A couple of years ago, the pastor of the church I attended at tbe time gave a brilliant sermon about Easter morning. In a quite unexpected shift, he spoke of that glorious morning a couple thousand years ago, how the stone was thrown away from the opening of the tomb where the Lord had been laid to rest, trumpets blaring, angels rejoicing in boisterous song, all of creation roaring wild and exuberant praise at the resurrection of Jesus. This tale of Easter morning was quite the juxtaposition to the one I had heard all of my life. It was the story one would expect to hear about the God-Man being raised from the dead…with victorious, indignant, middle-finger raised to death and suffering.
But a resurrection full of fanfare and celebration and trumpet blasting wasn’t what happened at all. Rather, resurrection morning was quiet, secret, and revealed to only a small handful of people…and certainly not the people you’d think God would want to shove the glory of the resurrection into the faces of. In fact, it took alot of convincing many of Jesus’ followers that the resurrection had even happened, much less the Romans. In some ways, it kind of feels like death still won that day even though life managed to slip in through the backdoor, largely unnoticed. Whether or not you believe that an actual, physical resurrection took place…that question in some ways is irrelevant… why would the Gospel texts include a story of Jesus making a comeback that seemed so…lackluster?
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I attended Easter services on Zoom this morning, gathered with a beloved church family I used to be a part of when I lived in New York State. I am now proud to be counted as a virtual member. The pastor of this group also happens to be one of my dearest friends, a person who is one of the wisest, kindest people I know, a woman who is fiercely loyal to me and constantly encourages me onward even when she sees me at my worst.
This morning she spoke of hiding, and how we who are staying at home instead of physically attending Easter church are in some ways similar to those who were hiding during the days surrounding Jesus’ death. Both of our hidings are rooted in fear…the fear of what might happen if we venture out too far beyond our homes. Just as the disciples and other followers of Jesus faced an uncertain future, so do we not know exactly where our resurrection from COVID will come from and when, even if there will eventually be a resurrection of new life that feels safe and good.
This “hiding” is dreadful and lonely. I’m trying to keep a stiff upper lip about it, especially considering that when all is said and done, my situation is far better than that of so many people in the world right now. But today…I broke down and cried. Cried because I hate feeling like a pariah among many people in my life because of what I may carry home from the hospital, who feel like they have to slather themselves in hand sanitizer after brushing something I’ve touched. Cried because the lack of intimate physical touch by loved ones completely undoes me. Cried because I don’t know if I’m making the right decisions for my children during these times. Cried because I daily have multiple people asking me my opinion on what they should do regarding this or that COVID-related issue and I hope I give decent answers but most of the time I just don’t know. Cried, because this hiding is a form of dying, something I write all the time about in this dumb blog that we need to learn to embrace so that we can wake up spiritually, but God damn, dying still hurts like hell and today I don’t feel like dying.
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That morning, a couple of years ago, as I listened to my pastor talk about how we would have expected the resurrection to burst forth wildly instead of how it actually did in relative anonymity, my mind began to explore how we sometimes view our mini-resurrections in life.
If we are honest about it, we don’t always like the resurrections we are given. And sometimes that makes it really hard to want to die, because we don’t really know what we have waiting for us on the other side.
The author of Hebrews wrote that “for the glory set before him, Jesus endured the cross.”
Did Jesus REALLY know the full extent of glory that would be waiting for him on the other side of death? Because I have a hard time believing he would have spent so long in the garden of Gethsemane praying, sweating, and reprimanding his followers for not staying vigilant if he had known that everything was going to work out well for him in the end.
We all want to know that our dyings will not be in vain, that they will be worth something and bring us to a better place. I’m not talking about just a physical death where we’ll end up in the great by and by or the ultimate mingling of souls or whatever…but our daily dyings…those places where we let go of our ego attachments, where we sacrifice for the betterment of others, where we do hard things with the hopes that we will discover our truest selves. And right now, we all as a collective want to be reassured that staying home, going untouched, wrecking the economy, and trying to love each other through social media will not be in vain.
