up and saw the gaping hole where the stone should have been, they stopped, speechless. This was unexpected.
Their first thought would not have been Christ is risen. Their first reaction would have been fear, and pain. Has someone messed with his body? Was it grave robbers? They gathered their courage and stepped in to see what there was to see. But there was nothing to see.
The worst that could have happened has happened – this is what they would have thought. They were afraid, they were heartbroken. Luke says they were “perplexed,” but that hardly suffices to describe what they were feeling. They were shattered, because their grief has now been compounded, amplified, by the devastating sight of the empty tomb.
Grief is unpredictable. It can sneak up on you sideways. You’re trying to keep busy. Days go by, weeks, months – then you hear a song. You see something, or you feel the pain of another loss, some little thing, inconsequential by itself – and then the tears fill your eyes, your breath catches, and there you are.
There is no getting over it. There is only learning to live in a new way, but how? How do we live with this companion grief?
During Holy Week and Easter Sunday I often think of a woman named Julia Esquivel. She was Guatemalan; a poet, a theologian, and an activist for peace. During her life, Guatemala suffered through 30 years ruled by dictators. Many thousands of people were brutally murdered. It was 30 years of terror. The people went through a collective trauma over these decades of torment. Many of them put their heads down in hopelessness. Some took up arms to fight. But Julia looked for another way.
She would not give up hope and surrender to the terror. She would not turn to the same violence the dictators used. She used her faith and her ministry to bear witness to God’s justice and compassion. She used her poetry to give voice to the poor and oppressed in the land. She became a voice for hope in a nation that was at risk of losing all hope.
Julia would not be cowed. She would not be silenced, and for this she was subjected to many death threats. There were kidnap attempts, assassination attempts. She went into exile for a decade where she continued to speak and write and work on behalf of the suffering.
In 1980, around the time she went into exile, Julia wrote a poem called “They Have Threatened Us with Resurrection.” A strange, moving, and unforgettable phrase. It is a poem about the restlessness that will not let go, the tenacity that clings to life, the hope that persists in grief.
It comes from the memories of the ones lost too soon, the ones who really can’t be taken away from us though, because we still feel them inside of us. The poem says:
They are more alive than ever before,
because they transform our agonies
and fertilize our struggle,
because they pick us up when we fall
I think of the agony of the women at the tomb that early dawn; the struggle to keep moving through their grief – an agony and grief that was interrupted by the angels. Luke calls them men, but we know they are angels. The women knew, too, as they bowed their faces to the ground. The angels spoke: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, he has risen.”
The ground shifted for these women. Yes, he is not here, he has risen; they remembered the words he had said to them. He has risen. And now it was the aliveness of Jesus that picked them up and carried them forward.
They returned to the men and told them everything, but to these men it seemed an idle tale. Which is not surprising, of course. Who would expect the dead to rise in new life?
But still, a little stab of hope penetrated Peter. And he stood up. He walked out of the house. He ran to the tomb where he saw for himself – there were the linen cloths his body had been wrapped in, lying alone.
Why do you look for the living among the dead?
It would take some time before all these disciples came to believe the news. It would take their own personal experiences of Jesus with them – walking and talking with them, teaching them, breaking bread with them.
It takes that personal relationship, you know.
It would take the community of disciples, the shelter of one another, to keep moving forward, to pick one another up when they fell down.
It takes a village, as they say.
It would take the power of the Holy Spirit, whirling through their midst, lighting a fire in them, giving them the passion to care and share, as Jesus had done, to expand their circle, as Jesus had promised. And to keep moving this circle forward, one step at a time, not always in a neat linear fashion because life is messy. We press on, as the Apostle Paul said, toward the prize to which God has called us in Christ Jesus, carrying the refrain, “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
He has risen! The almighty God has raised Jesus from the dead to give us life. Resurrection. Yes, we too are threatened with resurrection.
Which is to say this: Jesus reaches out a hand toward us, open palm. He sees us, he calls our name and he says to us, “Follow me.” He makes us promises that we cannot begin to understand and so we make our excuses. Not today, Jesus. I have too much work to do. Not today, Jesus, I have a business to take care of, I have funds to manage, storehouses full of grain to protect. Not today, Jesus. I just like this life too much. Maybe tomorrow. Later.
But Jesus doesn’t pull his hand away. Jesus persists. He will not let us go. He says to us, “Come with me into this new life I have called you to.” Resurrected life.
We are threatened with resurrection because it seems to ask a lot of us. And we are afraid and tired and, well, comfortable – comfortable enough. We can learn how to adapt to all kinds of shocking things if it means we can avoid the great unknown.
And so we cling to what is unhealthy. We become collaborators in our own diminishment, as one writer said, all to avoid the risks of being fully alive.
Still, Jesus calls us to follow him into resurrected life. Our ancestors in the faith call to us, do not be afraid! The hope that is carried forward, passed on from one to another, generation to generation, will carry us over the threshold into new life.
Here’s the kicker: we don’t have to die to know it. Resurrected life is here, now, for us.
The poet says,
and you will know what it is to dream!
Then you will know how marvelous it is
to live threatened with Resurrection!
To dream awake,
to keep watch asleep,
to live while dying,
and to know ourselves already resurrected!
And so we move from death to life. This is how we deal with grief. We look for life among the living. We do not stop at the cross, we do not make our home there – but we live, even while dying, knowing ourselves already resurrected.
