Alleluia, Christ is Risen!
He is risen indeed, alleluia!
I love today. Today is my favorite day. After forty days of hiding the alleluia, we finally get to break it out again, in all its glory, and spend a whopping fifty days celebrating this season of Easter. That’s ten more days than we spent on Lent. So there, season of repentance, Easter trumps guilt every time.
Or does it? I wonder...
When the women go to see the tomb, there is a great earthquake as the angel rolls away the stone and just plops down on it like a golf chair. “Hey, ladies, what’s up? Looking for a body? Yeah, you just missed him. Headed to Galilee, didn’t he tell you? Might want to remind his disciples, then.”
Whoops. The disciples. The faithful twelve who were nowhere to be found while Jesus was put on trial, abused, beaten, and strung up to die. The men who had followed him and seen his miracles and been so excited about him, who turned tail and ran when the going got tough. Poor guys. Scared and scattered, what in the world will they make of this announcement from the women? Worried Jesus might call them on their abandonment? Frightened he’ll find another group of followers who’ll do better this time, leaving the twelve to grieve and wander alone?
But I wonder, too, what the women made of it? That angel scared the Roman guards into passing out, but the women stayed alert, payed attention, took it all in
And while their buzzing brains were trying to make sense of it all, as they are on their way to tell the men about this curious and terrifying thing that just happened
“Rejoice!” says Jesus. I know it says ‘greetings’ in your bulletin, but the Greek word is less formal than that, more of a ‘peace and blessings’ or ‘shalom y’all’ or ... well, really, we don’t need to get picky about it. He could have said ‘asparagus soup’ and it still would have been wonderful. Because
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Christ is risen, indeed, alleluia!
I mean, the women, the men, the followers and rulers, barely had time to get used to the idea of his death, had only just gotten started into grieving, and here he is again, standing right in front of them,
and I can only imagine the terror and energy that grabbed those women as they saw him, fell down before him, and took hold of his feet. My guess is they would have embraced him upright, but their knees probably gave out. All of their energy for so long had been put on this Rabbi, their lives had been absorbed in the ministry of teaching, feeding, healing, and then, when they spoke too much truth to power, the one who loved all was taken from them and slaughtered like a sacrificial lamb. And if you’ve ever loved somebody, you know what pain it can be to see that one in pain. They could do nothing to stop his execution. They could do nothing to hasten his death so he wouldn’t suffer so much. They couldn’t even bury him properly because of the holiday.
I know Jesus knew the women’s pain, because he’s been walking with us while we’ve been hurting, loving us while we’ve hated ourselves and each other. So he comes as one among us, living in the pain with us, and though he loves us more completely and honestly than anyone else can, we let him be crucified, we clamored for it last week, every time we deny him or live like he’s just another excuse to either give up chocolate or buy multiple pounds of the stuff, we’ve forgotten what his life is like.
So while we can be ridiculously happy that he’s not ever going to die again, what do we do with the guilt at how we’ve killed him? What do the men do when they find out he’s been resurrected?
Well, we don’t get that part of the story today. We’ve got fifty days, remember, to live into this story. But what we do get, I think, is a little bit better.
Remember, the angel appeared, rolled back the stone, and told the women to let the other disciples know Jesus was on the way to Galilee. They were on their way to do just that, no more convincing required, when Jesus himself, in the flesh, stopped on by just to say hello.
It seems to me that Jesus was also a bit excited to be back. Maybe I’m projecting here, because I absolutely love to say
Alleluia, Christ is risen!
Christ is risen, indeed, alleluia!
but I think Jesus was just as eager to see those women as they were to see him, if not more so. Just as glad to be on the other side of death as to know in his skin and bones that we’re right there with him because of what he gave us.
We can live in guilt, sure. There’s always going to be more we can’t and don’t do than what we can and do. But Jesus himself walks with us. Jesus in the flesh greets us on the road and restores us.
The women grabbed at his feet, maybe because that was all they could bear. Maybe because it was a sign of service and intimacy - remember how Jesus washed his disciples’ feet before he handed himself over. But for all of our things done and left undone, things said and left unsaid, good intentions that never got anywhere, promises broken, injustices ignored, so on and so forth, in the light of the resurrection these things, like us, are just dust. Unlike us, they will not last. Our guilt and sin, our failures and misdeeds, they have power, they have consequence, but they are not the end-all, be-all definition of who we are.
Something more solid is here, friends. Something more lasting, more permanent, more true.
So grab hold. Grab hold of his feet, though they still bear the marks of the nails. Grab hold of his presence on the road with you, whatever face he seems to wear today. Grab hold of his body and blood given and shed for you at this table, and be nourished for the resurrection life ahead of you because it is already living inside of you. And taste and see, if Christ lives in you, and he does, then you also shall live, because after all
Christ is risen, alleluia!
He is risen indeed, alleluia!
No comments:
Post a Comment