Holy week. Entry into Jerusalem, palms and circumstance. Preaching, teaching, Temple tantrum. Praying in the Garden. Take this cup away from me. Share the Passover meal. This is for you. Broken Bread. Betrayal. Arrest and torture. Convicted by the crowd’s conviction that speaking truth to power is dangerous work. Hung out to die.

Two on the road to Immaus. Stranger appears and comforts them. Don’t you know what happened here? He is dead. Share a meal. Broken bread. Their eyes see what their hearts yearn to hear. It is he!

Back in town, disciples search for Love in all the wrong places. Why do you look in a tomb for the living? Good question. He is not here.

He is not here . . . It does not make sense.

He is not here. How do you tell that story in the midst of war, oppression, cynicism, economic injustice, inequality, and fear of the other? How do you speak of the kind of HOPE that comes from imagining that death is not the last word?

It is a good question.

I was in Israel almost 15 years ago with colleagues from seminary. We saw it all: the place where Jesus fed the 5,000; the Sea of Galilee; the desert in which Jesus was tempted; the place he ran from his parents. We saw several places that might have been the site if the crucifixion, but one site really struck me. In a little cave managed by Scotch Presbyterians, there is a flat piece of rock, on which Jesus was reportedly laid. On the wall, there is a little brass sign—nothing fancy, and it says He is Not Here.

He is Not Here.

It was stark in its simplicity. There were no halos, or gilded angels, or that wonderful music that appears in all the movies about the Holy Land.

It moved me, more than walking on certain ground or being in Jerusalem or on the Sea of Galilee. I got this plain and clear. We do not worship a dead icon! We worship a God who stretches our understanding of who God is and what God can do. We worship a God that cleans up our messes. We worship a God who does not forsake us.

It is a leap of faith to believe that dead bodies live. It is a leap of faith to believe that God can intervene in human history, that God cares enough to do so. Face it, for some of us, it is a leap of faith to believe, in this time, that there IS a God.

I need something to believe in, how about you?

I love you,
Jacqui