A Broken Hallelujah

I don’t pretend to understand the story of the empty tomb on the first Easter Sunday. I don’t know what happened to Jesus’ body. I don’t know what the first disciples intended when they told this story. I do know that the questions that we bring to it, the questions of a modern, scientific age, are not the questions the earliest disciples would have asked or anticipated. Rather than those modern questions, I ask what I understand to be post-modern questions, about the power of a story, about the ways in which stories can shape and form the way we see the world, about how some stories can be oppressive, and others can be liberating, and some can be both, depending on how they are remembered and retold. I don’t believe that the stories of Easter were told primarily to provide an historical account of an event that happened one Sunday morning long ago. I believe rather, that their stories are told to liberate us from the power of death, so that we can live in the power of Easter hope. And I also believe that when we tell this story, we are freed to offer that beautiful care to one another, from birth to death, without fear and without reserve.