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.
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