Is belief so far removed from unbelief; is love so far from hate? Is not hope only a moment away from despair, and does not joy live side by side with tears? There is the space between where all things touch and meet; a word, one simple word, has the infinite potential to unleash power for life to renew itself.
"Mary."
Freedom: a guide for prayer
Bergen and Schwan
Dear Friends,
This year as we been journeying through lent, we've talked about the startling new life that Jesus brings to those who are hopeless. The life of the Samaritan woman at the well is transformed from the shunned outcast to the radically included. The man blind from birth is given his sight and a whole new existence. Jesus' friend Lazarus is dead and buried for three days when Jesus calls him out of his tomb from a putrid death into a new chapter in his life. On Easter, Jesus reveals the ultimate triumph. He's been put to an agonizing and shameful death on the cross, yet not even that can put an end to him. He is resurrected - not resuscitated as Lazarus was - he rises from death into a whole new kind of life that can never be destroyed. There is nothing that can limit the power of God. No evil or despair or destruction can be so comptete that God cannot overcome it.
Last year when I was in Jerusalern, we visited the Garden Tomb - not the actual tomb, the location of Christ's actual tomb is unknown - but one very much like it. We strolled through a beautiful garden on a sunny day on paths lined with cyclamen plants of more colors than I knew existed. We walked into the tomb - a cave hewn out of the hillside where the grey gloom and cold damp of the tomb was a shock after the lush life of the garden. There was a rock shelf where the body would have been. How desolate I felt, imagining the stark grief Mary felt coming to the tomb. Then, when she found the stone rolled away from the entrance, she ran to get the men. I could just feel the blood draining from her face and her muscles, her stomach sinking into her feet, the breath being sucked out of her lungs, despair taking over. After Peter and the beloved disciple ran to see what had happened and found the tomb empty, they returned home, not knowing what had taken place. Mary, left behind and sobbing uncontrollably outside, peers inside and sees two glowing white angels who ask her why she's weeping. She tells them it's because someone's taken Jesus' body and she doesn't know where. Already she's weak and transparent with grief, emotionally and spiritually bruised and bleeding from the events of the last days - now even his body has been taken from her. She turns from the darkness of the tomb to the dawning light and fresh beauty of the garden, and sees a man she doesn't recognize. In speaking to him she comes to recognize him when he speaks her name, and her emotions rise wildly to unbelievably joyous relief. Nothing in her life will ever be the same. That's what we can have, too. Our lives can be totally and unutterably transformed!
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
With great love,
Rev. Nancy