How frightening it must have been to watch the passion of Christ. To see him carry the cross, beaten and bloody. To watch him die, and with his death everything his disciples believed in was shaken to its foundation. For only a moment the thought creeping in: were the promises, the glimpses of God all true? Then suddenly He was there again. He came through the shut door, ate with them, showed them his wounds. Risen from death.
And how wonderful it must have been to be there at that moment. To see him with our own eyes, to touch his wounds and rejoice in the moment and in the promise: He is not dead and neither will be those who believe in Him.
I see the empty cross and I see the empty grave. I can’t be there back in time as other were. But there were witnesses who saw everything with their own eyes, and I can find their testimony in the New Testament and in the churches where the stories of these events are repeated and taught to everyone year by year, never forgetting what happened. So I sit in the church and look at the symbols of Easter and I don’t see only two pieces of wood nailed together or an empty hole in the wall symbolizing a place from long ago. Not just a linen cloth folded on an empty slab of stone. This is an emptiness that gives us power. The knowledge and the faith of the promise. The power of the empty cross and grave. He is Risen. He passed through the cross. He didn’t come down early, He didn’t go around it, He didn’t try to exchange it for something else. Then He rose from the grave, showing us that all his promises are real. And there were those who saw this and we read their words in the Bible every day, it is as if they were standing beside us speaking excitedly: “You will never believe what I saw…”
But I really do. I believe in what they witnessed. Because the empty cross and grave are right in front of me. He is Risen, and this happy and hopeful emptiness is really his promise and this is the promise I want to shout from the rooftops.
It gives me courage and eagerness to look forward to and to look for all his promises. It gives me courage to want to be a disciple asked to perform miracles in His name, to be the one followed by the signs. And what’s even more important, to tell others of the promise of the empty grave, to show it in my everyday life wherever I go: it is not just a piece of wood and the events at Easter are not just fairytales I listen to every year. This is the emptiness that gives us the hope that the world lacks today and the biggest power of all, to live every day with Jesus.