Allow me to
tell you a different kind of Easter story.
A long time
ago in a hospital far, far away, I was a chaplain where the Sisters who ran it
were very intentional about communicating their Catholic mission and identity. Which
meant, among other things, that my colleagues in the pastoral care department did many activities during Lent. And it was the job of the On-Call Chaplain over
Easter weekend to come in on the evening of Holy Saturday to lead in the transformation of the hospital lobby, other public
spaces, and chapel from the austerity of Lent and Holy Week to the festivity of
Easter.
The first
time I had to do this, I came back to the hospital very late Saturday night
after attending a local parish’s Easter Vigil. The job included putting up the
white hangings in the Chapel, changing the veils on various crosses around the
building to white (and there were a lot!), and putting out Easter lilies and
tulips in the main lobby, the chapel. and some other places. The meant that we
ordered lots and lots …and lots!... of flowers!
I
commandeered a handcart and, along with other chaplains and some volunteers, we
started my rounds.
Only a day or
so before, we Chaplains along with many folks from the hospital community had
walked these very same halls in a special way. We did The Stations of the Cross
on Good Friday. Instead of being in a chapel, these Stations were scattered
throughout the building—we went to places where people met suffering, pain,
hope, fear, loneliness, death and new life. These stations were in the places
where people ministered to human frailty sometimes with awesome technology and
just as often with compassion and simple touch. These were the places where
divine healing met human need in everyday ways so often that, if you weren’t
careful, they would became mundane.
These were
the places Jesus walked. The cross stands at the intersection of brokenness and
hope. And just two days ago, on Good Friday, we walked with Jesus to places
where suffering and compassion could not be plainer. We planted a plain, rude
wooden cross in our midst and, in venerating that cross, we confronted all the
ways we separate ourselves from God, each other, and creation.
Anyway, back
at that hospital all those years ago, when it came time to get those Easter
flowers, they were gone! When I went to the loading dock, they were not there!
Where’d they go? After much searching, I called security.
The guard was
expecting my call. He said, “I’ll show you.”
We met and
took the elevator to the basement, to a dark hall in the oldest wing of the
hospital, a hallway that few people walked. We came to an unmarked door. The
guard sorted through his wad of keys and opened the door and entered the
morgue.
Just before
he turned the knob, he said to me “Don’t worry, Chaplain, there had been a body
in here tonight, but now it’s gone.”
He was right.
When he opened the door, there was no dead body. But there was an explosion of
flowers! Everywhere there were lilies, daisies, tulips, and spring flowers.
They covered the examination table, the counters and overflowed and even the
drawers meant to hold bodies, like the ones you see on shows like NCIS, had
flowers on them.
A place of
sterility was filled with color! The medicinal “laboratory” smell was overcome
with the perfume of blooming flowers. A place of death had become a
nursery.
It turns out
that the housekeepers had brought the flowers to the morgue because they
arrived a day early and they thought they’d keep longer in the coolness of the
morgue. “I hope you don’t mind,” the guard said.
So that’s my
Easter story, or at least one of them. Easter lilies in the morgue. What’s
yours?
Today, we are
not here to celebrate an empty tomb, let alone a morgue. Seeing an empty tomb
does not bring life. An empty tomb does not change anything. The Easter story centers on women who came
expecting to find a body and instead the found an empty tomb, a vision of
angels, and encountered in person the real, live Risen Jesus.
All the
Gospels agree that Mary of Magdala was among the first to meet the Risen Jesus,
which, if you think about it, is a very strange choice as the first messenger
of Good News because they say she was once possessed by demons. Not the best of
credentials. But she was in very good company. Mary of Magdala fits right in
the parade of people that the Gospel of John has shown us all through Lent.
People who have met Christ and been changed: such as Nicodemus, the inquisitive
but fearful rabbi; or the outcast and troubled woman at the well; or the beggar
blind from birth. And then there Lazarus, the dead man who was brought back to
life!
All these
people encountered Jesus at the point of their deepest need… and they were
changed!
Mary came to
the tomb to grieve, and to care for the dead body of her friend, teacher and
healer.
Mostly she came
to weep. Weep tears of inconsolable grief. She weeps her losses. She weeps for
what she was given and now has lost. And now she finds that the tomb is open,
and the body is gone.
On seeing
this, Mary runs to the disciples, and Peter and the Beloved Disciple race each
other back to the tomb. They find it just as she said—empty, vacant. Bandages
on one side, and the face-cloth neatly folded on the other side. But that is
all. The two disciples leave, perplexed. Mary stays behind at the empty tomb,
weeping even more.
Certainly
they know something is up…something is going on…but this does not change
anything. Not yet.
It is Jesus
who comes to her and ministers to her, only she doesn’t recognize him. She
supposes him to be a groundskeeper who might know something. She is looking for
her friend. It is only when he utters her name that she understands.
“Mary” he
says. She knows that voice. She knows that person who reached out and touched
her heart and cast away whatever was eating away at her life. Her fear is at
once replaced with relief, healing and courage.
Notice her
journey this Easter morning. Can you see your journey reflected in hers?
I don’t know
about you, but I see so much of my own spiritual journey in Mary’s zig-zag
journey to meet the Risen Christ. So often I come to this space, these
sacraments, these liturgies and want only to dwell on the empty spaces in my
soul; along with my fears, disappointments, and sense of endless busy-ness. I
expect, I demand, that they be filled! But too often I try to do that on my terms,
in my way.
The way that works for me is that I tell God what I want God to do for me. I
tell God how it is. Sure, I may bring my expectations, my pride, and my pain,
but I can’t let go of them. Because I really need them to define who I am. So I
tell God to either bless them or fix them. And it’s a pretty safe bet that if
nothing happens I either blame God or maybe chalk it up as a learning
experience. Either way, my fears are reinforced, prejudices stiffen, attitudes
harden.
It's like
coming to an empty tomb. Or to a morgue filled to the brim with flowers. I may
or may not see Christ in all that. It depends on how I look at it.
So let me
tell you where I have met the Risen Christ. I have met the Risen Christ in the
person of a grown man who spent his whole life in a state institution for the
mentally retarded—who taught me that Jesus comes to us like a child, even when
they are not. I have met the Risen Jesus in the face of young girl who had
brain cancer and literally had half her brain removed, who told me in clear,
cheerful words “After the rain comes the rainbow.” I met the Risen Christ in a
quiet man, a man who knew how to listen with his whole heart who asked me once
what I was running away from and what I really believed. I have met the Risen Christ in people who
have not been intimidated by my anxieties and busy-ness and have prayed for me
anyway. Who knows? You, an ordinary person, an ordinary Christian, may be the
face of the Risen Christ to someone who needs it and not even know it.
The Risen Jesus is made is known in baptismal waters, broken bread and poured out wine--and in the faces of the people God gives to us. The Risen Jesus is made known by people just like us, who hear him call us each by name, and allows us weep with the joy being known and who helps leave our empty places in an empty tomb. Because he is not there. He is risen!
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
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