John 20:1-18
Easter Day - Years A, B, C
Expectations are usually traps, set-ups for disappointment. In this case a broken expectation becomes a release, a source of mystery upon mystery that joyfully engages our sense of meaning.
Having gone out with weeping, we return with a song on our lips.
It was bad enough to visit the tomb, but to find it empty meant an insult of thievery is added to the injury of loss by death. Mary sequentially trudges in sadness, runs in dismay, stands distraught, and went announcing what shepherds and magi before her reported - “I have seen creation at work.”
An Easter of remembrance and familiarity is not an Easter. An Easter of turning resurrection over to G*D is not an Easter. Easter is only Easter insofar as we have an experience of holding and being held and then being released and releasing to be able to move on with an assurance and an announcement.
Interested in measuring Easter, whenever it should come this year? Relate your experience of turning from lost to found. If you actually tell that story, then Easter arrived. If you have no story to tell, it didn’t. A resurrection in a garden without a story being told is like unto a tree falling unheard in a forest - it is still a reality, but a lonely one.
May you and all be blessed through your catch-and-release story.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2013/03/john-201-18.html
I come to the garden alone.
We laugh and weep out of our own reference points.
"People hate as they love, unreasonably."
~
William Makepeace Thackeray, novelist (1811-1863)
Then we try to hang on to another as our source of laughing and weeping.
It is hard to find that point of holding on and letting go.
The same is true of congregations and congregations of congregations. We've never done it that way; We've always done it this way - as unreasonable in the aggregate as in the individual loves and hates we nurture.
Mary Magdalene is to pass a message on to the brethren who had scattered to their homes. How would it be that she passed on the message entrusted to her? Would she have done it one on one to follow the "I come to the garden alone" model? Would she have gathered them together in a locked room in anticipation of the visitation to come?
Once she was about this individual or communal task, how might she have engaged them in wrestling with this ascension business, this larger view than what they knew of simply an empty tomb? Is this not the same kind of task before us - how do we help folks, individually and corporately, wrestle with a larger reference point than our their/our own experience? If so, let us talk together about how that is going.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/april2003.html
"Do not hold on to me." [John] "Do not be afraid" [Matthew] Different stories, same dynamic.
There are two different ways in which we can break the new family relationships Jesus has been attempting to bring together.
One is to so focus on Jesus that we lose ourselves. The other is to so focus on ourselves that we lose Jesus.
Insofar as we can't say, "Jesus," without also saying, "community of faith," we can always choose to so focus on others that we lose ourselves or so focus on ourselves that we lose others.
Again and again, in many different ways we keep coming back to the dual commandment regarding GOD and Neighbor. Depending on the context we need to be able to so inhabit this wisdom that we can play either end by ear, not manuscript.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/march2005.html
Did the women run away, end of story? Did Mary Magdalene run on telling the story? Did Mark or John get this detail accurately? Both, you say, then what can't you excuse?
Do the shorter and longer additions to Mark make his gospel more palatable?
Is an unrecognizable Jesus attributable to an internal state on the part of Mary and Cleopas or an external state of Jesus?
If our imaginations have not been captured along the way with Jesus life, these questions are but interesting speculations. If we have followed the story and connected it to our lives with an increasing hope and actual investment of life, resurrection becomes a viable conclusion to reach. But it is not the details that prove anything. They merely complete the suspension of our disbelief - the unchangableness of our past and present can be moved on to a new day in a new way.
May you bless Easter by beginning a new 8th day of creation after a night of resting in peace.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/april2006.html
In John, Mary M. is all over getting to the bottom of Jesus' disappearance, like a dog on a bone. She goes after friend Peter. When that doesn't avail, it's look into herself. Then it is just hang around, almost Columbo-like, checking out who else is around. So intent is she that when she finally finds the culprit, wascally wabbit, she falls back on, "What's up, Doc?"
In Mark, Mary M. can hardly wait to get out.
John's rough-and-tumble Mary seems closer to the image I have in my head and rings truer to my heart. But I must admit I have a certain appreciation for Mark's consistent presentation of the disciples as those who don't get it. Glad to have the women join us guys in finally running away, even if it is long after we had cut-and-run.
As we draw nigh to Easter, may we recognize it ain't over 'til its over. This is true of both death and resurrection. Some of us get caught with a tropism toward one or the other, others just go on their merry way. Whether we are focused on the half-empty of death, the half-full of resurrection, or the full-inertia of other fish to fry, it is helpful to know the other stories. We will eventually get to all the possibilities.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/april2006.html
Who goes into the tomb first? The men in John or the women in Luke? It is difficult to have it both ways. My bias runs toward Luke telling a better story here, so let's look at the women.
A key difference is between John's sense of being bereft -- so distraught that Mary M. couldn't see straight -- and Luke's sense of awe -- being overcome by a visitation as powerful as the transfiguration scene.
Will people return home amazed from Easter worship? Is that an internal state that depends on what they come with or is that a function of sacramental and preaching that goes beyond what folks are expecting? Obviously a false choice, but will shape what is done by the church leadership in providing common or uncommon ritual.
What would be amazing enough to bring the Easter crowd running back next Sunday so it won't be Low Sunday where we can joke a lot and get away with it because Easter showed we don't have to take this resurrection stuff any more seriously than did the first witnesses? What context and content would move this from an incomprehensible idle tale to revived and changed lives?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/april2004.html
With a crowd (well, two or three) we are strengthened to enter where an angel may fear to tread. In Luke, in they go. When one, even one as persistent as Mary Magdalene, is alone it is easier to cut and run quite early. In John, away she goes.
The women, together, got no respect from the disciples. The individual one received an immediate response from a disciple who ran to the tomb.
