My minders may be fuming right now. “We told him he had to take his leave and he’s still writing on his blog!”
Relax, minders! This was written yesterday, as were the rest of the posts that follow this week. I’m using that cool feature in WordPress that embargoes posts for release at the date and time when I say.
So I’ll take this opportunity to acknowledge my minders who prod me to take time out – you perform a valuable service not only to me and my family but the community of faith here as well. I spoke yesterday of the resurrected Christ being incarnate in the body of the local church. Many is the way this truth finds expression. Looking out for one another is one.
I’m not going to pretend I can write more than five coherent posts in a row, however. So I’ll be back at the end of the week to write another batch. And I’m going to sneak a peek once in a while as well!
“But how did it happen? I don’t understand how when he was dead he was alive again. How did it happen?”
The class had finished. The next class was waiting and I was halfway through the door. A nine year old, engrossed in the drama of the Easter story, required an answer to this question or he would be most disgruntled.
I had at the most ten seconds to reply.
Little did he know that he was asking a question that has proved to be one of the greatest stumbling blocks to a full minded, full hearted, full bodied embrace of faith in the Crucified and Risen One.
The disciples themselves had enough trouble coming to grips with it.
Even though Jesus had spoken many times of his coming death and being” raised on the third day.”…
Even though the concept of resurrection had already been adopted into mainstream post exilic Judaism …
The disciples were just as confused and disoriented on the day of Jesus’ resurrection as we often find ourselves to be. They were looking for answers that required more than a passing ten seconds.
Often we think we have to have it wrapped up so neatly.
Christian tradition has spent two thousand years developing and narrating through art and music the Great Triduum – the events leading up to and including Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday.
Good Friday services – with their focus on the vicarious pain and suffering of Jesus seem to draw the most crowds. Our own human experiences seem to be so well expressed in the shame, scapegoating, grief, disappointment and seeming failure of the Passion of Jesus. We are drawn, not through masochism, but an eternal value that breaks through the most awful things we can humanly experience.
It is the demonstration of love – it is the culmination of a truth that Jesus demonstrated and taught throughout his time amongst us “Greater love has no one than they lay down their life for their friends.”
We can feel part of the Good Friday story – it is our story that beckons us to be more complete expressions of who we are called to be, even though it culminates in death.
Holy Saturday seems to be a hiatus – an “in between time”. The gospel narratives graciously omit the thoughts and activities of Jesus’ followers at this time. Grief deserves a season of silence – where nothing is said and nothing is done.
Easter Sunday immediately throws us into the unexpected. Grief and trauma experts would say it’s far too soon to come to grips with new realities – we are still trying to assimilate and adjust to fresh loss.
Yet here it is. On the third Day the Son of Man will be raised.
The women attending the tomb at dawn with their embalming supplies must replan their day and their emotions.
The disciples must contend with their disbelief and confusion.
And I suspect this morning that many of us may find ourselves among them.
This week we have farewelled two significant fellow travellers, both well known to our community of faith, both an integral part to our understanding of who we are.
At the service for Keith and again at the service for Bruce, we uttered the words that give expression to resurrection hope, yet this morning on resurrection day, we are still dealing with our feelings of numbness and empathy for their families who are in the early stages of readjustment to “the great absence.”
Others of us, for ourselves or our friends, have received grim news about our health and once again we are confronted with finiteness and mortality.
There were those of you who, at our Good Friday service, came face to face in a deeper way with some of the grief that you have carried daily with great courage and faith.
But this morning, Easter Day, the Day of Resurrection, you are brought face to face with a new reality.
Traditionally, the Great Triduum marks this day as one of joy and celebration. We may feel under pressure, in spite of ourselves, to put on a brave face and join in with gusto the alleluias and the Easter shout.
I know that we often do these in defiance of our feelings than because of them.
Our question is not “How did it happen?” but what does the resurrection of Jesus, the Christ, God’s anointed one really mean? What does it mean to the grief I carry for myself and others?
This question moves us beyond the debate of the mechanics of resurrection and the debate around its physical, metaphorical and allegorical interpretations. The question, “What does it mean?” transcends them all.
Bruce Sanguin, who blogs at If Darwin Prayed, also reflects on the meaning of resurrection in the face of personal loss:
Paul had this theology that Christ was alive in the gathered community, risen in them, or not at all. I’ve never felt that the church took itself seriously enough as the mystical body of the risen Christ. Church is a community that knows all about despair and so is able to create a space that can hold the grief. Like Jesus, we can be a healing presence…
When the time is right, we can also play the part of the mysterious stranger in the story of the road to Emmaus. The road to Emmaus is the path we all walk when we discover that much of life is beyond our control. The conversation can turn to despair, but the stranger miraculously sets this conversation within a larger narrative of promise. Then he sits the heart-broken disciples down, feeds them, and explains that the worst thing that can happen is never the last thing that happens.
