The Principle of Graveyards

I’m taking a class on Faulkner and the Bible. Most of the time, I’m confused. Faulkner is very confusing, and connections between Faulkner and the Bible are also very confusing. But my professor is amazingly brilliant, and even though I’m not always completely following what he’s saying, I write it all down because oftentimes he’ll flippantly throw out deep and poetic sentences that I like to capture in their entirety.*

The week before last we read Jeremiah and this past week we read Matthew and Mark, looking at how Jesus is reconstituting Israel, and how he preserves his sinlessness for the people of Israel by standing in solidarity with sin**.  We talked about how the resurrection was not merely a resuscitation but a resurgence. And in the middle of that train of thought, Professor Wilson casually throws this sentence out there:

“Resurgence is forward motion into new life;
the whole principle of graveyards contradicted and canceled.”

What a wondrous way to say that, and what a glorious truth! I love that Professor Wilson is telling us the gospel in unconventional ways in this class, and I love that this thought can guide my thinking this Holy Week.

I know we still have Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and a lot of solemn and momentous things to stop and remember this weekend, but I love that, even so, we already know how it ends. We already know that there is Resurrection – resurgence! –  and that the whole principle of graveyards is contradicted and cancelled. And we get to celebrate that this Sunday!

Happy Holy Week, everyone.

*Well, I also write it down because I have to take notes (or doodle or something) to stay focused, and because it is class, after all, so notes are good…

**I copied this word-for-word from my notebook. It’s another one of those things that I wrote down because it sounds poetic and deep.

[image via We Heart It]