Daily Devotion - April 12
I will send a brief message each day (except Mondays) while we are pausing gathering in person. I am taking time off this week until Thursday, when I will return with another devotion.
- Kara
- Kara
EASTER SUNDAY
Mary Magdaline
This Easter there will be (spoiler!) no trumpet. We’re not doing sparklers or streamers in a sun-filled sanctuary. We are tiny faces on screens, scattered hither and yon, our bellies not likely filled with the church ladies' egg bake, and having snapped no photos of the egg hunt hullabaloo, which, with this all-day snowfall, would definitely have happened indoors this year.
And, let’s face it, it’s wildly underwhelming hearing your own creaky voice joining the musicians on the screen, with no boisterous side by side singing with harmonies thrown in by choir members if you’re lucky enough to be sitting near one of them, which almost none of us are today.
If I really want to get melancholy about the present and anxious about the future, I need only imagine all the colorful Alleluias pinched between pages in hymnals and lying motionless under pew cushions in our cold, dark, empty sanctuary while the snow falls outside the windows.
What Easter is “supposed to be,” according to us, anyway, is not what we get this year. It’s not what any of us, anywhere in the world, are getting today.
What we are getting instead is far more authentic, though.
Let’s just say nobody bought new tights or ties to wear to the sunrise gathering near the cross at Golgatha, or blew a trumpet ballyhoo at the empty tomb on that first Easter morning. They were too busy huddling in misery behind their locked doors, wearing the same thing they’d had on for days, and wondering who was going to make the next grocery run.
For all the ways the gospel accounts differ about Easter, they are consistent about this fact: nobody is celebrating. There is no rejoicing going on. It’s scary, and strange, and nobody knows what to make of it.
Jesus’ followers have lost everything. All that directed their path, all that shaped their days, all that gave them a sense of hope about the future - it’s all gone.
Jesus is gone, and they don’t know how life is going to look from now on, or even when it is safe to go back out and try to start over at living it.
So when Mary comes to the tomb on Easter morning she comes to weep. She comes to mourn what was lost. She comes to grieve the One she loved and do the work of letting go.
And what she finds is an empty tomb.
Is that hopeful? A cause for celebration? No! So what his body is gone? Who cares that the tomb is empty? Somebody must have stolen the body, or moved it, right? There is no hope in an empty tomb. The absence of death is not the same as new life. Not even close. We need our rituals around death; we need our ways to grieve together. An empty grave is just more loss.
So, swathed in her grief, standing at the gaping hole where death resides, when Mary sees Jesus not dead but alive, she doesn’t recognize him.
Please, Mary begs the one she thinks is the gardener; please sir, tell me where his body is. And then he says her name, Mary. And when she hears his voice call her name, she recognizes Jesus.
She responds, Teacher! And she tries to grab onto him, but unlike a dead martyr, an object lesson frozen in time, or a namedrop for your cause, a risen savior can’t be grasped or captured. He’s alive, bringing new life in the world, meeting us when we don’t expect it and are not even looking for him.
We don’t get to decide what he will do or how that will look.
When he calls her name, Mary is resurrected.
Her life begins anew. Out of the death of what had been comes preposterous new life, life that’s been through death to the other side.
Resurrection meets us in death.
It starts there. It can begin no other way.
It’s what happens when the Risen One meets us in our own gaping holes where death resides.
Resurrection isn’t a thing we can do.
It can’t be pursued like self-improvement, or learned like a new language, or gained as a new tool in our tool belt, or skill for our Sim.
Unfortunately for us, it is not about maintaining, or producing, or accomplishing anything at all.
As frustrating as it is, the only thing we can do if we want resurrection is to wait honestly in our death for the Risen One to bring new life.
But the good news is, this is where God is, and this is what God does.
Jesus is right here, in our lives, calling us by name. And most of the time we don’t realize it. Most of the time we mistake the Lord for a gardener. But that’s ok, because we can’t screw this up since it’s not ours to do. Jesus is the One who comes into death, and resurrection is what God is always doing.
Most of the time it surprises us utterly, so convinced are we by the finality of the death.
But sometimes, sometimes we do see it, and I don't mean only afterwards, when we are telling someone about a moment and have that sudden awareness in retrospect that what happened was holy.
I mean sometimes we see it right when it’s happening. And when we do, it feels hushed and sacred, and confusing and thrilling. It invites us to wake up wider and join in deeper.
Hearing the Risen Christ call our name changes us. Resurrection makes us more permeable and less guarded, more soft and less brittle. We find ourselves moved toward others, drawn to our deeper connection, longing for ways to water and tend that. It nudges us to resist evil, and easy targets, and apathy. And it stirs us to hold out for hope and love, trusting that they are the last word in this new reality.
Again and again, we are pulled out of death and into life, resurrected by God to reap the resurrection that the Spirit is bringing around us, in us, and through us.
So today, with all the trappings of Easter splendor stripped away, we find ourselves pared down to the heart of it. What does it mean to be Easter people? It means just this: We go bravely to the places of death and we wait.
Sometimes we feel despairing and gloomy, or sometimes we feel attentive and ready; sometimes we’re scared or bored or overwhelmed. But no matter, that’s how disciples feel. Resurrection comes just the same. When we’re weeping and not even looking for him, the Risen One calls our name.
And we may wait in darkness for a long time, not having any idea what comes next. But we will not wait forever, and death will not win. That’s an Easter promise.
Because this God comes into our darkness - is already here, in fact - poking around in the dirt where the new life will emerge. This God takes on our death, and this God brings new life.
Christ is risen.
Happy Easter.
Amen.
CONNECTING RITUAL:
Perhaps, tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we might pray in this, and so join our hearts:
Christ be wth me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.
- Patrick of Ireland (389-461)
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