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I have always been attracted to the graves of famous people. When I was a student many years ago in Washington, DC, I loved visiting the Kennedy brothers graves on that beautiful hillside in front of the Custis-Lee Mansion. In Paris, I frequently visited the Père Lachaise Cemetery, the resting place of, among many others, Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Abelard and Jim Morrison. When I was on retreat at St. Meinrad Monastery in southern Indiana, I often took a morning to visit the nearby Lincoln Boyhood Memorial, on whose grounds stands the simple grave of Nancy Hanks, Abraham Lincoln’s mother, who died in 1818. I always found it deeply moving to see the resting place of this woman of the woods, who died without celebration at the age of 35, covered in pennies adorned with the image of her famous son.
Cemeteries are places to reflect, reflect, give thanks, perhaps to smile sadly. They are places of rest and purpose. The last thing one would realistically expect in a grave is novelty and surprise.
Then there is the grave that appears in the Passover story. We are told in the Bible that three women, friends and followers of Jesus, came to their Master’s tomb early Sunday morning after his crucifixion to anoint his body. They undoubtedly anticipated that, as they performed this task, they would fondly recall the things their friend had said and done. Perhaps they would express their frustration for those who had brought him to this point, betraying him, denying him, and running from him in his hour of need. They certainly expected to cry in pain.
But when they arrived, they were surprised to find that the heavy stone had been removed from the entrance to the tomb. Had a grave robber been working? Their astonishment was only intensified when they spied inside the tomb, not the body of Jesus, but a young man dressed in white who was happily announcing: “You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been resurrected; he is not here. Look, that’s where they put it. ”
The communication from the mysterious messenger was, to put it bluntly, not that someone had broken into this tomb, but that someone had escaped. In the San Marcos version of the story, which is the oldest we have, the women’s reaction is described as follows: “They came out and fled from the tomb, because terror and astonishment had seized them.” .
