Empty Tomb, Full Hearts
“Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.” (Matthew 28:5-6 ESV)
Every year Lent rolls around, and I’m eager to engage. This year was different, though. I was eager to engage for completely different reasons than just the practice of giving up something to get more of God. This year, Lent was far more palpable to me. Why? Because in previous years, more than ever, the fear of facing actual death along my journey with Jesus was unavoidable.
Repentance—that’s the passport we take with us on the Lenten journey with Jesus. And at each season of life, we reach a new destination along the way, stamping a new page. Envy, anger, lust, gossip, greed, and more are stamped to the pages of our passport. Sometimes, along the way, Jesus visits certain destinations in our lives a time or two. Each destination visited is a miniature death of sorts, dying to the things we thought would give us life to taste true life with Jesus. And we go to these destinations even though it’s painful because Jesus is with us, forming us, leading us toward something more beautiful.
But there is one place deep down where we all don’t want to go. That destination is death. It’s the tombs that mark what seems like the end to our journey. Consider for a moment what the Marys were doing the day after Jesus went to lay in the tomb - they traveled to visit his grave, a grave in a garden. A grave that signified to them that the journey they had been walking with Jesus had ended because He lay in that grave. All their little deaths along the way with Him, for Him, were they all for nothing? To them, Jesus ended where everyone else before them did. Their deaths were in vain, until…
Lent is a preparatory season; in reality, our entire life is a Lenten journey of little deaths preparing us to go where Jesus went. He went into the belly of death. And it’s not until we reach His tomb that we come to the final destination in our Lenten journey. We take our passports of repentance and look up to see Jesus stamping it, welcoming us through the custom doors of His empty tomb to the country of His resurrection life. Our hearts are full because of the empty tomb.
Death, where is your sting? Grave, where is your victory? He’s alive, He’s alive! He is risen! And in our deaths in Christ, so will we!
Father, united to Jesus we pray: “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to you, our God! You give us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.
