Jesus is dead. Like the parrot in the Monty Python sketch, he has ceased to be. He is bereft of life, and rests in peace. Pushing up daisies. Taking a dirt nap. He is an ex-person.
Death is both the most simple and most mysterious event. It is the end; our body stops working. No more blood flowing. No more electro-chemical functioning in the cerebellum. No more kidney's filtering out poisons. No more digestion (except, of course, of us by bacterium). No more toe wiggling. No more burps after meals. Nothing. Yet none of this captures the emotional reality that is death. The physical reality is interesting; it is and always has been the emotional dimension that gives death its mystery, its fascination, and the odd feeling that we are treading over a vast chasm. As the Marillion song, "Estonia", says:
No one leaves you
When they live in their heart and mind . . .
Of course, this strangeness is captured in the second half of the chorus:
When we're gone
Watch the world simply carry on
The Bible is silent on the events of Saturday, because death is silence. The late Swiss Jesuit theologian Hans Urs Cardinal von Blathasar wrote a book, Mysterium Paschale, in which he sought to bring out the mysterious elements of the passion event, and wrote an entire chapter on Saturday, that most silent and strange of the days of Holy Week. Yet, for all the depth and profundity of von Balthasar's work, it is really only death that we are about today, that end of all that is for what is most important - us. Yes, the world will go on, our loved ones will mourn but continue while we return to the dust from which we were created. We will write no more poetry, sing no more songs, argue no more with spouses and co-workers, make love no more, laugh no more, cry no more.
Jesus is dead. The event itself is too close to reflect on anything more than the pain, the shock, and the fear ("Are we next?"). His body lies wrapped in a shroud, unprepared, a borrowed tomb his only resting spot. There is nothing to see, hear, or think beyond this - Jesus is dead. All that he said, all that he promised, all those whose lives he changed - it is all meaningless, and he and his movement can fade in to obscurity now, like all the other would-be messiahs and miracle workers.
I couldn't find anything on YouTube for the song "Estonia", so I substitute, for your viewing pleasure, from their Marbles Live DVD and the CD Brave (IMHO, the best recording they have ever done), the song "Living With the Big Lie" (I think there is something apropos about this):
