'THE EMPTY TOMB AS A SYMBOL OF THE RESSURRECTION' Matt 28:1-8pp; Mk16:1-8; Lk 24:1-10; John 20:1-8

 

The anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness

Nonbeing threatens our spiritual self-affirmation of being in two ways, “relatively in emptiness and absolutely in meaninglessness.” In the thought of Tillich, one is “Empty” if one is unable to participate meaningfully in the expressions of one’s cultural symbols; it is that emptiness that ultimately becomes meaninglessness.  Spiritual affirmation is the meaning drawn from the connection and correlation that one attaches to the symbols, whether they are created by him/her or by others. A poem or music lyrics for instance may articulate in language and sound a person’s unfathomable spiritual deep.  Art is indeed one way in which these expressions are made.  The best-selling song on the market touches a nerve that may have been dormant otherwise.  The creator of a poem or song is spiritually fulfilled with his/her work but so are the rest of us who participate in it in different ways.

Meaninglessness is introduced when the symbol loses its original meaning.  If someone would hoist a flag of the old apartheid regime in South Africa today, I am sure it would invite a lot of criticism, even violence in some quarters.  For many the piece of cloth has lost its meaning, while for others it provokes memories. 

If a symbol loses its historical meaning it is rendered obsolete unless it is reinterpreted.  

The teacher in Ecclesiastes observed that when symbols lose meaning they become miserable business, one begins the futile adventure of chasing the wind.  Ecclesiastes is a journey of reflection.  King Solomon had tried everything and discovered its hollowness, much like the Easter egg.  He had possessions, experience, wisdom, power, and pleasure but in the end he cried out, “Meaningless!”  As Tillich says, ‘Everything is tried but nothing satisfies.’  These symbols of success in human culture still attract much attention; the travesty is not in the symbol itself but the spiritual meaning we attach to it.  We stand or fall, not with the symbol, but with the meaning we attach to the symbol.

“Spiritual” in the context of Tillich is not the schizophrenic and dogmatic sense it is often presented by religious fundamentalism.  It is a way the human spirit progressively and creatively participates in the various spheres of meaning in human and cosmic experience (1952, 46).  Einstein (2010) was religious in this sense, he did not believe in a personal God, but his formulas convinced him of something or someone greater and beyond what he called the “the arts and the impenetrable objective.”  To that extent he had a sense of the eternal.

The human spirit is religious; it is on the “Augustinian” perpetual search for God (Augustine 1960, 43).  Anthropologists agree that this is a universal phenomenon, it may be expressed differently in different contexts, but it is as universal as hunger and the myriad of ways in which people respond to the challenge.  “Religion is the way in which the human spirit must express itself,” says Tillich (1959, 3-9).

In Africa there is empirical evidence everywhere, from the majestic organs in cathedrals of ebony and ivory to the beat of cowhide drums and blowing of horns under the trees in indigenous religion.  The human spirit will always device and design ways to express itself in religious ways.  Even the atheist is religious because he/she must believe there is no God.

Mandela’s well known closing statement during the Rivonia Trial implied that he was consumed by the “Ideal” with religious tenacity (Mandela 1990).  Everything else had to have some implications for the “Ideal” otherwise it was contemptuously dismissed.  In Tillich’s words the “Ideal” was his “ultimate concern.”

For Martin Buber (1937), God is the irreplaceable “Thou.”  The crisis is when the ‘It’ becomes a ‘Thou.’  The “Augustinian” restlessness is neither an event nor a project but a spiritual evolution in perpetual process.  Our tragedy is seeking to express that process in events and projects.  That partly accounts for our busyness, we are on a frantic chase for spiritual fulfilment, but our emptiness is resurfaced at the zenith of every symbolic achievement.

Teilhard de Chardin (1959, 292-294) in his “omega point” espoused an evolutionary notion of “spiritual.”  Meaning is not static but is dynamic and derived in the formation and continuous transformation of that which is spiritually meaningful.  “Spiritual” is a journey in and into a universe in process.  “The human spirit” de Chardin said (1964, 6), “is still in process of evolution”.

If Augustine and de Chardin are right, then the rigidity of religious dogma is the worst crisis of the human spirit.  This is precisely the point—as many have lamented— where religion in the name of religion renders religion empty.  Religious absolutes or dogmas—like symbols of culture—stifle the ability of the human spirit to progressively actualize into the “omega point” where God is finally “all and in all” (Ibid, pp. 1-15).

If religious dogma insists on its static state, then it loses the role it ought to play in the dynamic evolution of the human spirit.[1]  Meaninglessness is a natural consequence of an empty spirit.  Tillich called it the “loss of a spiritual center.” (Tillich 1952, 47). 

Some prisoners in the Nazi death camps developed an “intensification of inner life” which helped the prisoner find refuge from the emptiness, desolation and the spiritual poverty of his existence” (Frankl 1984, 54-59).  While the spiritual connection may not have averted impending death, the prisoners “were able to retreat from their surroundings to a life of inner riches and freedom.”  In this way a dynamic spiritual center offered sustenance in difficult times.

Religion in the dogmatic sense loses this dimension, it becomes the futile effort to be innovative, determine or adapt divine revelation to the human situation (Tillich 1955, 2).  While the effort may be good and even relevant for its generation, it becomes a widow in the next.  Those who derived ontic, spiritual, and moral meaning from it are thrown into an abyss of emptiness and ultimately meaninglessness.

God as “ultimate concern” is a perpetual and dynamic journey of exploration.  We try to capture the divine in structures and institutions more for cerebral convenience; not that it is possible, but it serves a purpose in time.  When these structures and institutions take the place of God, the God who is God breaks through in fresh beginnings.  In that way symbols of religion and culture must keep up with God and not God with symbols.  Thus, Tillich spoke of a ‘God beyond God.’

Essentially the spiritual journey is a permanent tug-of-war between the divine and the demonic, the struggle between being and nonbeing.  The human spirit as an exploring spirit in search of a home is homeless until it finds meaning in God who stands within and above the human situation.  This sentiment is expressed in the Confessions of St Augustine (Augustine 1960, 43): 

'Yet man, this part of your creation wishes to praise you.  You arouse him to take joy in praising you, for you have made him for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.'

The call of biblical scripture is none other than a call back to God.  It is a reconnection of the “Estranged” to God as the ground of all being.  The word “Repent” is not so much religious as it is pedagogical; it is the beginning of a journey with God because God is a journey.  As we explore, we learn, and new meanings of spiritual affirmation perpetually unfold and we understand God in new and dynamic ways.

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[1] Evolution here is used in the spiritual sense employed in the context of Teilhard de Chardin, and not the biological sense in Charles Darwin.  A correlation between the two may be valid, but that dialogue is the subject of another paper, and I suspect another discipline.