Easter Dawn

"On the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark, and saw the stone removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them, 'They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don't know where they put Him.'  So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb. The other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first. When Simon Peter arrived after him, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there. Then the other disciples also went in, and he saw and believed." -[John 20: 1-9].

"Easter" is a word that refers to, or means The Dawn.

The discovery of Jesus absent from the tomb is made at dawn. Easter is quite literally, the dawning of a new age, when early Christians saw and believed that there is a whole lot more beyond our limited sight, than what we can perceive in the natural world.

Easter is THE demarcation between early inklings of who Jesus was, as He himself prophesied, and a time when the disciples came to understand proof of Jesus as Divine.

It is not as if Jesus did not warn His disciples. In Mark, the earliest Gospel account, Jesus tells His followers, "the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and teachers of the law, . . He must be killed and after three days rise against." -[Mark 8: 31-33].

Jesus also tells his disciples: "The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill Him, and after three days, He will rise." -[Matthew 17: 22-23].

And in John 2:12-22, when Jesus overturns the tables of the greedy money changers at the temple, He says, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." His listeners said, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?" But Jesus was talking about the destruction of His body, and his rising from the dead to new life.

Jesus' disciples and His listeners had varying degrees of disbelief and unbelief. Easter is an unfolding, of layers of meaning and revelation for the disciples - AND for all of us. I used to feel foolish for not really understanding the full meaning of Easter.

But now I am beginning to realize that the unfolding of Easter is all part of our growth as Christians.

When I was a child, I used to hear the priest in my church say that "Jesus died for us." I thought that was horrible. Who wants to hear about the aftermath of a grisly death, on a day so full of the life of spring and promise? How can the violent end of one man save lowly ME? It made no sense. It was just too awful, especially since that one Man was God's only Son!

I still cannot watch any reenactment of the Passion. It wounds ME. But I am starting to understand that the Crucifixion is "supposed" to wound me! Jesus is a part of me, I share in His Passion. Whatever Sin I commit, crucifies Him a little bit more. Any Sin against me, is a crucifixion of Jesus. Each time I receive the Eucharist, I receive a tiny bit of His body and blood, like a healing balm for my human weakness and temptation.

It took the deaths of my best friend, my father, my mother, my mother-in-law and a dear family friend, all in a span of two years, for me to finally live out the simple Truth, that Jesus went to Heaven before us, so that we can follow Him. He established the way: literally the Way, the Truth and the Life. I don't have to live in despair that this Life of sweat and violence and evil is all that there is. Beyond our human capacity, lies a supernatural world that possesses far more than we could ever imagine in this Life.

I understood from a young age, that doing Evil in exchange for Evil, only hurts myself, AND Jesus. I have always tried to be part of the cadre of humans who offer compassion and peace.

But, it has taken me a lifetime to understand that in this Life we all suffer. It took me getting to this Easter to finally see - perhaps to accept - that there is no escaping the trials and suffering of our human existence. Whatever it is we humans all suffer is merely a matter of degree- some suffering horribly, others less so.

I used to spend a good part of my day, reciting the litany of every bad thing that has ever happened to me.  My litany was a chorus of grief, a lament over the trauma of my life. I believed that all these bad things should not happen to me, or to ANYONE. I was capable of getting depressed simply that these bad things ever occurred.

I don't know what I was expecting? Christians are meant to carry their own crosses. My dear mother-in-law used to say all the time, "We all have our crosses to bear." I used to see that as a platitude. A nice saying that you would discover on a wall plaque. It seemed hollow of meaning. This Easter, I see the profound Truth in it.

Every human on this planet has the experience of feeling deep Joy, but also awful despair. But we Christians do not carry our crosses alone. We have each other. And we have Jesus, who suffered the greatest agony ever. He understands our agonies, more than anyone. He walks with us.

Each Easter, I encounter a new Dawn of revelation, of what Jesus meant to us over history, and of how today, I can live with Him in my daily experience. Each Easter, I am a new creation, as I rediscover Jesus in a new way.

Each Easter, I encounter the Dawn that conquers the darkness.

[Related Postings: "Easter Joy!", 4/23/11; "Easter Redemption", 4/7/12; "Roll Away the Stone", 4/17/14; "Crucifixion Redux", 3/20/16; "The Triumph of Easter", 4/15/17; "Killing Him Softly", 3/27/18.]

(c) Spiritual Devotional 2019. All Rights Reserved.

