Three years ago, on Epiphany, I received a little wooden star. Shelly had created a whole basket of them as a reminder of the magi following the light to Jesus. On each star she had written a different word or phrase that was to guide its receiver through the coming year. “Do not choose the star,” she said. “Let the star choose you.” Closing my eyes, I reached into the basket, wondering what my word might be. Friendship? Faith? Or would I get some inspirational phrase: “follow your dreams” or “let it shine!” Imagine my surprise when I turned it over to read “carry a cave.”

I rotated the star to see if it said something different from another angle. I scrutinized each letter to figure out which I was misreading. But it really said “carry a cave.” Whatever that meant. So I took it home and placed it on the little shelf where we place such things in our house, and there it has sat for more than three years. And from time to time, out of nowhere, those words will come back to me: carry a cave. And I’d be given just a piece of what they mean.

This year for Lent I read a book about fasting. It seemed like the seasonal thing to do. It reminded me of the first Lent when I tried that practice. I was in the 7^th grade, and I was feeling hardcore about my spirituality, so one day a week – on Mondays – I didn’t eat. Breakfast, lunch, or dinner. What I remember from those days was a strange sense of excitement that came over me when I started to feel my hunger. In those early afternoon hours, the hollowness in me would sharpen my sense of presence. I became more aware of myself and my surroundings. I had the sense that I had readied myself although I didn’t know what for, that my emptiness had made room for something. I was carrying a cave.

The book I read this Lent is part of a series on ancient practices of faith, and as I looked through the other titles, I realized how many spiritual practices begin with carrying a cave, with emptying ourselves in one way or another. Prayer and meditation begin by emptying our minds, carrying the cave of silence into our speaking and thinking. Sabbath is the practice of emptying one day a week, carrying a cave of inaction into our busy doing. Even service, which may feel more active, begins by emptying ourselves of self-interest, carrying the cave that makes room for the needs of others.

I’ve begun to recognize the spiritual power of emptiness. I’ve started to believe that the most meaningful thing you and I can do is to carry the cave of emptiness to each other, to show up to our relationships, not with the fullness of our schedules, of our minds, of our hearts and stomachs, but with actual space available to each other – space in our stomachs for a common meal; space in our speaking for real listening, or better yet, for shared silence; space in our schedules to do nothing, and do it together. The cave that we carry is a space we hold for ourselves and for one another.

And it is also the space where we meet God. Sitting with that star over the last three years, I’ve started to notice all the stories of those who experienced divine revelation in caves.

In her book, Learning to Walk in the Dark, Barbara Brown Taylor tells the story of exploring a cave in North Carolina. In the depths of its darkness, by the light of her headlamp, she finds a rock that she says is “impossibly sparkly.” She puts it in her pack as a souvenir. But when she gets it home, she is dismayed to find that it looks like an ordinary stone. Until she thinks to turn off the lights. In the dark, it is transformed again into the “diamond factory” she remembered. She concludes, “At least one of the day’s lessons is about learning to let go of my bright ideas about God, so that my eyes are open to the God who is…God is a cave I do not want to miss.” Taylor is far from the first to make that connection.

The biblical prophet, Elijah, St. Ignatius, St Francis, Buddha, and Muhammed all experience spiritual awakenings in caves. G. K. Chesterton writes about Francis’ transformation in his biography. He says, “At the time…when he disappeared into…the dark cavern, [Francis] underwent…a profound spiritual revolution. The man who went into the cave was not the man who came out again; in that sense he was almost as different as if he were dead…He looked at the world as differently from other men as if he had come out of the dark hole walking on his hands.”

When I told Shelly that I was preaching on that strange star she had given me, she asked if I was interested in reading the article from which the phrase came. The words belong to Sister Doris Klein, who said, “We all carry a cave, a hidden place within us, into which God longs to be born.”

Like Taylor, the cave we carry gives us new eyes with which to see the holy. Like Francis, our encounter with the divine turns our worldview upside down; and like Klein, the cave that we carry is the one in which God longs to be born.

But this week, of course, we recognize that it is also the cave where the God known in Jesus comes to die…and to live again. The cave that we carry is a place of resurrection, which always exists in a place of death.

This week, as I read the familiar story from John again, what stood out to me was the disciples’ reluctance to enter the tomb. Mary is the first to arrive, but she only gets close enough to see that the stone has been rolled away before she turns back, assuming the worst. John is next. In fact, he races Peter, but once he’s there, he can’t cross the threshold. He hangs on the precipice, uncertain. Finally, Peter makes it and goes in. Then John follows behind, and that’s when the story says they believed. It is only when they enter the tomb that they are able to recognize the possibility of new life, only when they enter the tomb that they experience the reality of resurrection. It is only when we enter the tomb that we experience the reality of resurrection.

