Easter Prose

Where was Jesus buried?

what was sealed behind that heavy rock?

was it Joseph’s tomb? 

no, it was my heart

behind that heavy rock sealed my cold and calcifying heart

 

There he was buried.

There I cried.

I mourned his death and mine.

 

But on the third day, before my tears have dried, 

something happened

the rock moved

the tomb was empty

he rose and I too

he rolled open the gates of death from within

 

no one knows what happened over those three days. 

Not even me,

whom all this happened within.

I am as baffled and confused as anyone else might be. 

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All we know is that on the third day, the people who emerged from the tomb are the same people who were buried, but they are no longer the same. 

both were different, but only one was changed,

and they were different in different ways. 

 

The Christ who entered was beaten and marred

The Christ who emerged was clean and scarred

His scars were no blemish, but rather signs that he will never perish

It was no ordinary scar of a victim or the branding of a slave, but a dictim

of the brave

 

I who enterd was clothed and well-fed, 

proud but bowed

anxious but oblivious

regretful but remorseless

I who emerged looked no different, but is never the same

 

we were both different, but only I was changed

he was uncovered and revealed 

 

he was washed, he was not dirty with blood stains, his face was clean, but he was still he

 

I, on the other hand, was fundamentally different

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nothing new was added to him, only things taken away, things that blocked the light of his ways

perhaps it was not he that was changed, but we

his blood shed and his body broken for us

if that is so, then perhaps it was not he who was changed by his death, but we 

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why did he want to be buried there? in my heart? 

the place had never been inhabited, the place was uninhabitable, I could not enter it as i am, a living being, and once i entered, i would not be able to come out. i would be locked in there. 

This is how my struggles have often felt like, a foreigner and prisoner in my own heart. I was not free because I am locked in and outside of me. 

 

This is why he was buried there: so that i would be buried in it with him and I could rise and walk out of there behind him. In his death and resurrection, in being buried and then rising and emerging, the rock that was sealed is opened, and it is kept open. the doorway is now a passage way. I am no longer a prisoner chained within or a foreigner locked without. I am finally free.

 

“For in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28)

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In gaining him I’ve gained myself too for my being is within him.​