Easter Day-The Rev Melanie Lemburg

Artwork by Marshall Ramsey 

Easter Day 2022

April 17, 2022

 

        I have a Facebook friend, only an acquaintance in real life, who is, among other things, a well-known cartoonist.  This week, he shared a cartoon, and his caption was “did this a couple of years ago.  Seems fitting for this year, too.  #holyweek”  The picture is drawn as if one is inside a cave or a tomb.  Written in dark ink on the dark walls of the tome are the following words over and over again:  “Fear.  Anger.  Hurt.  Hatred.  Depression. Anxiety.  Hopelessness.  Pain.  Frustration…”  The words are swirling and spiraling chaotically around a hole in the center of the tomb that is filled with light.  And if you look closely into the distance in the light, you can see three small crosses.  The yellow light is also filled with words in white in the distance:  “Hope.  Love. Faith. Life.  Alleluia.”  (The artist’s name is Marshall Ramsey, and his original artwork is linked on the church’s blog post under worship resources on our website or on our Facebook page, if you want to see it.)

        I’ve been sitting with Marshall’s drawing through this past week, as we have walked through Jesus’s footsteps in his last days—from his triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday; to the last supper with his friends when he offered them his love in an act of service in washing their feet and he instructed them to do likewise; to his crucifixion and death on the cross and his last words creating Christian community by commending his mother and beloved disciple to each other’s care and modeling what self-emptying love in that community should and can look like.

        And even though spring is breaking out everywhere here, something about where we are right now and all that we have been through in our common life in these last couple of years feels like those shadowy words are still swirling all around us in a chaos of darkness.  “Fear.  Anger.  Hurt.  Hatred.  Depression. Anxiety.  Hopelessness.  Pain.  Frustration…” 

        Our gospel reading for today is Luke’s version of the resurrection.  This may be my favorite of the four resurrection stories, and it’s probably because the women are front and center in this story. 

        Luke offers these women disciples up as a picture of faithfulness and discipleship that is contrasted with the male disciples who all run away and abandon Jesus at the end.  In Luke, the women gather together at the foot of the cross as Jesus hangs there suffering.  They keep watch with him as he dies, and when he is taken down from the cross, they follow his body to the tomb, and they see where he is buried.  And then, Luke tells us, they hurry home to prepare the burial spices and ointments so they can go back to the tomb and anoint him for burial once the Sabbath observance is over. 

        That’s where our story for today picks up.  The three women—Mary the mother of James, Joanna, and Mary Magdalene—are up in the dark before dawn, sleepy and sad and making their way to the tomb to offer their last act of care for Jesus.  When they get to the tomb, they are perplexed to find the stone rolled away from the entrance, and they become terrified when they encounter two men in dazzling white who say 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.”  So, they hurry back to the male disciples to tell them what they have witnessed—the empty tomb, the strange, dazzling men with the strange dazzling pronouncement—and Luke tells us that the men don’t believe them, and they think it is “an idle tale.”

        I appreciate Luke’s contrasting pictures of discipleship because we all have a little bit of each within us.  We are all a strange mix of faithfulness and fear, a strange mix of a willingness to show up and bear witness and of abandonment when things get difficult.  We are a mix of altruism and selfishness.  Deep down our inner cynic that scoffs that the story of resurrection is just an idle tale is at war with the part of us that longs for a path out of the dark tomb, the part of us that hopes that God’s love really is stronger than all the dark forces in our hearts, our lives, this world…stronger even than death. 

        The good news for us today that we celebrate on this Sunday and on every Sunday is that Jesus has already gone before us creating the way out of the tomb of “Fear.  Anger.  Hurt.  Hatred.  Depression. Anxiety.  Hopelessness.  Pain.  Frustration…”  And even Death.  And into the resurrection light. 

Can we be brave enough to live our lives as if it is, in fact, the truth and not just an idle tale?  Can we choose this day and beyond to live our lives in “Hope.  Love. Faith. Life.  Alleluia.”