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There’s an old song sung by The Cathedrals, a gospel quartet that I grew up listening to, that I’m thinking of now. It’s called Sunshine and Roses, and while the tune is catchy, I used to get so annoyed at the lyrics. I’ll explain why in a second. Here’s the song if you’re interested in taking it back a few years:
I USED TO SING A SAD SONG, FILLED WITH GRAY SKIES AND RAIN
I USED TO SING OF NO FUTURE, SAD DAYS WITH ONLY PAIN
NOW AS I LOOK BACK UPON THEM, SEEMS TOME THAT I FIND
THERE WERE DAYS IN THE VALLEY, NOW I’VE LEFT THEM ALL BEHIND
NOW IT’S SUNSHINE AND ROSES, ONLY A THORN NOW AND THEN
COOL STREAMS, WARM BREEZES, SINCE JESUS TOOK MY HAND
GREEN MEADOWS AND LAUGHTER, HOPE WITHIN A CRUMBLING TIME
IT’S SUNSHINE AND ROSES, ONLY A THORN NOW AND THEN
I NEVER MISS THE OLD WAYS, YET THINK BACK FROM TIME TO TIME
TO THOSE DAYS OF NO PURPOSE, WHEN MY LIFE HAD LITTLE RHYME
THOUGH THE WATERS DRUNK BE BITTER, THEY MUCH SWEETER MAKE THE TASTE, OF ONE DROP OF GOD’S BLESSING, BLESSING
GIVEN BY HIS GRACE
Oh my word! Even when I was a kid, with little life experience, this song used to make me want to throw up in my mouth. What a misrepresentation of Christianity and spirituality, in general! Since when did following Jesus become about sunshine and roses, cool streams, and warm breezes? I really don’t think Peter was whistling this tune as he was crucified upside down. I doubt as brave as Polycarp was, he likely wasn’t dancing into the fire proclaiming, “Tis but a thorn!”
No, the real task of following the teachings of Jesus is a matter of dying every day, sometimes multiple times a day, and hoping to God that you’ll get a resurrection on the other end of it. And it’s a matter of trusting and sweating prayers, that the resurrection you get will make those deaths feel not in vain. Whoever is selling you “sunshine and roses Jesus” is feeding you snake-oil religion.
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Years ago I visited a leper colony in West Africa. I remember walking down a line of men whose bodies had been grossly disfigured by the disease, shaking their hands and looking them each in the eyes. And I remember how after they each took my hand, they would touch their foreheads and then their hearts. I remember asking one of the local missionaries what this meant, and was told it was a traditional way of fully accepting one’s greeting into themselves. I thought at the time that it was poignant and sweet, especially among a group of people that so often do not receive significant physical touch. Now, after going for long periods without being touched and, when I am touched, feeling as though the people touching me are reticent to do so, I understand the need to accept fully into the body whatever touch is received…cherishing it….bringing it into the mind and heart and holding it carefully, recognizing that loving, meaningful touch should never, ever be taken for granted. Maybe I had to die in this way, to lose so much of the physical and emotional contact that I need and crave, to be able to never again underestimate the value of it for both me, and for others.
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I wonder if sometimes we have the wrong idea about resurrection. Like, do we think that we are just supposed to be handed a nice resurrection as a thanks or prize for being willing to die to ourselves or for something greater than ourselves? Or is resurrection a process…not a one time event…that we are invited to be a part of? Maybe we are co-creators in our resurrections?
What if the resurrection of Jesus was not simply the moment breath entered his body and the stone was rolled away from the tomb? And what if our ideas about the nature of resurrection are all wrong? What if resurrection is not sunshine and roses, but it can still be resurrection even when struggle is present, when uncertainty exists?
What if resurrection is mainly about the springing forth of new possibilities that hadn’t existed before? What if it is life reimagining itself…not because it had been conquered by death, but because death was the gift…the catalyst…that was necessary for this imagination to blossom?
What if we don’t like the resurrections we are handed in life because we don’t see them for what they really are? We wanted to be handed a finite package of perfection and bliss, when really, we are handed something far greater….the open-ended expanse of possibility and “what will we create out of this”-ness?
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I”m kind of excited now, as I write this because I”m seeing Easter morning in a whole new way. Maybe, just maybe….the calm, quiet, secret return of Jesus was from a God who was curious to see what we would do with this new possibility for life. If Jesus had burst forth from the grave in such a way that no one could ever doubt it, and everyone was suddenly compelled to fall before him out of fear and reverence for his power….that would be a good narrative climax. But an even better story is one where God offers a “create your own ending” by handing us endless possibilities wrapped up in a peaceful Easter morning, instead of a loud, triumphant, one-time event.
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Could it be that we have to be just as brave to resurrect as we have to be to die?
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EASTER BLESSING
“On this Easter morning, let us look again at the lives we have been so generously given and let us let fall away the useless baggage that we carry — old pains, old habits, old ways of seeing and feeling — and let us have the courage to begin again. Life is very short, and we are no sooner here than it is time to depart again, and we should use to the full the time that we still have.
We don’t realize all the good we can do. A kind, encouraging word or helping hand can bring many a person through dark valleys in their lives. We weren’t put here to make money or to acquire status or reputation. We were sent here to search for the light of Easter in our hearts, and when we find it we are meant to give it away generously. The dawn that is rising this Easter morning is a gift to our hearts and we are meant to celebrate it and to carry away from this holy, ancient place the gifts of healing and light and the courage of a new beginning.”
John O’Donohue
Dawn Mass Reflections at Corcomroe Abbey
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Scientuality 