And Love Will Rise Up

Irondequoit United Church of Christ

April 12, 2020

You are the God who remains with us during our Saturdays

 of waiting and wondering, marked by the memory

 of Friday and the hope of Sunday.

Forbid us too-easy exits out of the darkness.

May we wait until we are at last called

 by your life- giving grace. Amen.

Walter Brueggemann

    Holy Week for Western Christians has coincided with the worst week for the Covid-19 pandemic. What timing! More infections, hospitalizations, and deaths and still not even the peak. So, the question must be asked, “What does it mean to celebrate resurrection when people far and near are dying by the thousands? What does it mean that the tomb is empty when our mortuaries are over flowing and mourners can’t even bury their dead?

     When I lived in Jerusalem, I used to tell people that the Palestinian people lived a perpetual Good Friday---a life full of pain and suffering. Everyone had an address on the Via Dolorosa. But this year, my first Easter as your pastor, I am thinking that we are living Holy Saturday. We are in hell. But then I remember our sacred story and it matches. Jesus went to Hades on that Saturday after he was crucified to save and liberate everyone beginning with his biblical parents--- Adam and Eve. In the Universal resurrection tradition, Christ does not rise alone but raises all of humanity with him. St. Ambrose, the archbishop from Milan, put it this way: “In him the world arose, in him heaven arose, in him the earth arose. For there will be a new heaven and a new earth.”

Dear Ones, there will be a new heaven and a new earth.

    In the Orthodox tradition they call Saturday Holy Fire Saturday. Do you know why? Because dear ones, the tomb was not empty, it was full of angels and light, light emanating off the stone where he was laid in his grave clothes. In addition to celebrating the universal resurrection they celebrate the mystery of the light in the tomb.

     So, in Jerusalem on Holy Fire Saturday, people flock from all over the world to go into the Old City to Holy Sepulcher to wait for the light to come from the tomb. You see the Holy Spirit arrives more or less around 3:00 PM on this holy day and miraculously lights the torch of the Greek Patriarch who is in the tomb praying and waiting. Once lit he comes out of the tomb with his torch and shares or passes the light to the other Patriarchs. They then pass it to all the people gathered with their lanterns or candles. Eventually the whole church is lit up. It is indeed a sight to behold.

     The light goes out from Jerusalem to the rest of the world. This is how Easter begins. The rest of us stand and wait to have our 40 bees wax candles singed and then we bathe ourselves in the fragrance. It is a beautiful ritual and has added a new dimension for how I celebrate Easter.

     While it was still dark, Mary went to the tomb and saw the stone was rolled away and that Jesus was gone. She told Peter and one of the other disciples to come and see for themselves. They saw the grave clothes neatly folded and ran off to find what happened to Jesus probably fearing the worse.  Mary remained. When she looked in the tomb, she saw two angels in white sitting where the body had been. They said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." She like the two disciples thus far have not understood the meaning of the empty tomb or the tomb full of angelic presence and light. Then Mary turned around and saw a man who she thought was the gardener, but his voice was so familiar. Some say Jesus must have put on the gardener’s clothes because he and thrown off his grave clothes. I prefer to think that like God, his father, the creator, Jesus was a gardener of sorts. Mary’s weeping gives voice to her agony, pain, and grief. You will recall in the story of Lazarus, Jesus wept as he called Lazarus out of the tomb. Mary is a faithful disciple. She recognizes her beloved teacher, “Rabboni”, when he calls her name. What a lovely and important detail captured in Jan L. Richardson’s blessing,

            All you need to remember

            is how it sounded

            when you stood

            in the place of death

            and heard the living

            call your name

    Dear Ones, we are standing like Mary in the dark before dawn in the place of death, are we not? Easter begins here in Hades when all rise or in the shadows before sunrise when someone you love and thought dead calls out your name.

    This Easter is special not only because we cannot gather together as a church family or have Easter dinners but because the story is so close to our lived reality. Mary is told not to cling to Jesus. It’s not a rebuke but a command to let go of the past so she can step into her new life which will begin with telling others. For this, Mary will be called the Apostle of the apostles. Later, the stories say, she was interrogated by the Roman Emperor about where Jesus was. When she told him, “He has risen”, he didn’t believe her. He picked up an egg and said that was like saying this egg is red. Then the egg turned red. This is why St. Mary is depicted holding a red egg and why some Christians dye their eggs red in the Eastern churches.

   “Do not hold onto me.” Mary had a decision to make that morning in the garden. She wanted to hold onto Christ and the life she had known. Only in letting go would she be able to move into her new risky normal; to proclaim that he is risen; he lives.

     Dear Ones, we living in this time of a global pandemic, of chaos, and upheaval, we also have a choice to let go of what we thought was normal and risk an unknown new life. This coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else and our minds are racing back and forth with longing for a return to normality. But should this be our aim, our goal? The skies are clear over Los Angeles. The sea turtles are mating again. Are we clinging to normal because it was so great or because it is what we knew? What gifts or lessons is the pandemic teaching us? Can we make this our new normal? Indian writer Arundhati Roy says this pandemic is a portal which forces us to break with the past and imagine the world anew.

