The Emptiness of Easter

“Fear and great joy” are what we’re told the two Marys felt on hearing that Jesus had been raised from the dead. The joy part seems easy: Such glorious news! The foundation of our faith! What seemed to be an end was in fact a new beginning! We know the story—so why were they terrified? 

I can think of lots of reasons, but the one resonating with me this year is emptiness. These women went to tend the body of their beloved friend. The tomb was empty—and emptiness of any kind can be terrifying.

I think this year of the empty cupboards and hunger (especially as programs that fund school lunches and SNAP are curtailed), the empty wallet of poverty, with so many people losing their jobs in the gutting and restructuring going on in this country. I have known the empty nest when children leave or are estranged, the empty arms when a loved one dies. Students used to tell me that they were terrified of the emptiness of silence. 

There’s a story that I heard years ago about a little girl who gave her father a Christmas present she’d spent all evening wrapping and re-wrapping, but when he opened it the next morning, he exclaimed with irritation, “What’s this? It’s empty!” Chagrined, the little girl responded, “But it wasn’t empty when I wrapped it. I filled it with kisses for you.”  

When we first moved to Maine nearly 40 years ago, we ended up in a tiny apartment until our “real one’” was available. My then 9-year-old slept on the fold-out couch in the living room, and we set up a bed in a big walk-in closet for the 13-year-old, thinking that he would appreciate the privacy. It had its own light, and a door to close, and he could read as late into the night as he wanted since it was summer. It wasn’t until he was in his mid-30s that he told me that the closet felt to him like a black hole, a terrifying emptiness, an indication that he didn’t matter. 

I wish that irritated dad might have been more tender with his little girl. I wish my son didn’t have to wait 24 years to learn of the love and care that went into creating that temporary bedroom. But as human beings, we continually misread each other’s intentions and perceive emptiness because it’s our hearts, not our eyes, that are meant to see. The empty tomb of the Resurrection reminds me to open my heart as well as my eyes to possibilities beyond simply seeing.

I go back again and again to the empty tomb this Easter season. Sometimes I look inside and notice only the damp chill of nothingness (easy to do in these chaotic days), and sometimes I can enter the emptiness and in it feel the embrace of God, hear the music of the universe, touch eternity. That’s where the “joy” part of the “fear and great joy” comes from. Mary of Magdala and Mary of Bethany felt both, but their joy was greater than their fear, and it propelled them straight into the presence of the risen Lord.  

It’s important for me to name and know that emptiness is real, and yes, it can be terrifying, but my deepest knowing needs to be the embrace of God’s love in Jesus. Out of emptiness, fullness; out of death, life: Resurrection.