That which is not

Artist: Fra Angelico

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I have long appreciated the medieval theologians who asserted that we must not attempt to say what God is - only what God is not. The following excerpt from an Easter sermon reflects that same principle:

An empty tomb. Our great Christian symbol of life and hope is found in something missing, something not there, a displacement...

For this empty tomb is full of meaning. From this empty tomb, hewn in rock, we as Christians draw forth all of our faith and hope for this world and for the kingdom to come. At this empty tomb we find the Christ of eternity alive in the here and now. From this chasm, a symbol of death and defeat, comes forth victory and life itself. Christ’s tomb is the earthen fissure through which God’s love pours out upon our parched world of sin and death.

We do not know how this is so. But then there are a lot of things we do not know. How life began in some ocean lagoon billions of years ago, for instance. Or even how our parents fell in love. Just as our lives today are in some real sense mysteries we shall never fathom, so is the Resurrection for us a sharing in the mystery of God’s own life. Or perhaps more to the point, it is a sharing by God in our lives.

-- The Rev. Dr. Frank Hegedus

Maybe as we continue to ponder the mystery of the Resurrection, we could well reflect on what is not. What are the things that now are not true about us, are not part of our lives, that speak to us most strongly of our own personal resurrection? I can think of quite a few, actually. I imagine we all can.