What is helpful in going in to find out some facts seems not to have been as response-getting as the individual's haste. In some sense, to have corroborating facts lays us more open to dismissive questions while sheer energy motivates.
As we come to Easter, what emotion, beyond facts and figures needs to come to the fore? Can that be expressed in a variety of ways for the variety of people who respond to different stimuli?
What dynamic do you see when you contrast these two passages rather than try to conflate them? Is that a helpful hint about the processes that would be helpful in your situation, with the people you deal with?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/april2004.html
Men in fabulous, shining clothes try to speak with the women with spices. First response - acculturated fear and shyness. With no expected attack, memory returns.
Women with spices try to speak with men in ordinary dress. First response - acculturated distance and dismissal. With unexpected persistence, a trial listening ensues.
And so the confusion of resurrection begins. Unlooked for to begin with and unbelievable when a glimmer is caught, a new story begins in the rocky, weedy paths of a few.
We are still working resurrection out. When we get the acculturated stuff out of the way we will get much closer to all that lies behind this multi-valenced word. If nothing more, may Easter be a scraping away of at least one layer of traditional religion that the mystery of life might shine through every attempt to explain and control it.
- - -
idol tales of common wisdom
lead us to put our tails between our legs
and simply agree with what everyone knows
and develop and idle tail
first we drop our tail
and then our head
no joy of curiosity
no hope for a quantum leap
no matter how long the lenten season
or how dark the easter vigil
a primeval choice keeps presenting
howl or turn tail
- - -
Elizabeth (Reader) Said...
Thanks for your Easter reflection - really got me thinking in a new direction for Sunday.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html
No earthquake in Mark. "When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back."
As you look back at your own life-journey (not always "spiritual") can you identify those times when your eye had been downcast, but, when you did, accidentally or hopefully, look up, it was obvious the dragon's maw no longer awaited you?
These are important markers, individually and communally, when we are then able to enter the tomb we so feared or were resigned to.
As in Mark, we may find even these subsequent experiences to be as frightening in their reality as they had been in their expectation. We may yet run afraid, away. But always there is a remembrance of a stone having rolled away and we can regroup to move beyond a next fear.
The ending of Mark is a marker for us in this process. Just how many endings there are to the resurrectional story, no one will ever know. They don't end with the recorded accretion of endings in Mark. We are still adding new endings to this old story. One way or another, fear never has the last word.
What we know as the original ending of Mark begs for completion in our lives. We have hurried (then and then and then) onward through this story that had no beginning and has no end. We have run right up to and past the last word of "afraid" and found ourselves hanging over an existential abyss - How'd we get here? What are we going to do now? Will this be the last word?
Mark's masterpiece has a masterpiece of an ending that tosses the salvation of G*D and Creation right back to us. Are you going to run forever, away, or stand over your nothing left and trust again, build again, live again?
- - -
so a new heaven and new earth
are about to be created
will this creation be a partnership
or a wholly-owned subsidiary
if without remembrance
will it long endure
without labor's seeming vanity
where resurrection's blessing
as came death so comes life
through you and me and us
choose this day
a last fruit - a first
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html
Matthew's image of an earthquake is important to shake us loose from our expectations and fears. Is there anything more to look forward to? How is the blockage ahead ever going to be taken care of?
Even Jeremiah's wonderful image of being built anew and dancing merrily carries with it an earthquake's worth of transition that will be tempted by and returned to bygone days of the sword instead of grace.
Paul's great assumption that "if" we have been raised with Christ we will seek the things above, causes an earthquake in our lives and the life of our communities that will need continual choice between a building upon the past and attempts to have the past build upon the present. What do we do with still being on the earth, but not of it?
Or another earthquake image of Peter's that there is no more partiality. We have built our lives and decision-making on how we might get to be those for whom partiality, privilege will redound their benefits to us.
It will take a resurrectional earthquake to roll away our expectations and fears to move us into a new perspective and better communal behaviors. Even though we might idealize this as a good thing, it will always mean a change of life (read, sacrifice) to enact and the earthquake itself may scare us more than the resurrectional opportunity it reveals.
- - -
this is a day
holding the tectonic plates
of our lives in place
regardless of the stress
it places upon us
to keep things from falling apart
this is a day
we yearn for sweet release
even a release that shakes foundations
relieving unrealistic expectations
controlling our lives
spending our resources on security
this is a day
of resistance to change
of dreaming heaven on earth
unknowing clouds dim our eye
to unseen consequences
hidden beneath our next step
this is a day
to rejoice and be glad in
to dance merrily
on the graves
within and around
trusting this day
this is a day
like all days
infamous and usual
ready and unready
for an earthquake opening
tombs and joy
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html
In the dark of lingering night and the dark of tomb, eyes-that-can-see note that stumbling, blocking stones are out of place. To note an unexpected opening is to rouse even more fear from within. In such times we run to others with a heightened story. Here the story escalates from moved stones to an interpretation of such - "They" have done something unspeakable. [The excuse of "they" seems to persist in both time and space.]
Where are we after all this running to and fro? Back at the beginning - The Magdalene alone, and now weeping.
Twice comes the question about why the weeping? Twice usually indicates an important question. Why are you weeping these days? There is ever so much to weep about, but why are you weeping? What are you looking for that weeping is a helpful response?
In this setting we are looking for that word of assurance known as being known by name. Does a lack of a sense of being known have anything to do with your weeping?
At any rate, regardless of ascension language, Mary shifts from Weeping Mary to Announcing Mary. Does a lack of having something to announce have anything to do with your weeping?
Look - light breaks in through cracks in hardened situations, weeping stones shout out an old "new message" - follow on and jump ahead, we are all becoming G*D.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/03/john-201-18.html