The Seal on the Tomb: Reflections on the Sri Lanka Killings in Light of Resurrection Sunday

I lay in bed last night for hours, trying to shut out a nightmare.

The nightmare had happened the night before. Most days, I can take a long walk, write it out, draw, or take a busy shift at work and let the dream go before night comes again. Yesterday, the dream stayed with me, and now, at the end of the day I could see it vividly, every time I closed my eyes until I was afraid to close them anymore.

At last, I threw off my blanket and came out into the living room. I’ve often found it easier to sleep there on hard nights. My contacts were off, and the house was a familiar blur of black and grey, but through the large picture window, I could see a bright haze lighting up one corner of the sky, surrounding the vague outline of a brilliant white orb, a sphere my blurry vision expanded to be larger than life—seemingly too bright for this darkness, too large to hang in the sky, and I paused for a moment, wrapped a blanket around my shoulders, and went outside.

I’ve always been a “Look at the moon” person. I think there’s something sad and soft and beautiful the moon touches in people when they look at it and have always had a theory that those who don’t care to look at it are only the ones too afraid—or worse, too apathetic—to have this part of them touched. Disagree with me if you will in the light of day, but perhaps last night, you would have come to my view of things. It was beautiful. And the stars were so bright I could make out their hazy discs, spread out like distant snowflakes, hanging, silent.

The dream flashed through my mind again, but out here in the darkness, it’s own darkness was too shallow to reach me inside. Like the cathedrals of centuries past, with gargoyles and gnomes poking out ugly fingers and staring eyes, etched into age-old stone—not to inspire fear in the laity, but fear in the demons—it is possible to find hope in fighting darkness with darkness if done under a tapestry of stars.

I went back inside, put on the hot water, and armed myself for this hope: thick socks, blanket, music, sweatshirt, Jane Eyre, a cup of tea. I was less afraid of the dark than of my mind. The moon and stars were only the lovelier because the darkness was there. It surrounded them like a close friend, while they, in turn, lit up its shadows in a haze of silent glory. I was determined to lose my mind with this glory. To chase the moment I would forget myself. We are always most happy in the moment we forget ourselves.

I sat out there, as midnight passed, curled up in that comfort for over an hour. The cold was soon forgotten. The moon rose, higher and higher above the tree line, growing bolder in its own beauty as it expanded. The stars sang their exaltation at her glory. Like Lewis, I’ve always been convinced the stars really do sing a song we are too small to hear. But if they stopped, silence would sound different. To any who doubt I say only: You should have been there. I closed my eyes, for the first time that day in full peace, and leaned my head into the blanket.

If such was the escape of dreams, play on.

____________

At that moment, 8,000 miles away, all Hell was breaking loose in Sri Lanka with the first explosion. Hours later, when I had at last gone inside, the death toll had risen to over one hundred. When I fell asleep in the living room in the early hours of the morning, fighting to hold on to the comfort of the outside, over 200 people had been killed or were about to die and over 450 were injured in a series of eight explosions, intended to take innocent human life.

The terrorist attack is considered the largest attack on South Asian Christians in recent memory. For the hundreds—if not thousands—of families personally affected, the day of the Resurrection of our Lord will come, year after year, with horrific memories, a deep blight of innocent human blood, lost family members, carnage and remains, utter devastation, heartbreak, chaos, confusion, grief, and despair.

Of course, the day chosen was intentional. If you intend to strike fear in thousands of faith-filled people, surely the cruel knife will strike their hearts deepest on the day they celebrate the eternal victory of the God in whom they profess to believe. Kill them the day they most believe they’ve conquered. Wait for the celebration of triumph, and there plant the bomb.

When grief strikes, people say in response: There are no words. There are no words for what happened here. It seems shallow, an easy out even, probably most so to the ones saying it. Yet to a griever, it strikes deep. Because there are no words. There are no words that can hold this pain, that are full enough, deep enough, specific enough, intense enough, for this kind of sadness. There are no words that seem a proper vehicle for the weight of a crushed human soul; no words strong enough to carry the brokenness of this world. There are no words for groanings which cannot be uttered, no words to express the cry in each of us against all this that is wrong, that is evil, that should not be here, that was never meant to exist in a world like ours.

When people try to speak in this sort of pain, the words are short. No one goes on lengthy soliloquies on how it feels to be deprived of air whilst the hand is clamped over their nostrils. Often it’s only a small, gasped, “Why?” A choking, “Help me”. A “How could this happen?” trembling beneath the full weight of the fact that it did.

And perhaps, the most poignant of all—God crying to God—My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? 

No words in response to this pain. Fill the sponge with sour wine, run it over our cracked lips, let us seek numbing, seek the ending of the ending of nerves, seek the night, seek to forget, most of all to forget oneself, let us seek escape, and bring back that wine-soaked sponge, for life is too hard to take straight.

No words. No words. Except three. The three words that were the hope of every Christian in Sri Lanka this morning when they died. The three words that are their hope still. The three words on which every good and bad and evil and beautiful thing in this world hangs: He is Risen. 

Yes, on the day Christians celebrate the triumph of their Lord, it seemed a clever thing to end the battle here. It seems a move Screwtape himself would have thought of—but I honestly think he would know better. For try as the world might, the battle did not end for those Christians there. It ended 2000 years ago on a Cross, in Christ, with full satisfaction over sin. It ended 2000 years ago, today, early in the morning, when our Lord walked from an empty tomb, fully triumphant over death and all that is wrong with the world.

“No words, no words for this pain,” say we. We put our seal of sadness on the graves of those we love, and bid them goodbye. “No words. It is pain inexpressible, full of sorrow.” 

“Yes,” replies God. “But I will break the seal on your graves as I broke his. On that pain here is my seal instead: It is Finished. Here is my promise: He is risen. Let me take your pain inexpressible and full of sorrow. I have swallowed it whole. In its place, because of me, because of my grace, because I am risen, I have for you joy inexpressible, full of glory. Amen.”

We are intimate, like our Savior, with grief and pain and sorrow. We are intimate, through our Savior, with a living hope. For our hope is sure. As sure as it was since the beginning.

I weep for the hundreds who have lost their lives, brutally killed, torn apart by shards of evil. Today was chosen by their enemy as the day to end their lives. This failed. For it was chosen also by God, that they should meet Him, on the very day that guaranteed their resurrection.

Soli Deo Gloria,