By Rev. Marek Zabriskie
It was a Friday afternoon around 6 p.m. in April of 33 A.D. when Jesus breathed his last. An earthquake shook the ground as the sun was setting. A lone soldier guarding his cross looked up and said, “Truly, this was the son of God.”
Jesus’ friends and family claimed his body and carefully washed his cadaver on a stone slab which can be viewed inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre today. They laid him in a tomb belonging to a supporter named Joseph of Arimathea. The tomb was just under the hillside where he was crucified. An enormous round stone was rolled to seal the tomb.
On Easter morning, three intrepid women, Mary Magdalene, Mary, Jesus’ mother, and Joanna, the wife of Herod Antipas’ steward, a wealthy woman who helped to fund Jesus’ ministry, visited his burial site.
They had heard him preach, “Blessed are the poor and the poor in spirit.” They had heard proclaim, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” They had listened as he said, “Love your enemies.” They marveled as he taught, “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another.”
So, they came to do what love does – to give him a proper burial and anoint his body with spices. They knew that guards had been stationed there and that a great stone had sealed the tomb. What they didn’t know was that Easter had already occurred.
History’s greatest surprise awaited them. The tomb was an empty. Peter and the beloved disciple came and saw for themselves and ran back to tell the disciples. Then Mary Magdalene looked inside and saw two angels. After a sleepless night of inconsolable grief, she turned and saw a man, who she mistook him for a gardener.
“Woman, why are you weeping?” he asked. “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him,” she replied. He said, “Mary.” Recognizing Jesus, she answered, “Rabbi.” He told her, “…go to my brothers and tell them, [that] ‘I am ascending to my Father…” She went and shared the great news.
Had this story been invented, women would never have been depicted as the first to discover to the resurrection because women could not testify in court back then. Their witness was not deemed to be credible by men. This was not a made up story.
During the next forty days, Jesus appeared numerous times in Galilee. Some estimate that as many as 500 people saw him after he had been resurrected. For Christians, Easter is history’s defining event.
It’s why churches are packed on Easter Day. If there’s ever a day that will lift your spirits, Easter is the day. This is the day where we trust that with God all things are possible. Love triumphs over all things, even death.
Twenty-two Christ Church pilgrims recently returned from the Holy Land. We visited 42 holy sites in ten days. It was quite a spiritual workout. We visited the site where Jesus was crucified and where his body was buried. This is found inside Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
The church is dark, mystical, filled with greasy smoke, dripping wax, and stunning mosaics. It’s holy ground. For 2,000 years, Christians have visited this site. One of our pilgrims told me, “Something happened to me inside. I cannot describe it in words. But it changed me.”
For 1,700 years a church has stood on this site. The Persians damaged it in the seventh century. Muslims burned it in the eleventh century, setting in motion the Christian Crusades to reclaim the Holy Land. Crusaders eventually rebuilt the church as we see it today.
Since the eighteenth century, six Christian denominations have governed the church among themselves. They have also bickered and fought over this sacred space. So, in 1757, the Ottoman sultan Osman III devised a plan to keep the peace at the Holy Sepulchre and eight other religious sites in Jerusalem and Bethlehem.
He called the agreement the “Status Quo.” This is how the term entered the world’s vocabulary. In Latin “status quo” means “the situation as it now exists.” Future agreements spelled out that no changes could be made to the building or the worship without agreement from all six governing parties.
If you stand outside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and look at the façade, you will see an old ladder resting on a stone ledge high up just under a large window. It looks completely out of place. Perhaps a stone mason left it. No one knows for certain.
But the ladder has been there since 1728. The ladder is referred to as immovable due to the Status Quo agreement that no cleric of the six Churches may move, rearrange, or altar any property without the consent of the other five religious orders.
I love this story because real religion was never created to keep the status quo. The purpose of religion is to inspire us to live on a higher plane with greater love, compassion, and hope and inspire greater acts of kindness and generosity. Ladders are meant for climbing. They help us reach new heights. Religion is meant to free to serve God and others.
May our recent celebration of Easter be a catalyst to help you not to settle for the status quo in your spiritual life. May it inspire you to go deeper, make some changes and take a few risks to draw closer to God.
Perhaps you are inspired to pick up the Bible and read the New Testament or develop a healthy prayer life and communicate daily with God or take a pilgrimage to the Holy Land or another holy site.
Perhaps Easter has inspired you to share your resources more generously or claim a ministry at your church. I hope that this Easter has inspired you to climb further on your spiritual ladder.
We don’t want to settle for the “status quo” in our religion or in anything else. We want to aspire to greatness, goodness, holiness, kindness, and love. Let’s climb higher together, lift others up. Together, we can practice resurrection. “Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!”
