A message for Easter
By Gordon Meyer
When I was a kid for a long time I thought that Monday was the first day of the week. I remember when my dad informed me that actually Sunday was the first day of the week and showed me how it is placed on the calendar. It really surprised me. I suppose that was because the first day of the week at school was Monday, and the last day of the so-called weekend was Sunday. The weekend is both the end of the week and the beginning of the week, but my experience of it said otherwise. This is a good example of how appearances constantly mislead us in this world.
There is some significance here for us on Easter morning. Our Lord was crucified on Friday, the day before the Jewish Sabbath. He was in the tomb on the Jewish Sabbath, Saturday, and rose the morning of the first day of the new week, which was to become the Christian Sabbath. We see in this symbolism the end of the old era, marked by the Old Testament and the Jewish church, and the beginning of the new era and the New Testament and the Christian church, which was instituted by the Lord's presence on the earth.
The first to find the empty tomb were Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. These two, last to leave the cross and the first to arrive at the sepulcher on Easter morning, symbolize the affection for the Lord felt by his disciples. They came expecting to find their beloved Teacher dead in his tomb. But as they approached there was a great earthquake, symbolizing the great change that had come over the world, and the stone was rolled back.
The stone that covered this entrance to the tomb symbolizes the literal meaning of the Holy Word. Throughout the Scriptures a stone represents truth. The stone that covered the sepulcher concealed the Christ within the way the literal meaning of the Holy Word covers the spiritual meaning within it. When the stone was rolled away the two Marys, representing the affection that true followers of the Lord have for his Truth, discovered that the tomb was empty, because the Lord, the Christ, had risen at the completion of his mission to bring his truth into the world and reveal it to us. A deeper understanding of the Lord was introduced into the world by his resurrection.
It was the custom at crucifixions to put a sign on the cross declaring the crime committed. Pilate had the soldiers put up a sign that read "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews." The chief priests objected to this saying to Pilate, "Do not write 'King of the Jews,' but, "This man said, 'I am the King of the Jews." Pilate answered, "What I have written, I have written."
Something interesting about that sign is that because of the population in Jerusalem in those days, which spoke different languages, the sign was written three times, in Hebrew, Greek and Latin. Now consider. The Old Testament was written originally in Hebrew. The New Testament was originally written in Greek. And Swedenborg wrote his writings about those Scriptures in Latin. Hebrew, Greek and Latin. Coincidence or providence? I think it was providential because the writings of Swedenborg regarding the Lord and his Word are one way in which the Lord has come again. They are, in that sense, another testament, another revelation of his meaning to us. The writings themselves are not the testament, because they only contain the key to the hidden testament that is already present in the text. But the rolling away of the stone, which happens when we read and understand Swedenborg's writings, is the second coming of the Lord. He comes to each person who looks into these writings and finds new meaning in the Word because of them.
There is another way the Lord comes to us again. That is when we leave this world and enter into his heavenly kingdom. However, if we have already entered into it by our regeneration as spiritual beings in this life, we have already experienced the second coming of the Lord. This understanding is reinforced by the fact that in the Holy Word clouds mean the literal text that obscures the spiritual meaning hidden within it. When it says in the gospels that the Son of Man will come in a cloud, it is referring to his coming in the inner, spiritual meaning of the Word that brings power and glory, a greater understanding and the salvation that goes with it.
The angel rolled the stone away and then he sat upon it. This signifies that the inner spiritual meaning of the Holy Word rests upon the foundation of the literal sense.
Who was the angel sitting on the stone? Since angels get all that is angelic about them from the Lord, an angel in the Word actually means an attribute of the Lord. No angel was actually necessary to move the stone. The Lord could have done it himself. The reason there is an angel present is to represent the Divine power that is able to remove the literal meaning and reveal the spiritual meaning of the Word to our finite minds. This is necessary to bring forth the new Word of God that occurs in the resurrection of the Christ. It says in Revelation that only the Lamb was able to open the seals of the book. Only the Lord can reveal the inner truth of his Word to us. The angel sitting on the stone represents the power of the spiritual sense of the Word, which sits on and teaches us from the letter, its literal meaning.
We are told that while he sat upon the stone the angel's "appearance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow." This had a different effect on the soldiers guarding the tomb than it did on the two women. The soldiers were terrified and became as if they were dead, completely overwhelmed by their fear. These mighty soldiers, whose job it was to be sure that the tomb remained sealed so that the old religion could remain, were overpowered by the presence of the Divine in the Lord. They had no power to keep that stone in place.
The women, on the other hand, having been reassured by the angel and seeing that the tomb was indeed empty, ran quickly to tell the others. The text says they departed quickly with fear and great joy. Their fear represents the sense they had that this event far surpassed their understanding; that it was a work of God that negated the awful fact of death. Their great teacher, who had promised them that by believing in him they would conquer death, had now demonstrated the truth of his teaching. It was beyond their comprehension and yet, here it was. They had felt the earth shake, they saw the huge stone turned aside and the angel sitting upon it as bright as lightning, and they saw the effect this had on the soldiers. The truth could not be denied. The resurrection was real!
And so they ran in joy. In the Word, walking represents going forward along our path through life. To run means to live life more intensely and to run in joy expresses the deep satisfaction of experiencing the presence of the Lord's love and truth within us. In the spiritual world and in our spiritual self there is no time. Time refers to the state we are in. Therefore, to run quickly denotes a state in which our affection is intense and our thought is certain and full.
A disciple is one who seeks the truth. Women represent the affection we have for that truth, the love and desire for it. So the women ran quickly in their joy to bring the truth to the waiting disciples. And what happened? There before them they saw their Savior. They had come to view his broken body and instead in a few short moments their grief was transformed to joy when they were greeted by the Master himself. "Hail," he told them. That greeting wishes health and blessing. They were greeted by the Savior with spiritual healing. Their grief was turned to joy in a moment. They were overcome. They prostrated themselves at his feet and worshipped him. The Lord's feet here represent his Divine natural, the fact that he had made his humanity divine. Their taking hold of his feet shows how the Lord joins to himself those who worship him from genuine affection for his truth, the love that comes from his truth into our hearts if we are open to it.
The Lord tells them not to be afraid, but to go and tell his brethren to go into Galilee and there they will see him. He calls the disciples his brothers. This expresses a very consoling truth. By the glorification of his human, the Lord has brought himself closer to us. This is why we are to worship God as the Lord Jesus Christ, because in him we can see and know God as a person, a personal God who is with us. Without the Lord we cannot experience the union with God that knowing him as our Lord makes possible. Our union with God must be a reciprocal union and if we cannot relate as a person to a personal God the union isn't the same. This is what his glorification and resurrection achieves. It brings together in himself the union of divinity with humanity. When that union came forth from the tomb of the old religion into the new world created by his presence in it, he showed us the prototype of the human being. He had cast off everything impure about his humanity and kept only what was truly human. Having made the human divine and the divine human, he became Immanuel, God With Us.
Judea, Samaria and Galilee represent the celestial, spiritual, and natural levels of the church respectively. So Jesus is telling the women to tell the disciples, now his brothers, to meet him in the natural principle of the church. That's where we are. We are here in the natural world, engaged in seeking the truth in the Lord's church. We are the Lord's sisters and brothers. We are the ones he is calling to join him, to unite our spirits with his spirit so that he can perfect us as he perfected his own human. What could be more joyous than that? It began that first Easter morning when the angel of the Lord rolled back the stone and released the Savior into our midst. This Easter morning isn't just the first day of the week, it is the first day of the rest of our lives in this world and the next. Let us leave behind the old tomb on this new Sabbath and run in joy to meet our Savior.