Christ is risen. Alleluia.
Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia.
“Why do you look
for the living among the dead?”
The men in the
tomb asked this question of the women who came to the tomb.
“Why do you look
for the living among the dead?”
And the men then
reminded the women that Jesus had told them he would rise again. The women remembered, and went and told the
others. I wonder how they told the
story. Did they speak of the empty tomb
first? Did they talk about the men in
the dazzling clothes? Or did they simply
burst into the room where the other disciples and followers were gathered and
say, “He has been raised from the dead!”
“He is alive!”
I wonder if they
remembered the question with which they had been greeted by the men:
“Why do you look
for the living among the dead?”
It’s not a bad
question. It wasn’t a bad question some
two thousand years ago, and it is still a reasonable question to this day. Why do we look for life in dead things? I know that isn’t precisely what those men,
those angels (?) were asking. Yet, I
have been thinking a lot about the cost of things versus their value.
Jesus’ life was
sold by Judas for 30 pieces of silver. 30
pieces of silver. That is what his life
cost, but that was, of course, not what his life was worth. His life was…is priceless.
Jesus sees your
life as priceless, too; whether you have nothing but lint in your pocket, or
millions of dollars in your bank account.
God loves you just the same.
Jesus died out of love for the poor and the wealthy, those who have
nothing and those who seem to have everything.
Here is where I
think that question holds such relevance in our lives still today; why do we
seek life among things that have never had life? Why is it we seek to fill the holes in our
lives with things? Why do so many of us,
at one time or another, think that what is missing can be purchased?
No pair of
shoes, no car, no flat screen television, no home, or boat, is going to fill
that hole. Blaise Pascal wrote about
this hole in our lives back in the 17 Century.
Pascal wrote: “What else does this craving, and this
helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of
which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain
to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the
help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this
infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in
other words by God himself.”
Only God can fill the hole that we spend so
much money and time trying to fill.
The hole will never be filled by anything
money can buy. Yet, it can be filled by
someone who was sold for 30 pieces of silver.
Someone who is priceless. Someone
who left the tomb empty so he could reside in the void in all of us.
Why do we seek the living among the dead?
He is risen.
He is alive and longs to live in the hole that we each carry. He longs for us to know that it doesn’t
matter what we can afford, because what he gives, he gives freely for all. He loves us.
To him we are priceless. He longs
to take the hole from us and leave us whole.
He left the tomb to seek life.
The life in you. He lives in you.
Christ is risen. Alleluia.
Christ is risen in me. Alleluia.
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