     Easter, dear ones, is a portal too. It is a gateway between one world and the next, and we dear ones, who have been called by name, are given the choice to either cling to the past or choose new lives, to practice resurrection. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! He has risen in us and therefore lives.

Blessed is the One

 Mathew 21:1-11

Rev. Loren McGrail

Irondequoit United Church of Christ

April 5, 2020

     It’s a scene of jubilation; full of shouting and singing and street theater like the conquering king riding in on a donkey while the Roman representative across town rides in on a war chariot. Self- conscious of fulfilling Zechariah’s prophesy, “…triumphant and victorious is he, humble and victorious is he riding on an ass, a colt, the foal of an ass (Zechariah 9:9).

Blessed is the One that weeps

for us and with us

when we have lost our way.

Blessed is the One that comes

towards us in majesty and humbleness

down that ancient twisted path

straight into our gated cities,

locked up homes and hearts.

Blessed is the one that hears

our shouts of joy

then endures our chants of betrayal.

When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was shaken. In the beginning the crowds who had been singing Hosanna, “Save us” acted like they knew who he was or rather they acted like a people ready to be saved by a victorious king. They missed the symbolism of the donkey and the foal and so do most of us.  He did not ride on two animals but rather the two represent the prophesy of both Zechariah and Isaiah in whose name and prophetic calling he is following. And of course, we don’t link the hosannas to the burnt palms that will become ashes for next year’s Ash Wednesday.  But most importantly, most of us don’t want a Jesus who has come to turn over our tables, who calls us out of our comfortable hiding places, or who will test and judge us.

And truth be told, we Protestants prefer a Jesus which is light on the Passion Story, light on all that blood and suffering. We go from the joy of Palm Sunday to the silent despair of Maundy Thursday with perhaps a prayer around 3:00 PM on Friday, to a quiet Saturday, to a sunrise celebration of “He is risen.” We don’t really want to hear about that event in the Temple when he turned over the tables and threw out the money changers; we don’t want to admit how we too have betrayed him with our silence as he walked by carrying that heavy cross, or how we have become complicit with the powers and principalities of our day who continue to squeeze and oppress the poor and marginalized; the vulnerable and elderly. This is not the part of the story we wish to focus on.  

 One of the gifts of living in Jerusalem was that I got to celebrate three versions of each Christian feast--- the Orthodox or Eastern Church, the Western Church, and the Armenian Church. One year the Eastern and Western churches celebrated Easter at the same time.  It was chaotic but wonderful. One year, Easter Sunday and Passover was celebrated on the same day. This was not so wonderful as it restricted the movement of Christian pilgrims into the Old City.  

 Holy Week was a joyous and busy time to be in the Old City of Jerusalem with its many pilgrims processing around with their large wooden crosses especially on what in Arabic is called “Sad Friday.” And on Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week, people from all over the world came to process down the Mount of Olives from Bethpage thru Lion’s Gate to Saint Anne’s Cathedral. They sang and danced on the narrow pathway waving their palms. We even had a barefoot Jesus come with his white donkey.                    

When you march down that ancient steep path you see Jerusalem the way you imagine Jesus saw it--- gleaming in the distance full of promise and hope, yet also then and now--the seat of power.        One of the places you pass during your walk is the Franciscan church, Dominus Fleuvet, shaped like a giant tear because it is believed to be the spot where Jesus looked out over the city and wept. That view from the church is one of my favorite holy sites as I can imagine him pausing here and weeping not for his fate to come but for our continued lack of understanding about what makes for peace.                                                          

And so, as it was then, and it is true today. We still don’t really get who this nonviolent Jesus was or what he demands of us now. We are still criminalizing political dissent, and persecuting children and their families in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and Gaza. By depriving people of their basic human rights which now include medical care, the occupying power is repeating a blood history of oppression and violence.

If Jesus were indeed to return to the world, to Jerusalem, this is what he would see---another military occupation mistreating the occupied, another imperial power trying to squash dissent through unjust laws and imprisonment. And Jerusalem, the city of the prophets, still running with blood.

This Palm Sunday there will be no walking down the Mount of Olives, no ecumenical services on Maundy Thursday at the Russian Orthodox Church of Mary Magdalene, or Good Friday walks through the Old City on the Via Dolorosa, or even Easter at Holy Sepulcher. The City is in lock down just like we are. But this doesn’t mean we are excused from our spiritual call to accompany Him all the way to the cross. We are in a time of a world- wide pandemic in which we are literally fearing for our lives and commanded thus to “shelter in place” to flatten the curve. We are living in a time where we can’t meet to worship or even pass out palms.

In spite of this Dear Ones, the Passion Story of Jesus’ betrayal and suffering still calls us to throw our coats on the ground, to wave our palms, and sing Hosanna today, “Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord (Psalm 118).”

We are invited to accompany all whose lives have become constricted, restricted, or targeted. We are called to stay awake and pray for each other and the planet we are destroying day by day. We are summoned to bear that heavy cross by choosing to live in compassion with those now dying daily, to see in them Him calling out, weeping, and rising up. And finally, we are called to roll away all the stones that entomb us, to practice resurrection daily.

Blessed is the one that

knows our limitations,

who pours out his love for us,

into us so we can be

guardians of truth

protectors of justice

architects of peace.

Amen.