Do you know the song "Table of Plenty?" If so, the title of this post probably has you singing it in your head.
This was the communion song at the mass I attended yesterday. You know what I realized?
Sometimes the Table of Plenty looks a lot like a tomb, with a stone blocking the entrance, and guards standing just outside.
When I think of the cross, I think of Jesus suffering there. In my mind and prayers, He is always dying - not dead. In my prayer, when I meditate on His dying, He is dead on the cross for only an instant. Then His side is pierced, and He is taken down into His mother's arms.
Don't you think that in the moment when Christ died, for those who loved Him standing there, the world stopped? Don't you think that moment was frozen in their hearts in a way that seemed beyond the normal rhythm of time?
And as Mary held him dearly in her arms, I'd imagine it was one of those tunnel moments - a moment when all of the surrounding life and movement goes unseen.
Jesus Christ died.
He was laid to rest in a tomb. A stone was rolled in front. Guards stood in the eerie silence and finality of the moment.
And the people walked away.
Have you ever noticed that the Bible doesn't tell us stories of His followers holding vigil as they waited outside the tomb for the Resurrection? Rather, they allowed His death to reign in their hearts. They accepted. Any hint of anticipation of His rising was not outwardly expressed in the actions taken in their lives.
Maybe it was alive - somewhere - in the depths of their hearts.
Regardless, for 3 days the Table of Plenty - the altar of our Lord, the life-giving eternal flow of mercy, grace, and love- manifested itself on earth as the still and silent tomb of death.
So often, I rush to the Resurrection. He died, yes. But He rose. And so we have been given the great gift of living as an Easter people. We can live and move and delight daily in the glory and power of Christ's rising.
But perhaps we should remember the tomb. Because it is in that tomb that God works undetected by us. It is in that tomb that He descends into hell, defeating death once and for all, claiming the victory that has been and always will be eternally His.
Sometimes in our lives, our relationship with God looks a lot like it probably did for His apostles during those three days. He is working in ways we cannot see. And somewhere perhaps, in the depths of our hearts, we know, somehow, that even if we do choose to sit, hidden from the guards, in the stillness of the garden where we see that stone, that the death matters.
And somehow, in the stillness and heartache of those days, we find peace. We know - and commit our lives to everything that this belief means - that the table of the Lord is always a Table of Plenty, even before the stone is rolled away.