Beatrice Bruteau , in The Easter Mysteries, reflects on resurrection thus:
It’s about “anointing” the world to be the real presence of God. This is what is celebrated in the Easter vigil and Eucharistic Feast. What we call “resurrection” is the full manifestation of the Incarnation itself. This is the revelation of what and who we really are…
…Thus the divine life comes down from heaven and is sown in a perishable body. But the divine life gradually rises up as the imperishable that it truly is. The world itself is to be wrapped in the mantle of divine praise, the presence of the life-giving Spirit. And this takes place through us, the highly conscious elements of the world, the humanity made from “humus,” from the dust of the earth, the dust of the stars, and organized into a “living being,” which is ultimately to realize itself as the “life-giving Spirit.” The first humanity was from the earth, a humanity of dust; the second humanity is from heaven….Just as we have borne the image of the humanity of dust, we shall also bear the image of the humanity of heaven. (1Cor.15:47,49)
If that wine is too rich and heavy, try this. Rebecca Lyman writes:
In his black and white photographs, [Ansel] Adams portrayed the whole range of tones from deepest black to pure white. Black and white are not oppositions as much as ends of a continuous range of light. His development technique overcame the limitations of the photographic paper to reproduce more closely the ratio of the human eye: we see much more than what a camera could reproduce. In his photographs of Yosemite snow and granite, Adams revealed to us what we physically see. Our minds and eyes are no longer disconnected. In Adams’ photographs we see light spread throughout the zones of black and into white again.
On Easter the resurrection stories of Jesus connect our eyes and hearts to our minds as Gethsemane becomes Eden. We have spent a week soaked in pain, separation, betrayal, and fatal suffering. What our hearts sought, our eyes did not find in the awful torture and death of Christ. None of this was what should have happened to a good man in Jerusalem. The male disciples flee and the women disciples stay, but all see nothing but the relentless victory of death.
Now in the early morning, the women encounter grief and joy as the darkness of the tomb gives way to light as dazzling as snow and lightning. The places that we knew were empty of hope are filled with divine presence, and the world as a whole has been remade new. We go to the garden looking only to be near our lost beloved, and find ourselves embraced by Love itself.
[At the Easter Vigil before dawn, we pray] This is the night … when Israel came out of Egypt, when all who believe in Christ are delivered, when Christ broke open the bonds of death. This is the most holy and blessed darkness where restoration and healing come from “Christ, the Morning Star who knows no setting—he who gives his light to all creation.”[1]
These places in ourselves that we avoid are exactly where God makes a home. What we consider to be tombs of our buried hope and dreams become the gardens of God’s renewal. The sharp realities of suffering, death, and grief are essential to the continuum of love and joy at Easter; their very darkness is what causes the light of resurrection to dazzle.
We don’t have to come to grips with it all at the mouth of the empty tomb on Easter morning. On the calendar, Easter is a season that runs, not just over this long weekend, but fifty days. Indeed, every Sunday is a reorientation to resurrection affirmations.
We ponder at leisure the fresh realities that the empty tomb of Easter places before us. And, like the women and the Twelve who were amongst the first, as Jesus’ intimates, to reflect on the new reality that confronted them, we too can move from confusion and despair to a courageous embrace of resurrection faith and drive.
So how does one satisfactorily answer a nine year old’s question about resurrection in 10 seconds?
“But how did it happen? I don’t understand how when he was dead he was alive again. How did it happen?”
“I don’t really know how. God did it!”
His look of relief and wonder was transparent.
“Oh, God did it! Wow!”
I also breathed a sigh of relief. That was all he wanted to know for now. And it’s a starting point.
“Why is it called Good when such a bad thing happened?”
There’s a bit more to this question than just the etymology that says “good” comes from “God” and that some say it was originally “God’s Friday.” It’s helpful to just sit and ponder the question a while.
Let such stillness take you past the rubrics of theological niceties, past the head stuff about Hebrew sacrificial systems and philosophical nit-picking. Descend into the heart of things, and if possible, the gut. Let the question sit viscerally.
The answer may not come, but you will know at a deeper level what Good Friday is about. And the question will feel different. Then read the story of the Passion in one of the gospels again.
When I was a schoolboy somewhere back in the last millennium, there were class monitor jobs that were much sought after – cleaning the blackboard, feeding the gold fish, collecting the lunch orders. The one no-one enjoyed was emptying the rubbish. Things haven’t changed that much – I asked the school kids the other day which monitor jobs were popular and which were the least enjoyable. Some tasks have changed in this high tech era (there is an energy monitor), but someone still has to put out the rubbish! The students agreed however, that the least enjoyable jobs were important. Someone had to do them.
I guess foot-washing was on the list of least desired tasks amongst Jesus’ contemporaries. It was the task of the least influential person in the household to wash the dust and animal dung from the feet of weary travellers as they reclined at table. When Jesus gave one final demonstration to show how the economy of the Kingdom worked by washing his disciple’s feet in preparation for the last meal they were to share, the disciples were somewhat disconsolate. Not that he was calling them to serve, but that Jesus, their teacher and mentor, the honoured one, was performing this lowly task on them!
