Reach For Resurrection!

During the past three days we gathered around a table to remember Jesus’ last supper with his disciples, remembered his betrayal, arrest and crucifixion, and then sat in the stillness and silence of Holy Saturday. We imagine what the disciples must’ve felt: the deep grief of the loss of their teacher, the death of a movement that held so much promise, the hopelessness of it all as they thought about returning to their former lives.

We, too, sit in this liminal space. However, unlike the disciples, we know the rest of the story: how on Easter morning the women discovered an empty tomb and later, the resurrected Christ. Mourning is turned into dancing as Love’s redeeming work breaks the power of sin and death.

I have seen the miracle of resurrection happen again and again and again. Have you? Resurrection happens each time someone reaches for recovery. Resurrection happens when broken hearts discover the flame of love leaping up again. Resurrection happens when relationships that had frozen over and become lifeless grow once more. As sure as the seedlings that sprout forth in a burned-out forest, resurrection happens. As sure as the night turns to dawn, resurrection happens. As sure as those who dare to rebuild even when nature did its best to destroy what once was, resurrection happens.

Through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, we learn that God will never break solidarity with us: God’s love for us is constant. In this love is always and forever the promise of new life. 

“Woman, why are you weeping?” first the angel asks Mary, and then later Jesus asks the same thing. Didn’t she believe all Jesus had told her? 

Do we believe the Gospel’s Good News? Really?

Woman, why are you weeping?

Man, why are you weeping?

Friend, why are you weeping?

The Good News of Easter is meant for all of us. How would our living change if we believed that we, too, can experience resurrection power in our own lives? What would happen in your congregation if you believed that resurrection is being offered to you all? And what is happening even in our United Methodist Church right now: how is God’s Love breaking out of the tomb of despair to offer new life?

Tomorrow, enter into the Easter story fully, for it is something that not only happened one early morning in Jerusalem. We are called the Easter people for a reason. Reach for resurrection!

On Palm Sunday Eve

Laity, here is a secret many of you may not know: tomorrow morning is probably the Sunday your pastor most agonizes over: Is it Palm Sunday? Is it Passion Sunday? Is it Palm/Passion Sunday? Do we march around the church, around the block, through the neighborhood waving our palm branches in a holy parade of joy and keep the emotion of the service up and happy or will we sink into deep despair as we journey with Jesus from the betrayal of a last supper to judgement, walking with Jesus through the streets of Jerusalem as he carries a cross like a common criminal? Will we make the crowd squirm as the details of his execution are described, until there is nothing but silence as he is taken off the cross and sealed in a garden tomb?

The struggle is real.

The movement between Palm Sunday and Easter is filled with shocking twists. The King’s triumphant ride into Jerusalem quickly sours. There is a desire in so many of us to skip those pages in the Gospel story and run to—and then from—an empty tomb. Keep the joy alive!

But Holy Week calls us to not turn away but study what happened to Jesus, how those in political power were so threatened by his teachings that they bribed one of his own followers to entrap him for arrest, to be subject to mockery, disdain, shame, and death. 

Between the packed church tomorrow and then again throughout Easter morning, there will be other services, with smaller crowds. Like the women who refused to leave Jesus as he hung dying on the cross, they will come to listen to the story, to take their parts in the Passion play. They will mourn as they sing with trembling voices, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?”

As a child, my mom had us save our palm branches until the next Palm Sunday. We would come home with those waxy palm fronds and sit at the kitchen table and turn them into crosses. They were nothing fancy, like some palm weavers I have encountered. We used kitchen scissors to make two slits through which a piece of the palm frond was threaded. The cross was placed above a little picture of Jesus that was hung above my bedroom light switch. 

I give thanks that at such an early age I was taught of the solemn connection between Palm Sunday and the cross of Good Friday. 

Enter into the joy of Palm Sunday. But don’t turn away from the events that followed. There are important lessons for us all to discover: that life can take unexpected turns; that betrayals happen; that the powers and principalities that be will forever be threatened by those who stand with those on the margins; that too often, death feels like it has the upper hand over love. 

But that’s not the end of it. God still has more in store for us. When all seems lost, when the story seems like it is over…

(to be continued…)