10 Resurrecting Easter

Transcription

1 Day 1 The Truth Returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. (Luke 24:9 10) In order to experience the miracle of resurrection, you must first face the fact that you are going to die. Mary Magdalene saw the risen Christ at the tomb. She had to go there, to that dark place where death lay visible for her to examine. It was in the face of death that she found life. Most Americans run away from death. We euphemistically say that someone passed away. We talk about our 401Ks as if we are preparing to live in retirement forever, but we do not prepare for death. Most of us seem to believe that if we avoid the subject of death, maybe death won t happen to us. Maybe if we use Oil of Olay and work out enough, and watch our cholesterol, then death won t come for us. When people in their eighties get cancer, many of them are shocked. They ask, Why did God do this to me? as if God has tricked them out of their lives. One woman, at eighty-nine, asked me as she lay on her deathbed why God was punishing her. Why is God doing this to me? she said. I tried to talk to her about the inevitability of death, that all bodies grow old and die, but she did not seem to hear me. My dear friend, I said, didn t you know that the death 8 Resurrecting Easter ResurrectingEaster_v3.indd 8

2 rate is 100 percent? Our bodies were simply not designed by God to last forever. They run out of juice. Your body is old and worn-out. It is time to talk about dying. This is the best part of my job as a priest. I get to tell the truth. I get to come into people s homes and ask if they have thought about dying, if they love God, if they say their prayers, if they are ready. Often my bluntness shocks them. Many will cry. Many will tell me that they really want to go, but their loved ones will not let them. One woman begged me not to let her husband put her on life-support when the time came for her to die. Our hospitals are designed to fight death with everything we have. Doctors are made to feel like failures if they do not save a life. But what often ends up happening is that they end up prolonging dying, not saving life. I cannot count the times when I have begged families and doctors to allow patients to die. People get so confused. They actually think that it is a sin to let a loved one who is terminally ill and on life-support die. But they are only prolonging pain and suffering. Part of life is letting go and there is such a large difference between love and attachment. You cannot contemplate resurrection without looking at the tomb, without contemplating death. There is no other way to eternal life but through death itself, through the tomb. We don t just continue life as we know it. Life doesn t just go on uninterrupted. We must die first and only then can we hope to live in Christ. If you admit that you are going to die, then your life can become a love letter to God. You can think of your life as a gift, the gift of a limited period of time in which you can Week 1: Mary 9 ResurrectingEaster_v3.indd 9

3 choose how to serve God. And you can prepare for your death so that it is beautiful and edifies all those who love you. How can we understand the miracle of the resurrection if we do not look into the tomb and see the darkness? Death is coming for you. It will come. And the only thing that you will be able to cling to is your belief in a God who loved you enough to face death for you. 10 Resurrecting Easter ResurrectingEaster_v3.indd 10

4 Day 2 Being Yourself with God Early on the first day of the week, when it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. (John 20:1) When I was a child, Molly Smith was my best friend. A simple chain-link fence with a small gate connected our backyards. We went through that gate a lot. She would come over to my house. I would drift over to hers. We skateboarded in the neighborhood and vowed to never wear dresses. I cannot imagine my childhood without Molly. Molly was no good at sports. She never could get her feet to move fast enough. She seemed to be perpetually falling down. I would laugh at her, pressure her, tell her to move faster. I thought that she was lazy. Molly and I collected stickers. We loved our sticker albums with a passion. I had more stickers than Molly and I loved rubbing it in. After we graduated from high school, Molly and I went to separate colleges. In the spring of my sophomore year, I got a call from my mom. Molly s roommate had found her in a coma. They d rushed her to the hospital, where the doctors discovered that she had too much fluid on her brain. It had been building up for her entire life. That was why she was clumsy and bad at sports. If her roommate had not found her, she might have died in her dorm room. I felt terrible for all those years of laughing at her and Week 1: Mary 11 ResurrectingEaster_v3.indd 11

5 yelling at her to run faster. I never knew why she couldn t respond with more energy. I found my sticker album and made Molly a large card. On it, I tried to fit every single sticker I owned. Mary Magdalene had something wrong with her brain. In biblical times, when someone was sick in a way that no one could see or understand, they diagnosed the problem as demons. Epilepsy, schizophrenia, mental illness of any kind, when people hurt themselves or others for no visible reason, their afflictions were attributed to demons. If there was no other visible cause for an abnormality, pain, or suffering, it was called a demon. And Mary had seven demons. Seven different kinds of pain and suffering. Seven things that no one could explain. So Mary suffered. She was not herself. She lived in a world of misunderstanding and pain. Then Jesus came and when he came, everything changed. Jesus did not punish Mary for her demons or lecture her. He healed her. And for the first time in her life, she was truly herself. Once Mary discovered herself in Jesus, she would not leave his side. She could not bear to be away from him. He was everything to her. Mary Magdalene alone was present at the foot of the cross in all four of the Gospel accounts. She never left Jesus, even when he was bleeding and dying. Not even the horror of the cross could drive her away. On the third day, when the sun began to rise, she raced to the tomb. She must have felt like half of her heart was removed when he died. She was drawn to his body almost unconsciously, needing to be there with him, even in death. Mary s first response to the disappearance of his body 12 Resurrecting Easter ResurrectingEaster_v3.indd 12

6 was shock and grief. She wept. Maybe she could not see through her tears. Maybe she just could not conceive of him being alive, but when Jesus appeared, she did not recognize him. Jesus called her back to herself. It is so fascinating to me that he didn t identify himself. He didn t say, Hey, it s me! Jesus! Instead, he said her name. He named her. Mary. He brought her back to herself, as he had when he healed her. And she woke up to the resurrection life, to the fact that he was there all along, that he lived, and that she lived in him. I have always been afraid that I might simply blend into some kind of divine morass in heaven, that it might be somewhat like a drop of water hitting the ocean, my soul simply swallowed up by God. Though this might sound good to some, it sounds scary to me. But this story of Mary s encounter with the risen Christ tells us something important. Mary recognized the resurrected Christ when he knew her, when he spoke her name. She recognized resurrection because the resurrected Christ knew her. Could it be, then, that we will be known in heaven by the risen Christ, that he will call our names as well? Week 1: Mary 13 ResurrectingEaster_v3.indd 13