Dark Voices Prevailed

"Morning after morning, the Lord God opens my ear that I may hear; and I have not rebelled, have not turned my back. I gave my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who plucked my beard; my face I did not shield from buffets and spitting. The Lord God is my help. Therefore I am not disgraced; I have set my face like flint, knowing that I shall not be put to shame." -[Isaiah 50: 4-7].


Palm Sunday, in a word, hurts my feelings. The reading of the Passion evokes in me such pain and deep sadness.

Even though we all understand that the Resurrection comes in the dawn, nevertheless, the whole ugly, bloody scene of the arrest, the false trial, the nailing onto the Cross, and Christ's suffering, hurt me to the core. The point when Jesus utters, "My God, why have You abandoned me?!" is probably my lowest point.

Each year, I ask if the Crucifixion was a one of a kind event, or if Jesus would be just as likely to be crucified today?

Each year, I tragically conclude that, yes, Jesus would just as readily be crucified today.

Jesus' trial was a sham. He had broken no Roman laws. Even Pilate said, "I find no fault in this man." -[Luke 23:4].  The trial was on the Sabbath, and was arguably illegal. The judges were high priests who determined that Jesus had committed blasphemy but that was not a Roman offense, only a religious one. It was only under Roman law that execution was warranted.

The high priests accused Jesus of the wrong things, with misleading questions: Asking if He was King? But Jesus replied that He would sit at the right hand of His Father, no earthly King, he. The high priests accused Jesus of blasphemy for saying he would crush the temple and raise it up again in three days. But, Jesus was referring to the Truth of His Resurrection from the tomb after three days, something the high priests could not have foreseen.

The Roman governor Pontius Pilate addressed the crowd three times, "What evil has this man done?"

What ensues next is what I call mass psychology - the crowd began to cry out, "Crucify him! Crucify him!" and "Away with this man!"

I see our world today enmeshed in mass psychology, especially on the Internet.  Collective calls for mob justice can build and roll on social media, into a veritable tsunami.

In our upside-down world, a good person or movement is labeled bad. Or, an evil person is revered because he is wealthy or powerful.

Powerful people in Jesus' time saw His goodness as a threat. The Romans held all the political power in a very violent way. It was believed that when the Messiah came, he would be a King or a Judge, as in the Old Testament time. In other words, the Messiah was expected to be a political leader. Jesus walking around preaching that He was the King and brought forth by God was a direct threat to Rome.

Jesus said, "Do not assume that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword." - [Matthew 10:34]. This is not a literal sword, but the sharp divide between those who are powerful and evil vs. those who are good and holy.

Disrupters like Jesus can rarely last long in our world. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "The world doesn't like people like Gandhi, They don't like people like Christ; they don't like people like Lincoln. They killed him. Here was the man of nonviolence falling at the hands of a man with hate, [But] thank God, Good Friday is never the end." -[From The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr].

There are powerful forces today, like Rome, who possess absolute power, and whose power corrupts absolutely. Any differences of opinion, religious beliefs or ethnicities (e.g. Rome vs. Jews vs. Jesus), is hemmed in, curtailed and ultimately crushed.

Rome's Hope was that Jesus was just one Man, and that they could stop the movement by eliminating the Man.  Herod and Pilate conspired to crush Jesus and His movement by crucifying the Man. They believed they were buying stability.  They had no idea that Jesus' crucifixion would spark a conflagration.

Once Rome crucified Jesus, and His Resurrection was told as the miracle that it is; once early Christians traveled far and wide - on Roman roads, after all!- Jesus' story became the Way, the Truth and the Life.

And there was nothing stopping Him - for all of Time.

[Related Postings: " Killing Him Softly", 3/27/18; "Our Own Role in the Passion", 4/10/17; "Why Did Jesus Have to Die?", 8/31/14; "Who Killed Jesus?", 5/7/14.]

(c) Spiritual Devotional 2019. All Rights Reserved.

Resurrection

"Now a man was ill, Lazarus, from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. So the sisters sent word to Jesus, saying, 'Master, the one you love is ill.'  Jesus said to His disciples, 'Let us go back to Judea.'  When Jesus arrived, He found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days.
When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet Him.  Martha said to Jesus, 'Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now, I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give to You.'  Jesus said to her, 'Your brother will rise.' Martha said, 'I know He will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.' Jesus told her, 'I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live.' When Jesus saw her weeping, He became perturbed and deeply troubled, and said, 'Where have you laid him?'  They said to Him, 'Sir, come and see.' And Jesus wept. So Jesus, perturbed again, came to the tomb.  It was a cave, and a stone lay across it. Jesus said, 'Take away the stone.'  Jesus cried out in a loud voice, 'Lazarus, come out!' The dead man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands. So Jesus said to them, 'Untie him and let him go.' " -[ John 11: 1-45].


