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His Empty Tomb is Your Full Life
It's coffin commercialism. Those who want to make a final statement about their life can now choose artsy, personalized caskets to tell their story. Business is thriving at the Whitelight Casket Company of Dallas, which has introduced the "art casket" for those who wouldn't be caught dead in something in something routine. No longer must the discriminating consumer choose merely between a traditional wooden box or a boring bronze coffin. If you are a golfer, you might choose the popular "Fairway to Heaven" model; other popular styles of personalized caskets include a beach scene or a big postal package which says in bold, red letters "Return to Sender."
"Jesus can make the impossible happen."
Sound like a novel idea? Truth is, individualized coffins as personalized "final statements" is not so new after all. Many ancient cultures, including the Egyptians for instance, were masters of this practice. Tomb prep began long before a person's death, with craftsmen engineering a coffin to make a statement revealing what that person had accomplished in life, especially in preparation for impressively meeting the gods - at least that's what some Egyptians believed. Others dreamed of an afterlife for everyone like a calm, everlasting picnic on the sunny banks of the Nile, while still others planned to be reincarnated into a fresh body and begin another earthly life.
Sounds like a contemporary syllabus of college courses, doesn't it? What was once coffin confusion is still today - but not for those who believe in Easter. Easter morning for us injects a single core conviction into confusion about life and death: the tomb of Jesus Christ is empty - more than that, barren, blank and bare.
Christ's unexpectedly empty tomb is God's final statement to a questioning world. But what does it mean for us today?
We aren't interested in blank caskets, so it's hard to see the significance of Jesus Christ's tomb echoing with emptiness. No decorated pillars or towering pyramids at his grave site. No cave drawings to tell his story. No golden trinkets buried with him to indicate his royal power. Just an empty tomb. That's because God has decorated his Son's death and celebrated his Son's accomplishments in life not at his burial place but in his believing people.
Just as Jesus Christ is risen from death, so we are raised up spiritual and physical death, from dullness and despair to a decorated life filled with vigor to take on yet another week with confidence in the strength God provides, and filled with vitality to smile through good times and bad, through life and death, with the sure hope of God's help. Of all the decorations on earth and in heaven, God by his grace chose you. Today, let's listen to an angel try to explain that to some saddened women, and to us.
Like the women on the first Easter morning who sadly shuffled to Jesus' tomb, our lack of faith and our low level of expectation disappoint our great and mighty God for whom nothing is impossible. He's ready to help us move mountains and our droopy faces don't look past the bumps in the road. All of it is a natural, but needless reaction. Not any more, fellow believers, because our risen Jesus won't have it!
Stop expecting to feel sad and separated because your Christian loved one is dying, or died before you wanted - the empty tomb raises your expectations to anticipate a glorious reunion in heaven, "If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men," the Bible exhorts us (1 Corinthians 15:19,22). "In Christ all will be made alive." Stop expecting yourself to act like a second class misfit who can't compete with sin's power and may as well continue giving into that same temptation - the empty tomb raises your expectations to a David-like approach to giant obstacles in God's way, facing them with confidence, and stepping up to Satan to announce, "Your wickedness cannot have its way with me." That, according to the Bible, is true because of the resurrection. "Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above not on earthly things" (Colossians 3:1,2).
The resurrected body of Christ had its whole molecular structure changed as it passed through burial clothes and the tomb itself without friction, only to appear shortly thereafter in physical, human form. If God can do that, can't he also change your circumstances to pass through another week without harm? Let's stop expecting from God only an occasional sunny day, relatively good health and tasty food on the table during the week. He can make the impossible happen.
This is God's final statement to the world: not a burial place decorated with the trinkets of this earth, but a believing people decorated with the treasures of heaven - Jesus' love and power. Don't be caught dead in anything else. His empty tomb is your full life.
