Anti-symbol (Bright Year: Day 3)

An empty tomb is the natural candidate, but how do you represent something that is, by its very definition, a hole? Resurrection is the consummate anti-icon.

On October 16, 1944 the parents of Dell Cox received the letter no parent should receive: your son is missing in action. He was shot down over Yugoslavia. The weeks passed and all presumed him dead. Cox’s parents went into mourning. No one, not even the Army Air Corps, knew that Cox survived the plane crash, hiding in dugout cellars by day and traveling at night. Ninety-six days later he had made it to the Russian border and a few days later he was on a plane back to Utah. “I got home before the mail did,” says Cox. “In those days, mail wasn’t very good, and phones nearly impossible.” When he got to his childhood home, he knocked on the door and his mother answered. When she saw her son, she screamed and fainted. Dell Cox reports, “My dad came, but I didn’t have a chance to shake his hand or anything because we were trying to get Mother revived.”

Now, I ask you, what is the symbol of Dell Cox? What icon could Dell Cox’s mother possibly keep that would properly capture the idea of Dell Cox? The answer is: there is no symbol. There is no need for a symbol. For there is Dell Cox. In the flesh. Alive.

No wonder Easter doesn’t work as a holiday. Holidays are supposed to be predictable, familiar, comfortable. They are supposed to be a symbol; they are supposed to hold an idea that commemorates the dead. But there is no good symbol here. For Jesus is not an idea. And He is not dead.

Bright Year is a series exploring how the good news of Jesus’ resurrection shines over every day of the year. Read the series introduction for more.

You can read Cox’s story here.