At a very dark point in my life, I went to see the pastor of my church. In the last two years or so, my father had died abruptly (we didn't even know he was sick); then a long-time family friend died, someone the family referred to as "Aunt"; then my best friend died; then my father-in-law's beloved wife died; then my mother died.

I felt as if I were swirling in a black hole, descending, falling down, down, down. Yes, you could say it was as if I were in a cave.

I found myself telling my life story to my pastor:

* When I was born, I almost died before I made it out of the womb. My mother nearly died in childbirth. BUT, the doctor's hands saved me.
* When I was about three, there was a fire in my grandparents' house. I was traumatized to see the charred walls and smell the acrid smoke in the air. BUT, no one was home at the time, and no one was injured. Damage was limited to one corner of one room.
* When I was four, I nearly drowned in a neighbor's pool. BUT strong arms lifted me up, to life-giving air. It was my mother who saved me.
* When I was five, the serious dysfunction of my parents meant they were not feeding me consistently. BUT, neighbors fed me and I did not starve.
*When I was six, I was diagnosed with a chronic lung disease. My mother's chain smoking worsened the scarring on my lungs. By the time I reached age 14, my parents were no longer taking me to the doctor for this disease. BUT several years ago, I found a devoted doctor, who even made house calls. His treatments put me back on a path to better health.
* When I was ten, my beloved grandfather died. After that blow, and years of abuse in my childhood home, I stopped speaking. My pastor said, You speak eloquently now.
* When I was in my twenties, I was the victim of a violent crime and nearly died at the hands of my attacker. As I felt my breath slip away, I prayed to God. The attacker loosed his grip on me and left. I lived.
* When I was in my early 40's, I was bringing my son home from the park, pulling him in his bright red wagon. I hesitated at the corner nearest our house, the wind was beginning to howl. I heard a "voice" say, "Cross here". . in other words, do not continue on straight, but cross the road, now. I was confused. I said to my son, "What did you say?" But he had said nothing. A tree fell across the road and I pulled the wagon at top speed. The tree fell only a few yards short of us. My son and I did not have one scratch. I believe that voice was my Guardian Angel.
*And now, I had lost many of the most important people in my life.

After I had recounted all this, my pastor turned and said to me, "You have had a lot of resurrection in your Life."

I was stunned. I had seen only trauma, terror and loss. I had never even seen the resurrection!

There are people today who say, 'Get over it. That is in the past. You cannot be defined by all the bad things that happened in your past.'

My answer to this is, even Jesus wept. He grieved along with Mary and Martha. He deeply felt the poignancy. Even WITH the possibility of resurrection in the next Life, it hurts. Jesus allowed himself to feel pain. He did not deny the raw emotion. The tears conveyed His humanity, his compassion.

Even when our resurrection comes, we remain in "the cave" for a time, scarcely believing that our resurrection has come. Just as Jesus has to beckon Lazarus out of the dark cave, Jesus has to cry out to us in a loud voice, "Come out!"

But what I also see is that we can be permitted our resurrection, not just in the next Life, but in this one. We don't have to stumble around in the dark, half blind, to find the Light, either. We are not alone. Jesus beckons. He exhorts us, He leads the way.

At the darkest of times, we can believe that somehow, with Jesus' help, we can overcome.

In fact, if we believe only in the individual, human effort to help ourselves, we vastly diminish the possibilities of resurrection. We don't need to rise up again, alone, and we ought not to. It is a haunting pride, as humans, to believe that we can raise ourselves up again, solely by our own efforts. As Thomas Merton says, in "The Seven Storey Mountain", "How could I love God, when everything I did was not done for Him, but for myself, and not trusting in His aid, but relying on my own wisdom and talents?"

And then, if we do rely upon God and Jesus for our resurrection, we see "the Lord [who] opens a way in the seas and a path in mighty waters, who leads out chariots and horsemen, a powerful army. Remember not the events of the past, see I am doing something new! Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? " -[Isaiah 43: 16-21].

[Related Postings: "Fear", 4/4/16; "Raising Lazarus", 4/3/17."]

(c) Spiritual Devotional 2019. All Rights Reserved.