And that is counterintuitive. It seems like the tomb should be the place most of all that confirms for us the power and reality of Death. If the promise of new life is real, it should exist as far from the tomb as possible. So it’s tempting to avoid entering the tomb. We, as a culture, avoid entering the tomb. I avoid entering the tomb. The tomb of pain. The tomb of illness. The tomb of age. The tomb of bodies failing, of minds failing. The tomb of death. I go to great lengths to stay out of the tomb.

It was true again this week. I was so excited to preach on Easter. I had this idea for a sermon that had come to me as I was walking the labyrinth earlier in Lent. Carry a cave. The cave we carry is a place of emptiness, a place where we meet God, and a place of resurrection. So neat. So positive. Wrapped up and ready to go.

And then I woke up Monday morning, ready to think about resurrection, and my city had become a tomb. The tomb for another black teenager, Robert Dentmond. The tomb for all of us whose hearts broke at the news. And I did not want to enter that tomb.

I did not want to enter it because it was Easter, and spring break, and probably the last good weather we will have until November. I did not want to enter it because it was sad, and infuriating, and complicated, and left me feeling restless and powerless. I did not want to enter it because I needed to write about an empty tomb and this one was far too full. So I stood on the outside, peering in and thinking, “I need to write about resurrection…I need to write about resurrection…How am I going to write about resurrection?” And what I needed to write about, what I needed to think about, and speak about, and preach about, was death.

It’s not time for resurrection in Gainesville. Not in the death of Robert Dentmond. It’s time to enter the tomb. It’s time to enter the tomb of racism and reckon with the black and brown bodies that pay the price of our broken systems. It’s time to enter the tomb of mental illness and face the pain and isolation that lead a young man to consider ending his own life. It is time to enter the tomb of complicity and come to terms with our own roles in the violence and injustice of our society and with the impossible moral choices we ask others to make on our behalf.

It’s time to enter the tomb of our mortality and grapple again with the knowledge that any evening may turn into a situation of ultimate consequence. That we can never get back the present moment or reverse the choices we have made; that we have just today, just now, to show our care to those we love. It’s time to enter the tomb.

But we do not enter it empty-handed. We carry a cave. We carry with us the story of a tomb which was entered and found empty. And not just a story, but an enduring faith that new life is possible, even and especially where we least expect it. And not just a belief, but an experience of resurrection, of life triumphing over death, of love defeating hate, of possibility and promise overcoming pessimism and fear again and again and again.

That’s the experience of Easter people: that every tomb, though it seems deadly dark from the outside, shimmers with a light that will not be extinguished once we let our eyes adjust; that every tomb, like every seed that falls to the ground, bears within it the hope and the promise of new life, a transformation which could not have been anticipated; that every tomb can be entered without fear, because every tomb will be emptied by the one who defeated death.

Maybe you’re not there yet. Maybe you’re still hovering at the threshold, or perhaps you turned back when you saw the stone rolled away; maybe you’ve entered the tomb, and it still feels deathly full. I’ve been there. Even earlier this week. There are tombs that feel like they’ll never be empty and caves which are too heavy to carry.

There are countless voices around us telling us that death and darkness will have the last word. That our worst fears are founded. And violence is the only answer. There are voices declaring that it’s us or them. That there is not enough to go around. That freedom for some must mean oppression for others. They want us to believe that those who are different are evil, that the stranger is our enemy. They want us to believe that war will make us free and safe. They are saying that hope is a lie; that what has been will be; that there is no point in working for change. That there will always be collateral damage, there will always be a body in the tomb.

Do not believe them. We cannot afford to believe them.

Trust the story, how on the first day of the week, while it was still early, a grieving woman went to the place of death and found it empty. And she carried that cave within her and told the story wherever she went. Carry your cave. Make a space within your life to hear again the still, small voice speaking to you of love. Allow your sight to be transformed until you see in the depths of the world’s darkness a shimmer of promise. Come out of the cave, as one walking on your hands; as one who practices love, where others rehearse violence; as one who believes in hope where others settle for the status quo; as one who knows the truth of new life where others still foolishly believe that death has power.

Enter the tombs. The tomb of Brussels. The tomb of North Carolina. The tomb of Gainesville. Every hopeless hole in the ground, every cavernous darkness. Enter them and tell the truth, that the light of love still shines and will not be overcome. Alleluia and Amen.