Stations of the Resurrection: Station Two; Empty Tomb

Stations of the Resurrection

By

Raymond Chapman

Station Two

Empty Tomb

V         We adore thee O Christ and we bless thee

R.        Because by thy glorious Resurrection thou has given life to the world.

They found the Stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. (Luke 24:2-3)

His friends had sorrowfully laid in the tomb a body broken with suffering and certified as dead. Now the morning brought a new realization that this had not been the end. The stone that had closed upon their hope had opened upon a hope greater than they had ever known.

We give thanks for the unexpected joys of life; for the solution of problems that seemed insoluble, for the disappearance of fears and anxieties; for the renewal of hope that has been lost in despair; for the opening of new ways in God’s purpose for us.

We give up too easily; we fear every setback is a disaster; we are anxious for a future we think we can foresee and understand. Help us to trust from day to day and to find the way to new endeavor in each apparent failure

V         Christ is risen.

R         He is risen indeed.

V         Let us bless the Lord.

R         Thanks be to God.

That mooring, everyone was thinking about a corpse. Some were thinking good riddance, some were mourning for a cruel, incurable loss. There was nowhere else for friends to go; only to look again, with worn with weeping, at the place of sorrow. But the end was the beginning.

That emptiness, the sight of nothing where there should have been something, was anew sight of reality. People were puzzled then and the mystery has never gone away. How can we comprehend and explain mere emptiness, when it is emptiness full of hope? When the power of life is so giving and yet so demanding, it is more comfortable to think about ways in which a dead body may be lost. But the comfort that God gives is not the coziness of the familiar.

Can an empty place, a vacant hollow, be the source of new hope? Graves are places of despair, corruption, and superstitious fears. There was no witness of the moment when death was overcome and turned to life, when a dead body became a risen one. This was not Lazarus, a widow’s son, a little girl waking up to go on living again. No human eyes could look upon the strangest, holiest place in all the world in its wonder – only in its emptiness.

The Cross for ever stands to mark the great price of our redemption: the Tomb forever lies open to declare our entry into eternal life.

Risen Lord, keep me and all who believe form living with the dead, the vanished years, the dry bones of time.

 

 Risen Lord, clear out from my soul al that would decay and turn to corruption, darkening the light within/

Risen Lord, whenever it seems that nothing id left, show me that there is so much still to come.