Alleluia! Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed.
Alleluia!
For many of us, there was a moment when we didn’t think we
would ever ride a bike. I remember wanting to get rid of those training wheels
until the moment of truth (when I sat on the, supported by one of my parents,
grasping the grips so tightly that my knuckles were white), then I told my
parents that I wanted to wait until tomorrow. As children, we are more in touch
with our fears and are definitely more willing to express those fears to
others. As we mature, we manage to exude a confident appearance even if we are
as nervous as we once were about getting rid of the training wheels. There is
nothing unusual about being scared at transformation. Whether it is learning to
ride a bike, moving to a new place, going to college (or graduate school),
becoming a parent, or retiring from a long career. Transformation requires us
to enter the fray of anxiety by leaving the comfortable flow of the known.
Transformation is not an instantaneous occurrence. It takes
time and that time can breed uncertainty. Experiencing new challenges along the
way can scare us from new paths back to those comfortable places where we are
confident in our ability to stay afloat. Now there are many who say that this uncertainty
is overcome with knowledge and others point to experience and practice, and
still others, gifts and talents. I
believe the ability to overcome the barriers to transformation demand something
inside, a resolve that exists deep in our hearts. We often describe it with
words like courage and perseverance, but this deep energy that is at the heart
of who we are and connects us to the world around us is God. God is always
there and yet our ability to grow and be transformed requires us to build our
relationship with those deepest parts of our soul, so that God can help us
through the times of challenge so that we can reach deeper fulfillment and
love.
Jesus was about transformation. He inspired his disciples
and others who heard his message (and hear his message) to transform their existence,
to find fulfillment through love and service. He called people to follow radical
paths of change. But then there was uncertainty. Jesus was arrested, tried,
convicted and ultimately put to death. Some of his followers fled. Peter,
considered the first among the disciples, denied that he even knew Jesus. I say
that there was some uncertainty, but it wasn’t like Jesus hadn’t told his
disciples that this was going to happen. Jesus told them the night before he
died about what would happen next, but they were unwilling and unable to
comprehend (I’m not blaming them, because I would, no doubt, have been as
skeptical as they were). Those first generation disciples thought it was over
when they witnessed Jesus’ body being carried into a tomb. Their knowledge and
experience led them to believe that Jesus’ life was finished so they were
forced to make a choice: continue to face the anxiety of the path Jesus
envisioned with them or return to a comfortable, safe and secure life. For
Peter, Andrew, James, and John, should they risk losing their own life fishing
for people or return to their boats to fish for fish.
And with that choice hanging over the disciples and the many
other faithful followers of Jesus, we are brought to this day when we celebrate
Jesus’ resurrection.
Just like us, the gospel writers were unsure how
resurrection happened. What I mean by that is that we do not have a description
of the actual moment that Jesus returned from the dead. What we do have, is
various descriptions of people reacting to an empty tomb, or seeing Jesus in a
new form. In John’s Gospel, Mary Magdalene is the one who first realized that
something wasn’t as it was “supposed” to be.
Mary didn’t say, “Alleluia, Christ is Risen!” as we proclaim
every year on Easter morning. She, instead, reports to the disciples that
Jesus’ body has been stolen and she doesn’t know where “they” have laid him. I
am unsure whom she means by “they,” but I can surmise from the context that
“they” wasn’t the close inner circle of Jesus’ followers.
I can’t tell you why she suspected that persecutors would
want to steal Jesus’ body. Logic tells me, as someone who has heard this story
since I was a little child and has studied the history of 1st
century Palestine, that the grave robbing suspects would want Jesus’ body to
stay exactly where it was: in the dark recesses of a tomb blocked from the rest
of the world by a heavy stone.
Mary stood in fear at what her next step should be. The role
of Mary Magdalene in the life of Jesus is one of conjecture. Dan Brown did base
his fictional Da Vinci Code on some
credible scholarship. Should she return to her previous life, a life filled
with sin where she didn’t honor herself, let alone the community. Or should she
continue to delve deeper into her new life, a life of fulfillment and love.
Mary is on the precipice of decision (or indecision).
Mary didn’t know the rest of the story, nor was she colored
by thousands of years of scholarship about the political structure of the day.
She jumped to a conclusion about what must have happened.
We can laugh off Mary’s reaction from our vantage point of
faith-filled knowledge, but that doesn’t leave us as innocents. We are as
guilty as Mary of making quick judgments based on limited information. Whether
it is classifying people by outward appearance or assuming someone’s motives
without asking clarifying questions. We make these conclusions using a mixture
of experience, knowledge, intuition, and a little bit of the luck. As we get
older, we are more convinced that our snap judgments about various things are
truth, which often clouds us from keeping an open mind about how we might
change to fulfill goals greater than our own. We can often jump to conclusions
that convince us that we should turn around and return to the comfortable way.
It is like sitting on that bike, shouldn’t I just keep those training wheels on
forever. Is it that big a deal?
We could probably live, forever, without ever changing that
much. We could just coast through our lives dealing with our own needs or the
needs of the few people closest to us. That way of being may be smooth, but it’s
not fulfilling. It doesn’t respond to that inner desire to find meaning,
solace, and strength from deep within the soul, that place where God exists
within each one of us.
Holy Week and Easter are about living out the cycle of
transformation. We begin by celebrating who we are on Palm Sunday, and then
realizing that we can be more if we take a risk to step forward and let our ways,
those ways that are so comfortable, to die. And then, if we can maintain the
path through the trials of transformation, we come out on the other side as
something greater, resurrected into something new.
We can’t do this alone. If we depend on our own inner call,
we will be content to stay where we are, safe and secure in the warm cocoon of
our own making. Community forces us to discern new ways to be transformed, new
ways to reach beyond our own secluded existence, in an effort to find new paths
to God. Yes, there are some who laugh at our ancient practices, but they are
proven as ways to deepen our souls, to find that which feeds our ability to
overcome the uncertainty of the path to transformation.
Mary Magdalene stood at the precipice of decision. She was uncertain
about moving forward or returning to what she had left behind until she
realized that the one she thought was a gardener was really the resurrected
Jesus. Then she had the strength to move forward to something new. Maybe you
have seen Jesus in the most unlikely of people, a person who helps you take
steps forward rather than backwards. Maybe you are that person to others. That
is what it means to experience resurrection, not just on this Easter Day, but every
day of every year.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! That proclamation isn’t in the
past tense, it is now. It reminds us to always be on a transformational journey
(in other words, don’t get too comfortable), seek God deep within your being, depend
on your community of faith, serve others knowing that you are sharing God, depend
on others when you are hesitant about your new existence, and you will discover
the miracle of the resurrection (just as Mary Magdalene did on that first
Easter morning). Be made new through the act of letting old ways, die. Alleluia,
Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!
Easter Sunday
April 8, 2012
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