Easter Sunday

With Easter coming as early as it does this year — second only to March 22nd (which won’t happen for another 280 years or so), it means that the signs of spring that we normally associate with Easter are that much more difficult to find. The forsythia bush in front of the rectory is buried under two and a half feet of snow — not a bad thing though since it insulates the bush against the cold — but it’s hard to believe it will ever re-emerge. Instead, I have a lone sprig of forsythia given to me when I was down in Massachusetts two weeks ago that sits in my south-facing kitchen window. It bloomed on Maundy Thursday. Likewise, I have some pussy willows that I got at the same time. An orchid that has done nothing for three years finally decided to bloom last week. And I do see that the buds on the lilacs are beginning to set. I will take those small signs of spring as I can.

At the same time, I also look for those signs of resurrection that happen in our midst, those signs that remind us that Christ has risen and the powers of death — be they spiritual or physical — will no longer have dominion over us.
That search sometimes requires more effort. It’s an effort that requires us to look in places where there seems to be no life to find it again.

As a Japanese haiku says:

Ah, the fragrance of new grass!
I her His footsteps coming —
The Lord of the Resurrection!

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The women knew the drill. Up early in the morning with ointments to prepare the bodies of the dead. Taking something precious and dear to restore dignity to those who had been executed by the Roman authorities. Perhaps they take nard, that sweet fragrant oil, ready to anoint the bodies. In the other gospels, a group of women go to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body.

Mary, though, in the gospel of John, does not seem to come prepared with oil. She comes alone, not in the company of women. She walks in the dark of the morning, that vulnerable time of day when the earth is still waking up, when the day’s potential is but a dream. For her, coming to mourn her teacher, Jesus, surely the day holds nothing but sorrow.

And then she sees the great stone rolled back. Maybe she was the Mary who, along with Martha, stood at the stone in front of Lazarus’ tomb a little while earlier. Her sister, Martha, well aware that Lazarus had been dead four days warned Jesus, who was about to roll the stone away, that there would be a stench. So Mary Magdalene, seeing the stone rolled back, must have recoiled instinctively.

But only for a second. She knows. She does not even need to see. And she runs, runs as fast as she can go back to Peter and the other disciples, telling them Jesus’ body is not there. Peter and the other disciple, presumably John, not trusting a woman’s words, run to the tomb, racing one another. They look in, see the linens on the ground, no corpse and believe, though they do not understand exactly what they believe. Then they leave trying to outrun one another.

Mary Magdalene remains, weeping. Her posture of grief ultimately leads her to a revelation the men do not receive in their haste to get back to the others. The second time Mary looks into the tomb, she sees two angels, one sitting where Jesus’ head had been; the other where his feet had been. They ask her why she is weeping. She answers that her teacher’s body is gone. She then turns around and sees Jesus. In her grief, she does not recognise him at first. He asks her the same question, with tenderness: Woman, why are you crying? Her grief blinds her to his identity but she is insistent in her task: I must find Jesus’ body.

Then Jesus calls her by name and she answers, now understanding that she is speaking to the risen Christ. Not only does he restore her identity, but he gives her a new one: that of an apostle, the first apostle to witness to Christ’s resurrection. He tells her to go tell the others he has risen. Then she runs off.

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As these things take place, new words break out of the silence of Holy Saturday and touch the hearts and the minds of the men and women who have known and loved Jesus. These words are: ‘He has risen, risen indeed.’ They are not shouted from the rooftops or carried around the city on big placards. They are whispered from ear to ear as an intimate message that could be truly heard and understood only by a heart that has been yearning for the coming of the Kingdom and has recognized its first signs in the words and deeds of the man from Nazareth.

All is different and all is same for those who say ‘Yes’ to the news that is whispered through the ages from one end of the world to the other. Trees are still trees, rivers are still rivers, mountains are still mountains, and people in their hearts are still able to choose between love and fear. But all that has been lifted up in the risen body of Jesus and placed at the right hand of God. The prodigal child is placed in the loving embrace of the Father; the little child is put in its mother’s arms; … brothers and sisters invited to the same table. All is the same, and all is made new. As we live our lives with a resurrection faith, our burdens become light burdens and our yokes easy yokes because we have found rest in the gentle and humble heart of Jesus that belongs for all eternity to God. (1)

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‘Woman, why do you cry? Man, why do you cry? Child, why do you cry?’ The risen Jesus asks that question to each one of us this Easter morning. In his gentle asking, he invites us to let go of what makes us ache, what weighs us down.

There is plenty in this world that causes us to tremble. We watch the continued deterioration and escalation of violence in the Middle East, and find ourselves in the sixth year of a ‘war’ with Iraq that seems to have no end. We know that even two years later the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina continue to influence heavily the lives of our sisters and brothers in Louisiana and Mississippi. Racism sadly still is alive and well in our country. And then there are the personal burdens that many of us carry with precarious family member’s or friend’s health, job insecurity, and even the sense that there is plenty enough snow now, thank you very much.

There is plenty in this world to make us want to hide, to say ‘no,’ to live in a world of deadened possibilities, to live in a state of fear.

But that is not how we, as people of the resurrection, are called to live. On this Easter morning, we can rejoice that those deaths in our lives have been resurrected with Christ. Jesus calls us by name, dries our tears, and invites us to believe in the God of Hope.

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Rather than live in a world of ‘no’s, this Easter morning we are invited to say, ‘Yes.’ To say ‘Yes’ is to make a leap of faith, to risk oneself in a new and often scary relationship. Not being quite sure of what we are doing, or where it will lead us, we try on the ‘Yes’. In a world that is so marked by ‘no’s, we are called to say ‘Yes’ to the good news of restoration, reconciliation, and resurrection. Like Mary Magdalene, Jesus calls us to say…

• ‘Yes’ to understanding that part of our identity is a child of God, marked and sealed as Christ’s own through the sacrament of baptism
‘• Yes’ to proclaiming the gospel, participating in the prayers of the church, seeking and serving Christ.
• ‘Yes’ to recognising Christ in one another
• ‘Yes’ to change, to possibilities, to growth, to new birth.
• ‘Yes’—to whatever Christ calls us to do.
• ‘Yes’ to trust in God’s ways, though they are not always clear to us.
• ‘Yes’ to be people of faith, of hope, of the resurrection.

Bishop Barahona of El Salvador writes in this year’s Easter message:

‘The resurrection is the hope of the Christian community. With the resurrection, Jesus invites us to a project of hope and to change our lives. It is time of the resurrection; the third day has arrived, Easter has arrived. What have we done for our brothers and sisters, for our own lives? What have we done with Jesus’ project? It is time to re-examine ourselves and act so that leaders and the led are filled with hope in order to offer hope in others.’

That is what the resurrection means for us. We have been raised to new life! And that new life resounds with abundant ‘Yes’s! We, too like Mary, can run off to proclaim to others how the risen Christ has touched us, wiped away our tears, changed us, and given us hope.

As people of the resurrection, let us be those who raise things that have been cast down; make new things which have grown old; and be those who proclaim out with loud voice, ‘Yes! Christ has risen, the Lord has risen, indeed! Alleluia!’


END NOTE
(1) Adapted from Henri Nouwen: Modern Spiritual Masters Series, ed. Robert Jonas (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1998), 56-57.