The foot-washing became an entry point for much that Jesus had to share over that meal – the total giving of himself – reinforced in bread and wine that his disciples would eventually come to understand as a way of recognising when Jesus would continue to be amongst them – in serving one another and in table fellowship.
Some of the lousy jobs ascend to the highest order!
The woman pours expensive perfumed ointment over Jesus’ head. It was worth about a year’s wages. The critics kick in: “How extravagant!. The money for that could have been used to to feed the poor.”
Jesus defends her against the hypocrisy of her attackers. She knows what he’s about – they don’t. The challenge of his way will be too much for his opponents and they will use their temporal power to be rid of him. In the best way she knows how, she prepares him for burial while affirming her allegiance (is this what really drew the criticism?) “Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.”
Having attended on Holy Monday the funeral of my former seminary principal, I reflect on certain associations with this passage on how the good news is proclaimed. This is compounded as I prepare to take the funeral service of a foundation member of my church tomorrow, Maundy Thursday.
One a renowned scholar and shaper of our movement, the other a quiet thoughtful man who preferred to keep in the background. Both “poured their ointment” in their devotion to the way of Jesus and their gentle humility “proclaimed good news” to all within their respective spheres of influence.
The Parable of the Ten Virgins (Matthew 25:1-13) finds its place in the Passion narrative of Matthew’s gospel. As the storm clouds of Jesus’ coming trial and crucifixion loom and gather, it is a reminder to those following the way of the peace of the Kingdom to remain alert and vigilant. Life and its events have a way of catching us by surprise. When awake and aware, we can savour and appreciate the fullness of what is taking place. We can be wholly present and wholly included in the gifts and graces of the occasion. If we are only half-awake or in a state of boredom, we not only fail to catch what others see, we might miss the boat altogether.
The parable is an invitation to savour with our whole being and full range of senses the events of our life, to discern where the Bridegroom is present and calling, to celebrate and not miss out through lack of focus.
Palm Sunday Peace immediately leads to confrontation. Jesus returns to the Jerusalem Temple and starts flipping over tables. He declares, “The Scriptures say, ‘My house shall be called a place of worship.’ But you’ve turned it into a place where robbers hide.”
The extortionate practices of exchanging Roman money for Temple money in order to purchase animals and birds for sacrificial rites was a long way from the kingdom of the heart and mind that Jesus was announcing. Such illustrates the continuing tension between Church and State, always an uneasy relationship.
The Church must necessarily don its institutional garb to negotiate with the descendants of Caesar. Sometimes it has sold its soul, and more often it has negotiated salvation for the common good in terms of public health, education and welfare.
This seems to work best when the relationship is collaborative rather than coercive – “wet” rather than “dry”. I note the contrast between the effectiveness of the earlier collaborative Community Refugee Resettlement Scheme and the failing draconian off-shore detention system. I note the Church, having been side-lined, is being called to the rescue as government authorities seek mainland accommodation and services for the overflow.
The Church is always going to be in the situation where it must decide to speak with the voice of the Temple or the voice of the Prince of Peace. When bureaucracy, institutionalism, and the “bottom line” are in the ascendancy, we hear the voice of the Temple. If the voices of compassion, generosity, courage, empathy and grace are to the fore, we can be sure we’ve heard the Prince of Peace.
I found that local primary school children were very quick to link the reign of the Palm Sunday “Prince of Peace” with the values of the Sermon on the Mount – the term’s lessons on generosity, forgiveness, trust and peacefulness. I recall my adolescent “aha!” experience when linking the Vietnam Conflict Peace Marches with the Palm Sunday rites.
As the drama of Holy Week, the period that begins with Palm Sunday and ends Easter Sunday, unfolds, it is instructive to allow the journey of Jesus to speak into our own journey. The Palm Sunday procession of welcome anticipates the hostility that arises when the implications of spending the currency of Christ’s reign begins to dismantle and threaten dehumanising but familiar, comforting institutional structures. The irritant must be removed. So “Crucify!” “Turn the boats back!” “Cut off their payments!”
But, in the meantime, “Hosanna to the Prince of Peace!”
The garage sale went off like a shotgun. Hundreds of people moved through and we sold enough to go along way to meeting our mission commitments projections. It was a warm 34º C and the ambiance, free tea/coffee, and the mouth watering sausage sizzle meant that a lot stayed around to chat and pass the time of day. Packing up after lunch sees our siesta type sluggishness transform instantly to energetic and efficient movement. Almost ballet like, trolleys, boxes, tables and chairs waltz around customers looking for the last-minute mark-down. Within the hour – all is packed away and set up for Sunday church service. Of course, the local wag gets the last say at my expense. Grabbing the “crockery” sign, he made a slight change, then stuck it to my study door. I intend to leave it there (for a while, anyway).
My minders may be fuming right now. “We told him he had to take his leave and he’s still writing on his blog!”
Wondering Pilgrim 