Fearful yet Overjoyed

On Palm Sunday afternoon after two long readings of the Passion followed by a serious nap, I sit in the garden enjoying the warmth of spring. Mercifully, the heat hasn’t descended yet and there’s a little breeze coming up from the river. The neighbor’s black and white cat ignores me as she sits grooming herself across the lawn from me, the new bursting calla lilies as white as she is. The roses are just beginning to pop here and there. The cherry trees and the dogwood have already come and gone out of bloom and into leaf, and one insistent blue jay flies back and forth from tree to tree, looking for a place to preen and a grub to eat. Two artichokes the size of tennis balls are already set over their gray green, elegant leaves. It’s spring at last, and for a moment everything is calm and still and lovely.

Yet Palm Sunday’s readings, and the long ritual arc of Holy Thursday and Good Friday and the long stillness of Holy Saturday ahead still press down with fearful weight. They tell the sad, true story of generosity and betrayal, of violence done to the innocent and the evil intent of the powerful, of suffering and death. Bread blessed and broken, and the spirit of the giver oppressed in a moonlit garden. A furtive kiss of the betrayer, a trumped-up trial, a denial that ends with the cock’s crow. An ugly crowd on the verge of riot, a hapless, cowardly governor, the mockery of a thorny crown. Torn flesh, torn hands and feet, awful, agonizing loneliness raised on high for all to see.

They took him down after he breathed his last, his few fearless friends and courageous women surrounding his mother. Into the dark, into a borrowed tomb they laid him, rolled the stone, and went away.

And yet, and yet the story does not end there. On Saturday night in the dark tomb of our church, new fire is kindled, and in the telling of the ancient stories of creation, delivery from bondage, and God’s faithful love for his unfaithful children we find hope to believe against all the world’s evidence to the contrary, that life and love are more powerful than death. The story opens out into dawn, and an empty tomb, and a woman named Magdalene, and her friend, encounter men clothed in light who tell them that their Lord and brother is alive. God loved him back to life, and gave him back to us, to them, and to the ages. Fearful yet overjoyed, they hasten back to tell good news, and on the road, they meet him, and touch him and hear his promise that he will go before them into Galilee, always before them.

Fearful yet overjoyed, they believed. They saw, and heard, and believed. We have heard, though we have not seen with their eyes. We see with eyes of faith, we see him in one another, in the good we do and evil we endure. We see him still suffering with the suffering and dying with the dying. We see him continuing to break the bread for us, and for the hungry, offering life and healing and wholeness. In our newest members we see his light shining in their eyes. Fearful yet overjoyed, we open our hearts to him, who is resurrection and life.

Blessings,