He has risen!

Isaiah 65:17-2.5; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; 1 Corinthians 15:19-26; Luke 24:1-12

Jesus' female followers, who accompanied him in his arrest, imprisonment, and death, are the first to discover the unbelievable news; in the words of the angel who guards the empty tomb, Jesus "is not here, but has risen" (Luke 24:5). The women are shocked, despite the fact that Jesus himself had promised the resurrection "while he was still in Galilee" (Luke 24:6). The other disciples are just as incredulous, for the news "seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them" (Luke 24:11). Luke's account ends with Peter's gaze into the empty tomb, "amazed at what had happened." The psalmist is also a speech less witness, testifying that "This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes" (Psalm 118:23).

If the disciples and prophets are incredulous, what about us? Can we really believe, 2,000 years after the event? More important, can we integrate God's resurrection into our lives as something alive and present, not just the commemoration of a historical event? For Brazilian theologian Ivone Gebara, the empty tomb itself is the key to both our understanding the resurrection and to living the resurrection in our own lives. In her essay, published in Searching the Scriptures, she writes that the empty tomb "returns us to the manger, the place of the child, the place of the rebirth of hope. The empty tomb returns us to ourselves, women and men capable of giving birth and rebirth to the divine, the essence of our own flesh."

Like his birth, Jesus' resurrection is an event that is ultimately beyond the confines of our ability to understand or reason. As mystery, the only way we can hope to "get" the resurrection is to live it. The empty tomb is thus not an ending, but a beginning, an invitation to each of us to birth and rebirth the divine in the confines of our own lives and histories.