Dear Brothers, and Sisters –

Happy Easter everyone.

We’ve been on a long journey through Lent. For some here, I’m sure Lent has been a challenging, difficult time. For others, we may be disappointed that our resolutions made back in February were broken, that we couldn’t live up to our own ideals. The message of Lent is that we can’t accomplish anything on our own. Our willpower is of very limited use. Easter provides us with an answer – Christ is risen, Christ has passed through death and now lives in us and among us, and he can accomplish what we cannot. But Easter still contains the lessons of Lent within it. Lent is not simply washed away when Jesus lives again. The message of Easter rests on our helplessness, on our brokenness, on our emptiness. In the 16th century, the French author Rabelais once wrote “Nature abhors a vacuum.” I’m not sure about that. And certainly, God doesn’t mind a vacuum. Rabelais and his confreres couldn’t have known in the 16th century that most of the universe is a vacuum. There are vast stretches of nothingness between stars and planets. On the atomic level, atoms themselves are mostly empty space. God uses emptiness, emptiness is creative. And to drive home the point that nature makes, scripture is full of empty spaces. Today’s readings are a good example. The book of Genesis tells us that God made heaven and earth out of nothing, though there is still plenty of nothing left over. Abraham thinks he is bringing a sacrifice to the top of the mountain in the form of his son Isaac, but Isaac represents an empty space – he is not the sacrifice, the sacrifice is not there until God provides one. The Red Sea parts – where there was water, there is now only empty space. The Israelites pass through the empty space to the other side. But the space is not empty for the Egyptians. When they try to follow, what was empty is now filled up, and they struggle and drown in the same place the Israelites easily walked through. Isaiah invites those who have no money to enjoy the rich things of life, those with empty hands. Baruch tells us that the place of wisdom is empty, the emptiness waits for those who seek her. Ezekiel reminds us that the land of Israel is empty, bereft of her people, waiting for those people to return and fill her once again. And in the Gospel today, the women come to see where Jesus is buried and find instead an empty tomb. Jesus is not there, the tomb is an empty space. This empty space is necessary for the resurrection. It is not merely the precursor, a sign to point us elsewhere. The tomb is still there and remains empty. Many of us are afraid of emptiness, of nothingness. Nature may not abhor a vacuum, but we do. We prefer explanations to ambiguity, we long to feel something, anything, rather than nothing. We prefer a full heart to an empty one. But accepting Christ as resurrected requires an emptiness inside us. We have to recognize our own helplessness, our brokenness, our need of others and of God. Many of us are aware of this emptiness inside us, and may have tried to hide it or fill it up with something, but it is this emptiness which can allow us to understand mystery, the unanswerable, the inexplicable. And of course God is the most unanswerable, inexplicable mystery of all. The emptiness of the tomb leaves room for the mystery of the resurrection, the mystery at the heart of our own existence. However, the women don’t stay at the tomb. The tomb is mystery, but not yet the fully risen Christ. If we stay at the empty tomb, we won’t encounter Christ. They have to leave to find him. Christ is not where they looked for him. Christ is not necessarily where we think we can find him, the obvious places. They don’t find him in their homes, in their workplaces, in their churches or synagogues, in any of the familiar places. Instead, they find him on the road. And that is where we encounter Christ as well, if our hearts are open and empty. We find him in unexpected places, in unexpected people. He surprises us when we are busy looking for him elsewhere. God, it seems, is very comfortable with a vacuum. God likes empty spaces, uses empty spaces throughout creation. And God is very comfortable with ambiguity and incomprehension. God defies any box we seek to put God in, however large. Emptiness and mystery are Lent’s gifts to us as we move into Easter. Without the emptiness of the tomb, the emptiness in our hearts, we can’t fully accept the risen Christ, the mysterious Christ, the Christ who lives among us in the most unexpected people and places.