On the first day of the week, at early dawn, they (the women disciples) went to the tomb, taking the spices which they had prepared (to wash Jesus' body). And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel; and as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, "Why do you seek the living among the dead?"
Why do you seek the living among the dead?…
Easter is considered the most important day in the Christian liturgical calendar, because Jesus' death and resurrection are the foundational events for the structure of the Christian religion. Jesus' death, not his life, compel the belief system of the Christian dogma. It is a time when Jesus' teaching, life energy and spirit consciousness became a part of all life, instead of the journey of one man. With the emphasis on the resurrection, Jesus' humanity gets a little lost in the shuffle, creating a distance between the power of his life and the potential of ours.
I believe that is a mistake. I believe that Jesus' ministry was far more powerful than that. Jesus' death is not the point of his ministry; how he lived is. And part of that living is how he died: fearless, with some sadness, in deep love and faith and ultimate surrender.
The root word for resurrection means "a coming back into notice." When Jesus' teaching, life energy and spirit consciousness became a part of all life, the potential of our lives, modeled by him, came back into notice. And part of that potential is to embrace ever lasting life. Life is ever available in each of our days, regardless of our death. Death is not the point of our lives; living them is.
Little deaths, letting go of moments, however, are a part of our everyday lives. We cannot live life fully without an element of surrender, a giving over to the way of life, a letting go of control of our days, a releasing of hardened definitions so that we may open to love, to growth, to the flow of joy and transformation.
The story of the empty tomb is less about the disappearance of Jesus, and more about taking our own responsibility to find our inner wisdom, our true selves, which will bring us to the knowledge of God or Ultimate Being. The "two dazzling men" in Luke's rendering signify the help that is ever available, in our intuition, in masters of wisdom, in others seeking truth, in signals from the many dimensions of nature; but there is no one, ultimately, to follow. It is up to you to take on true life, that is why Jesus is gone. It is our task to embrace the deep truth of our lives and bring it to the world in which we live.
Why do you seek the living amongst the dead? Why do you look away from your lives?
Jesus did not live for us. Jesus did not die for us. Jesus lived fully and bravely and died with such authenticity that his life energy infused a hope in humanity's consciousness. He dedicated himself completely to our understanding of life everlasting, something that is eternal, something that he did not bring about, something that he shared for the salvation of his followers, for their coming to a sense of wholeness and abundance and calm and peace and love.
The tomb can be seen as the place in which we have imprisoned ourselves, a state of mind that keeps us from the light of understanding and the freedom within. This image beckons us to roll away the stone—release that which has hardened us and weighed us down, so that we may come out of a state of being that deadens us to the world and enter into our full and abundant life.
Rev. Marilyn Sewell shares in her sermon, "Why Easter?", a tale from Germany about a circus bear who lived for years in a nine-by-nine cage, cramped and poorly treated—poked and prodded by circus-goers. When the circus failed, the bear was taken to the Berlin zoo. This was a wonderful environment, with flowing water, trees, ledges, and other bears to play with. But the bear had learned his boundaries well and identified his life in them. Day after day he would pace the same nine by nine square till he died, never breaking from his perceived prison.1
We have all known the experience of that circus bear in one way or another. We have all experienced times when we feel trapped in our lives, unable to see a way out of our grief, or anger, or hurt or shame. The cage can be subtle, in a casing of ego, where we hold onto our identity despite whatever comes along. We are the hurt one, the misunderstood one, the superior one, the unlucky one, the lonely one, the only one you can count on, the self reliant one, the self righteous one. We can hold onto these images of ourselves to the point that we lose awareness of our limited sight and confined movement of being. We then treat others from this place of confinement and only see what will feed the image.
An indication of that emotional prison, the pacing back and forth in confined living, is the habit of constant criticism and complaint. When in this spiritual confinement, we constantly see what's wrong with the world and find proof everywhere. Our glass is half empty for the most part and not (in our minds) because of anything we have done but because that's the way things are. Hope is branded naive, even dangerous, in this way of being and the limits we see and feel prove that there is no help. We feel distanced from any solution outside of our discomfort so we buck up and do the best we can by fighting the adversity rather than pushing through it. We stay with what's familiar, which, as Shakespeare once phrased it, "makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to those we know not of".2
Unlock those bars, lift that heavy tombstone, and find life beyond your limits. Death, defensiveness, and dread are not your life. Let go of that fight and find the love. Jesus gave his life to demonstrate that truth.
We sometimes keep ourselves imprisoned for the sake of others as well. This, too, is folly and false witness. We form our identities early in life and rise out of childhood with assumptions and expectations about who we are and "should be." We take on roles because we were trained to be certain ways or because we developed ways to protect us from harm. We limit our worlds and ways of being with one another because of the inner role we have taken on. We are heroes and martyrs, we are victims and survivors, we are special ones and the scapegoat, we are the reliant ones and the ones who always mess up.
These roles become a rhythm in our lives and we make our choices to maintain them. We often choose professions and relationships to strengthen our assumptions of who or what we should be. We bring ourselves into situations that confirm our self images, we attract experiences that make us the hero or martyr or victim or survivor or special one or scapegoat, or reliant one or failure, or … you fill in the blank.
We know we are in this cage when we find ourselves comparing ourselves to others. We are locked in when we are ever competitive and judgmental. The world needs to stay organized the way we see it for us to justify our roles in it, so we form opinions about everyone else as well. The hero needs someone to save, the special one needs an admirer, the one who messes up needs to disappoint.
Unlock those bars, lift that heavy tombstone, and find life beyond your limits. Judging, manipulating and fitting in are not your life. Let go of the tyrannies and embrace abundance. Jesus gave his life to liberate our sense of being.
Another way that we limit our lives is through pride. We sometimes stay in our boxes of being because we don't want to face our error. We stay with a way of being simply to justify all the time we've already spent that way. The disappointment of loss we would feel and regret we might face can be as strong a block to growth as the thickest iron bars. We stay, sometimes, in a place that keeps us small because we are afraid of what we may have missed.
We know this cage when we are locked into thoughts of the past and fantasies of the future. We do not know how to stay present because that reality brings us too close to the truth of the limitations\ we have put on our lives and of what we might be missing.
Unlock those bars, lift that heavy tombstone, and find life beyond your limits. Regret, resentment, guilt and shame are not your life. Find release from these specters that keep you from knowing the true potential that is ever within you, and say yes to the undeniable beauty of your life. Jesus gave his life to encourage the light in ours.
Near the end of Jesus' life, he was challenged by skeptics about the nature of resurrection. A hypothetical puzzle was offered him about a woman who was widowed several times, asking which husband she would dwell with in the hereafter. Jesus immediately reprimanded the error. "You are wrong," ' replies, "because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God." After a short lesson he concludes that God "is not God of the dead, but of the living."3
Our lives are in the here and now. They are ever a part of all that is and ever will be. The breath we breathe is an exchange of being that we do not own nor earn. The power of love is a presence of grace that has no limits and knows no death. The courage to be is a strength within that unlocks chains and awakens abundance.
Unlock those bars, lift that heavy tombstone, and find life beyond your limits.
In gratitude for Jesus, for the many spiritual mentors who came to this knowing and for Nature's eternal claiming of life everlasting may we rise out of our tombs to find the truth and beauty of our lives.
So may it be. Happy Easter.
Copyright © 2010 Lisa Ward. All Rights Reserved.