Transforming and Transitioning Toward the Future…
Finding Christ in Tombs Unsealed!

In 2005, S. Curtis Tuffs wrote the powerful and meaningful lyrics to a new 5-verse hymn: “Christ, Within Us Hidden,” based upon the prayerful poetry of the Australian writer Michael Leunig. Here are the lyrics to verses 1 and 5:

Christ, within us hidden. Christ, in all and each.

Christ, who comes unbidden. Christ, within our reach.

Christ, in love recovered. Christ, in hope revealed.

Christ, in faith discovered. Christ in tombs unsealed.

Finding “Christ in tombs unsealed” is just what we seek during lent and will find on the Day of Resurrection. But we must be willing, by faith, to journey toward life’s tombs, into the tombs, and only then back out of tombs unsealed.

Lent is the right time each year to confront all that entombs us. There are lots of things that do so, regularly or even on a daily basis. Each of us must wonder: Am I entombed by doubts or fears? Am I entombed by matters of health or of hatreds? Am I entombed by jealousy or loneliness? Am I entombed by greed or arrogance? And so it goes, on and on.

For the sake of the world and all its peoples, Savior Jesus would not be deterred from his mission. His determination to go to Jerusalem was not fatalism but faithfulness to his God-given calling. And so he journeyed on…toward the tomb, unto death and into the tomb, trusting God’s promises to be released from a tomb unsealed on the Day of Resurrection.

When Jesus calls us, is it any different? Dietrich Bonhoeffer (the German pastor-theologian who knew much about suffering and death) tells us: “When Christ calls us, we’re bid to come and die.” And when we understand dying and death (both all our daily little deaths and our final dying) in the light of Easter, we’re free for faithful living by finding Christ in all our tombs unsealed.

Grace and Peace!

John