April 17, 2006

  • for Saturday, the meditation should have been:


    Think about this day... what it must have been like for the apostles and early disciples of the Church.  Your leader has died, and not even a normal death or in battle, but crucified as a criminal  -- the nearest equivalent would be for him to have died in the electric chair.  All of your hopes for the coming of the Kingdom of God, a new world order of peace and truth and unity and harmony, have been dashed. crushed. destroyed. ground into the dust under the boot heel of Imperial Rome. 


    no longer are you a part of a dynamic movement of spiritual revival among your people, but now just another Judean failure.  and your best friend is dead, too...


    if you have ever lost someone you loved to distraction, someone you loved more than anything, and then broke up with them or they died , imagine that feeling, but perhaps even deeper.  imagine you watched that loved one die... there is no room for denial because you witnessed that death. they are "not only merely dead, but really most sincerely dead"...


    how long a night must have been that friday night!  how long a Sabbath day.... and now another night to endure... and then another day... the rest of your life stretches out before you in loneliness and despair and in the servitude of Rome....


    and then came Sunday...


    On this day, three women (prossibly more, but only three are named) rise very early.  The Sabbath had prevented them from preparing the body of their leader/friend for burial, and so they rise as early as they can to fulfill this obligation.  In some ways it is a very dangerous task, for the deceased was crucified as a criminal, for inciting riots against Rome, and the danger these women faced was not merely politically. 


    Still ,they come to prepare the body.  The boulder standing in for the door of the tomb has been rolled away > grave robbing was a common problem,.  But this is worse- the body itself is gone.  And a person, shining like the sun, announces that their Jesus has risen from the dead...


    Imagine the rush of jubliation, the giddiness of a dream come true! He is NOT dead -- of course he is not dead! He didn't let Lazarus stay dead, why would he, himself, stay dead?  And then the comparing of stories, past and present, realizing exactly what Jesus' words were pointing to... the coming of the Messiah, yes, but the ultimate sacrifice and scapegoat for God's creation.!  No longer must we languish in our sin, knowing we are separated from God by our inability to obey... No longer must we wait for the coming of the Kingdom of heaven!


    Already the Kingdom has come, with the reconciliation made possible by God's sacrifice.  Not yet has the fulfillment of the Kingdom been realized, but that is our opportunity to participate with God in God's saving work....


    Not exactly what you might have wished for your best friend, but what gratitude that your friend would obey God and see it through to the end!!!!


    Truly we can say, with the psalmist: "On this day the Lord has acted ... let us rejoice and be glad in it!" (Ps 118)