Easter Blessings! Christ our Lord is risen!
So often we hear these words but do we see the sights? How did people seeing the miracle of the Resurrection for the first time react? They were women. Women steeped in Jewish culture and meaning, they KNEW the emblems of their faith. What did they see when they arrived at the tomb?
Archbishop Williams has written an essay called "Between the Cherubim: The Empty Tomb and the Empty Throne," and has suggested that imagery of the Ark of the Covenant might help us Christians understand early Jewish thought when confronted with the emptiness of Jesus' Tomb.
Hidden in the Holy of Holies or carried before advancing armies into battle, the Ark, in Hebrew Scriptures, marked the presence of God with an empty space — the space between the cherubim.
This is unique in the ancient world. The Ark was considered to be the throne, or the footstool containing of the tablets of the law, of an always invisible God. This God was the only God Who must not be represented, Who cannot be possessed or contained, Who is where there appears to be nothing. In other words, the most sacred space where God was in the midst of the Hebrew people was empty. If you went to Jerusalem to visit God, what you came to visit wasn’t a golden idol, it was empty space--the holy absence and holy silence of the empty space between the cherubim. Because there was no gilded statue the Israelites were able to connect with the living presence of God in their lives.
There, as told by Luke and John, when the Jewish women looked in, there are two angels, and John further states in 20:12 "and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet".
So, they, who are used to the "God who dwells between the cherubim" suddenly see and know.. they KNOW Who Jesus really is, they see the imagery of the Ark, they know the empty space between the Angels in the Tomb is the evidence of the divinity of Jesus Christ -- the emptiness marking the presence of God in a way our modern minds forget.
Jesus has Risen, He is Lord and Christ!
that's such incredible imagery! i love how God sort of refers back to things that we're already familiar with to reveal truth to us. As I've been reading through the Old Testament, I can see how God used so many things to point to Jesus and then revealed them in Jesus' life and it's beautiful to me!
Posted by: janiners | April 17, 2006 at 08:42 AM
Great image. Thanks for sharing that!
Posted by: Paul | April 17, 2006 at 11:27 PM
wow!
This is amazing insight! I'm linking to it over at stf so more can be blessed
Posted by: Lorna | April 19, 2006 at 04:33 PM
Just followed the link from stf...wow thank you for this...also linking.
Posted by: Sally | April 20, 2006 at 04:48 PM