The Empty Tomb

by

Special to United Methodist Insight

My pastor preached her Easter sermon this year from the ruins of our church sanctuary, five weeks after a tornado toppled the bell tower, shattered the stained glass image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, and sent part of the roof crashing into the organ. As the pre-recorded video began, the image of my pastor, alone in the gutted hall, caused a lump to form in my throat.

Where once gleamed towering golden pipes behind a gilded cross lit with white light, now hung black and broken wood. The pipes had been removed. The cross was gone. I had never liked that cross, but I found myself missing its garish yet reassuring presence over the choir loft.

My pastor told the familiar story of the two women who come to the tomb of Jesus and find it empty. As she described walking into the sanctuary that morning, the glass crunching under feet, she noted that she, too, stood in an empty tomb.

I don’t generally put much stock in church buildings. The church is the people, not the bricks. Yet in those crumbled bricks we lost something, and it felt like a death. No one died in the church during the tornadoes, even while many across Middle Tennessee died that night. But our congregation is inseparable from its neighborhood and the larger community. As those around us mourned their own losses—the lives of loved ones, homes, businesses—we grieved with them.

In a way, the image of our broken church building holds the losses that all of us have experienced over the past month, from the fatal night of the tornadoes to the pandemic that takes more lives each day. The physical structure is a tomb, and it stands empty.

As she spoke, I thought about the paradox contained in the symbol of the empty tomb. In the place of death, we find the first sign of resurrection. Death leads to new life. The way up is down. We surrender to win. We give it away to keep it. We die to live.

I have always liked the paradoxes of our faith. They hold a deeper truth than mere statements of belief. Paradoxes feel authentic. As a recovering addict, paradox informs my daily recovery. Only by giving up control can I find the power to stay my addiction. Only by helping others to heal can I find the healing I seek. Only by letting go of my old life can I find a new and better life.

A weak faith proclaims life without acknowledging the reality of death. A weak faith cries joy without taking time to weep. A weak faith blindly praises God for blessings, without mentioning all who go without blessings.

In the embrace of death, however, a stronger faith emerges. That is why the empty tomb is one of the most powerful symbols of our faith. Because the tomb holds the stark reality of death, it all the more convincingly tells the story of life.

But until I saw my pastor standing in the “empty tomb” of our sanctuary, I don’t think I fully appreciated the power of this symbol. She was not there to lament the tragedy that occurred five weeks ago. She did not wallow in self-pity for a destroyed church. She did cry sorrow, when every day of this pandemic sows sorrow enough.

She merely stood in the empty tomb, and she proclaimed Resurrection.

In the symbol of death itself, she dared to speak life.

Had she stood anywhere else, I don’t know that I would have heard her message so clearly. “That’s all well and grand,” I might have thought. “But in the meantime, the world is in ruins.”

But because she chose to preach the good news from a pile of rubble—the site of so much bad news—I heard her message of hope more clearly than ever before. Even in the face of death, God creates new life.

After her sermon, the recorded service went on. I closed my eyes for the prayers, and I tried to sing along with the hymns, but it just wasn’t the same without the full crowd of the gathered faithful.

Then a shaky video appeared on the screen. It was an amateur recording from someone’s phone, taken inside a church sanctuary from the middle of the pews. Over the heads of the congregants, I saw a small orchestra at the front of the church. Grand timpani drums stood off to one side. A mass of people spread out behind the orchestra, crowded into the choir loft. Organ pipes towered over their heads. A cross hung over the whole scene, bordered in gold and lit with white light.

It was last year’s Easter service at our church.

Every Easter, anyone who wants to join the “walk-up choir” is invited to crowd in front and sing the “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s Messiah. I have stood with them in past years. It is always a powerful and joyful way to end the season of Lent and inaugurate the new life ushered in by Easter.

The orchestra began to play, and the makeshift choir began to sing. 

And I began to cry.

Although the video was a glimpse of the past, it was also a preview of resurrection. I saw the same sanctuary, only moments earlier broken and rubbled, transformed into something gleaming and full of life.

I needed to see that. I needed to see what could be. I needed an image of hope to hold on to. I needed to see the new life that might come in the place of death.

Because God does not just give us an empty tomb. God surprises us on the long road home, in resurrected flesh and blood, and shows us new life.

Gabe Horton received his master of divinity degree from Vanderbilt Divinity School and is a layperson at East End United Methodist Church in Nashville, TN. See a recording of East End UMC's Easter service.