The first natural and obvious reaction to the empty tomb of Jesus was that his body had been stolen. As John says in today's Gospel, till this moment they had failed to understand the scriptures that he must rise from the dead. The Apostles were slow to believe. No wonder we experience the same weakness. We started our Lenten journey with Jesus facing Satan's three temptations. Having failed to seduce Jesus, the Devil departs, only to come back "at a more opportune time". With this, Luke reminds us that there would be more such crossroads for God's people to face in the future.

Without doubt, the best known trial of Jesus in modern literature remains Dostoyevsky's chapter in The Brothers Karamazov narrating the Grand Inquisitor's revisitation of these temptations of Jesus, arguing that his way of seeing things has made him the enemy of real, tangible human happiness.

Dostoyevsky's Inquisitor implies that the truth of the human condition is bleak: most people are not capable of love without reassurance. On the Cross it seems that God was silenced once for all. When the stone was rolled over the entrance of Jesus' tomb, it seemed like the final act of God's sovereignty. Jesus was dead, the powers had prevailed, and all dreams seemed shattered. But when Mary of Magdala came to the tomb, the stone had already been moved away.

The Resurrection has set a new agenda for those who truly believe in Christ. "Behold, I make all things new!" The Resurrection is light coming out of darkness, life coming from death, the produce from the grain of wheat that falls to the ground and dies. The Resurrection is not a happy ending or a reversal of tragedy.

There is always the risk here of slipping into a false moralism in our understanding of the resurrection - pain now, reward later. But starting with Jesus's Resurrection, a whole community of people who suffered his loss when he was crucified came back to life again. Their eyes were opened in the sense that death took on another meaning. The Resurrection became the paradigm showing us the durability and indestructibility of life and justice and love.

The Gospel today speaks of an empty tomb, of witnesses whose proclamation has served as the foundation of the core beliefs of Christianity for the last 2,000 years. For us today, just repeating what Peter and John and all the others proclaimed hundreds of years ago is not automatically and necessarily meaningful. The powers of evil still seem to prevail around us.

For many, peoples and individuals alike, what we celebrate today seems too far-fetched. And I think in the face of a remarkable pageantry inflation in our country connected with this greatest of celebrations, it's high time that we seek to face the music of life seriously. As a country, I mean. The Cross tries and probes us. Being realistic in front of the Cross of Jesus, demands that we redirect our attention to the question of how that crucifixion is rooted in who and what we are.

We can discern so many signs of death today in our society on the social, political, cultural and religious levels. In the wake of a fast emerging and challenging culture, as believers we feel threatened and afraid. We experience the difficulty of making sense whenever we speak of Jesus.

Our Easter traditions are still very strong. But it's the Easter faith that we need most in the face of the stark reality that marks our lives and that looms over our future. As Rabbi Abraham Heschel says: God is waiting for us to redeem the world.