The Tomb

My dad is buried in a clock. Well, not quite, but that has been the running joke in our family for years. When Dad passed, Mom had his ashes placed in a mantel clock. There have been all sorts of "irreverencies" like my children calling it their "Grandfather clock," or one-liners about it being Dad's time to go. Mom, however, will be buried with her family in a cemetery not far from here, a place that is both sad and comfortable. Mom was the baby in a large family, and had me later in life, so aunts, uncles, grandparents were aging and passing on from the time I was a young child. The cemetery reminds me of my childhood as much as it reminds me of grief. Death has walked in and out of my life as freely and as familiarly as a friend. Death is a transition and for some, by God's grace, a joyously anticipated shuffling off of a mortal coil.

Matthew 28:1-7, records the events of Jesus' resurrection. This might even be one of those passages that, were you to encounter it during your daily reading, you might just gloss over it. Read it once, read it a thousand times, right? But this morning, I was stopped by verse 1: 

"Now after the Sabbath, as the first day of the week began to dawn, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb."

They came to see the tomb. The tomb. Speaking from experience, most people when they go to place flowers on a grave or remember a loved one, say they are "going to talk to Dad," or "I'm going to put flowers on Mom's grave." There is a sense of ownership, personalization. This is not just the tomb, it is his tomb or her tomb, their place of rest. That's not the case in Matthew's Gospel -- nor in any other, for that matter. Every record of The Resurrection in the Gospels refers to the tomb. Until God, through the Gospel writers, discloses the entire story -- The Resurrection -- no one mentions it was Jesus who had been in the tomb. Not until speaking of where Jesus had been is His name mentioned. 

I am guilty of, for the sake of brevity, referring to Jesus' tomb. Praise God, it is just the tomb! Jesus' association with the tomb was temporary, momentary. It was not His then and it isn't His now!