I recently rented the film I AM LEGEND with Will Smith. This is actually a remake of a 70’s film called The Omega Man which starred Charlton Heston.

The Will Smith version is vastly superior to the Charlton Heston version. Here’s the kicker. There is an alternative ending. I don’t just mean a different edit or “director’s cut” but a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ending. However you only get to see the alternate ending if you buy the Blue-ray Disc. I do not yet own a Blue-Ray player and as much as I need one all of a sudden I’m going to stick with the DVD player that I own. I went and found the alternative ending online and in my own personal opinion…it was 1000 percent better than what was released in the theater.

It is Good Friday as I write this. We are just a few days away from Easter. Mike Yaconelli was a hero of mine. I had the good fortune to meet him three or four times and I remember he once said that he wished the Gospels would have ended when Mary found the empty tomb. (That part goes like this…)

John 20:1-9

1 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.
2 So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!"
3 So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 4 Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7 as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. 8 Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed.

All four gospels have Jesus coming back and talking to the disciples. You have “the great commission”, and the part where Jesus tells Thomas to do the hokey-pokey, and the part where Jesus meets his friends as they walk along the road and they don’t recognize him. There’s a great scene at the end of the gospel of Luke where Peter stands up in a boat and jumps off like Forest Gump when he sees Lt Dan on the dock. (I love that scene.)

But what if all of that was the “alternative ending”. What if the gospels, like Mike Yaconelli pondered, ended with the discovery of the empty tomb? Would we still celebrate Easter the same way? Would we have a Christian faith? I would think we would but how would it be different? What if, since the beginning of our religion, we had to take things solely on faith. What if we never had the story of Jesus “reappearance”? How many of us would still believe?

That’s what Jesus was about, wasn’t it? Faith? We’re asked to take so much on faith. What if the main story of our faith ended with an empty tomb and not the resurrection? How would Easter change? How would our music change? How would our art change?

I’ve often quoted Arlo Guthrie who said, “You can’t have a light without a dark to stick it in.” I’ve taught that Easter is only meaningful in its purest form if we embrace Good Friday. But I’ve never looked at it from the other way before. We need Easter in order to full appreciate the crucifixion. Without the dancing there is only the weeping.

I love the Psalms. David writes these amazing lyrics where he is down on his knees in the filthy parking lot and screaming “Why God? Why?” and then a few songs later he’s singing about the dance he will do before God...that the entire earth will sing at any moment.

Yes, I’m fascinated by the idea of a gospel that ends with the empty tomb but I think in order for us to survive as a religion, we must have the dance to go along with the weeping. If we don’t cry we cannot laugh. If we don’t laugh we cannot cry.