Grief demands space

Luke 24:36
Jesus Appears to His Disciples
While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”

The disciples huddled together

Behind closed doors

Walking a day’s journey

Fishing on the lake

Or in locations not disclosed

Nursing their hurt

Burying their hope

While the whispers

And the rumours

And the women’s idle tales

gathered pace

Their grief demanded

that they pay attention

It demanded

that they sit awhile

with loss.

Before they began to piece things together.

Before words recalled began to make sense

Before hindsight began to shed light

Grief demanded its space.

And, whatever our loss

Whether we are able to make sense of it

Whether we can find purpose through it

Whatever we hope for the future

Grief demands

that we pay attention

give it some space

Even when we hear in its midst

Peace be still...

Risen today!

Luke 24:1-12

The Resurrection of Jesus

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” Then they remembered his words, and 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. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

The altar is dressed again

Resplendent in white and gold

as the resurrection message is proclaimed

He is not here

He is risen!

God could not be confined to the tomb

God returned to a world

where the “idle tales” of women

were not believed...

God returned to a world

where the boots of oppressors

still lay on the throats of the vulnerable...

God returned to a world

where insurrectionists believed

that their way of disruption and carnage

would herald a new hope...

And, in 2000 years

what has changed?

We proclaim Christ risen

in a world where the word of women is still questioned

where dictators and the deluded hold power

where bombs, bullets and knives

are the instruments of choice

to draw attention to a cause.

And the realisation that now, more than ever,

the need to proclaim

Faith, Hope and Love

to a world in darkness

is greater than it ever was.

And so we proclaim 

He is risen!

The challenge now, as then,

is showing God present

in such a messed up world

The Prince of Peace

shouldering a cross.

The king of love

stooping to serve the broken

The Risen Lord 

carrying the world

through the darkness of death 

to a glorious new life.

He is Risen!

He is Risen indeed!

Alleluia!

In between day

John 19:40-42

They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews. Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

Holy Saturday

The in between day..

When we cannot return to the way things were

Nor move forward to how they might be

But must, somehow, live in the vacuum

The vacuum of an in between day

A vacuum whose silence confronts us 

with questions of complicity and culpability

and with the realisation that even our love is not enough.

Stripped of all our resources

in which we’d normally find comfort

Laid bare

Just like the altars waiting to be dressed again

At the end of ourselves

We teeter on the brink of God

the only one who might bear us over this chasm

of the now and not yet.

And we cannot fast forward

but are forced to wait

to dwell in this in between day

as in all the in between moments 

we have experienced.

We are forced to wait

in the knowledge

that the worst has happened

and we do not know what’s next.

We are forced to wait

when even hope deserts us.

And Good Friday

cannot give way

to Easter Sunday

unless we wait

unless we dwell

in the in between day.

Silence

John 19:16-19

Then he handed him over to them to be crucified.

So they took Jesus; and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha. There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between them. Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.”

How can silence be so deafening?

The discarded wood of the cross creaks gently

as bloody rags flutter in the breeze

The hillside, heaving with humanity just a few hours ago

is now deserted, eerily quiet.

Folk have wandered home,

spectacle over,

not the high jinks anticipated

just another political crucifixion

served up as propaganda,

a warning to others who might consider

stirring up dissent.

All that hype of Messiah talk - 

just another delusional magician

who couldn't magic his way

out of execution.

The place of the skull is empty

and those who do venture out of the city

hurry past, shuddering at its eeriness,

struck by the silence that hangs

like a visible pall

over the place

where the criminals were killed.

It is a silence charged and pulsating

a silence that feels as though

it's about to burst.

All is not well.

There is something terrible in that silence

As though hell is about to burst through

and only God can prevent it.

He loved them to the end.

John 13:1-2

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. 

Celebrating the Passover with friends

Taking time out in an upper room

Caring for their tired and weary bodies

with water, wine and bread.

Then, stories shared and hunger sated,

going into the garden in the cool of the night to pray.

Going into the garden 

where betrayal and arrest awaited him.

And one by one, the friends disappeared

slinking into the night

watching form a distance

feeling the hurt and betrayal

but powerless to change it.

And the Son of God

who removed his robe to serve his friends

was left exposed and abandoned

on the night before his death

as the light burned dimly

just before dawn.

Surely not I?

Matthew 26:20-22
When it was evening, he took his place with the twelve; and while they were eating, he said, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me.” And they became greatly distressed and began to say to him one after another, “Surely not I, Lord?”

We too would have protested:

Not, I, Lord

Still protest

While we betray our Lord

at every turn.

Withholding 

bread from the hungry

love from the unloved

freedom from those imprisoned

by circumstances that we help create

Turning a blind eye 

to the plight of our neighbour

and the earth we inhabit

Distancing ourselves

from justice

when it demands too much of us.

Betrayal lurks at every turn

pervades our every day.

Yet still

Christ calls us his friends,

looks on us with love

shares a cup with us

and shows us how to love

and serve one another

as he loves

and served us.

As I have loved you...

John 13:34
I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

As I have loved you...

With tenderness

With grittiness

With challenge

With encounter

With knowledge

With reality

With insight

With understanding

From the inside out

Not superficially

but getting under the skin

Piercing the tidy (or untidy) exterior

to get to the heart

That kind of love

takes work.

It invites vulnerability.

It does not happen from a distance

It does not come

from assumptions

or suppositions

but from the kind of understanding

only grasped 

when space and time

have been invested

that make encounter a reality

and love a possibility 

Love one another as I have loved you...