Matthew 28:1-10
Easter Sunday / Year A
The prophet
Jeremiah looked on as the Babylonian army sacked the holy city of Jerusalem, burned
the Temple to the ground, and led of the majority of its citizens into
exile. It is one of the darkest moments
in the entire Old Testament. But he survived
and lived to see the dawning of a new day.
The Lord gave Jeremiah this word to share with all the families of Israel:
The people who survived the sword
found
grace in the wilderness.
“Grace
in the wilderness” – what a beautiful phrase and image. It proclaims God’s aid and succor can reach
us wherever we are and no matter what condition we are in.
I don’t
consider Windsor Castle Park in Smithfield to be the wilderness, but I
encountered an example of grace and resurrection there while on a hike a few
weeks ago. Walking through a heavily
wooded section I was struck by the signs of death all around me in the form of
trees that, for one reason or another, had fallen. And those trees, depending on how long they
have been down, are in various stages of decomposition; a process which feeds
and nourishes every living thing around them.
Well, I
passed by one fallen tree just off the path between markers 5 and 6. Something surprising was happening. Apparently enough of the tree’s root structure
remained in tack after the fall that the truck was able to put forth new
shoots. In fact, more than a dozen new
limbs climbed skyward in search of sunlight; some more than twenty feet tall. The tree literally is experiencing a resurrection
– new life after dying.
What I
saw in the tree I see in the lives of so many people I know in life and
ministry. One of the things I love about
being a priest is people want to tell me about some of the most profound
moments in their life. I encounter people
who, whether they know it or not, are experiencing their own personal passion
story.
Some
folks are at a Palm Sunday moment in life – everything is going fine, they have
great energy and tremendous excitement.
Some are at Maundy Thursday – having a sense everything is about to fall
apart. Some are at Good Friday – dying a
death of a thousand cuts and soon everything about life as you have known it is
coming to an end. Some people who reach
out to me find they are in a Holy Saturday moment – lifeless, no way to go back
and no sense of anything good to come.
These stories are especially difficult to hear because it is cruel to
say, “Oh, you’ll get over it” or even worse, something like “Snap out of it.”
And
then there are folks who are at the point of resurrection – grace has found
them in the wilderness and they are once again ready to move forward. For most, this is not a one time, dramatic
event like an earthquake that rolls away the stone. It is more like the Easter season – something
unfolding over time. The scars of what
you experienced are still evident, but seem to have a lessening influence on
your life as new shoots spring from you and push toward the light.
Some
folks are at or past the Day of Pentecost – they have endured the worst life
has been able to do to them (or perhaps they did to themselves), found grace in
the wilderness, and now are living into a new purpose and mission in life.
I have learned
from listening to all these stories how our lives only begin to make sense as
we understand Jesus’ life. What he
experienced, we experience. And when we
can locate our story within his story we can live by faith, believing just as
God brought Jesus back from the depths, so too God will do for us and for all
those we love and care about. As we see
our life in Christ’s we can glean wisdom and direction from how he lived,
appropriating it as best we can into how we live day by day.
On this
day we celebrate Christ’s resurrection.
Because he lives, we live. Death
no longer gets the last word because there is grace in the wilderness.
