The Great Vigil of Easter
Last year I experienced two exercise-related injuries. (I tell myself that this means I’m really acing my early forties). The first was a relatively minor but persistent shoulder injury. I found a physical therapy practice that helps patients return to their strength training goals, and I was paired with a young woman with a contagious smile, deep knowledge, and even deeper patience.
As people tend to do, she asked what I did for work. When I replied, “I’m a monk,” the predictable questions arose. But these quickly took on a unique substance and a quiet urgency. I found myself with needles in my back, hooked to low voltage electricity, muscles twitching, as she asked things like: “So how is Jesus both God and human?” or “What about hell?” or “If Christians believe in a God who is love, why are so many of them so full of hate?”
Week after week, we would dance from the robustly physical to the profoundly spiritual and back again, because of course: they are not separate. I did all I could to show her the face of Jesus as I have come to know and follow him. And I was shown more of Jesus through her healing touch.
I had barely returned to exercising when the second injury occurred, a major lumbar disc rupture that caused the most incapacitating pain I have ever experienced. Walking, standing, lying down – everything sent lightning bolts of pain radiating down my left leg. In the thick of this experience, I despaired of ever lifting anything heavy again. I could hope only for a few hours of sleep each night and the basic ability to walk without agony. A spine specialist got me on heavy pain medication, outlined a course of treatment, and said: Find a physical therapist as soon you can.
I know just the person, I said.
I returned to physical therapy a broken person, my basic sanity threadbare, weary of the constant burden of chronic suffering. But I trusted her care as she had come to trust my counsel and conversation. Our genuine alliance of healing in body, mind, and spirit helped me through a very dark time.
Four months later, my body is mostly healed. I have strategies for handling the chronic flare-ups, I sleep eight hours a night, and I can exercise, albeit more cautiously. I have been returned to the life I love.
The young woman whose baptism we have just had the joy of witnessing, Gabi, is my physical therapist. And by God’s mysterious and gracious work, she has become so much more: a beloved sister in Jesus Christ.
I begin this way because the Christian hope of resurrection we affirm in our baptism and celebrate today is not an abstraction or a metaphor.
The Resurrection is made known to us in personal relationships, as when Mary Magdalene and the “other Mary” went to see the tomb together early on the first day of the week.
The Resurrection is made known to us in places. The angel invites them: “Come, see the place where he lay.”
The Resurrection is made known to us in these bodies of ours, fragile and glorious: “They came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshipped him.”
We are living in a time that needs the transformative hope of the Easter gospel: the message that life has meaning in union with a Savior who came to love, not to condemn the world. There are two defining features of this interpersonal, locatable, and very physical Resurrection power:
First, Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead. He was raised from death by God, by the one he called Father. That passive verb is essential.
Jesus did not raise himself– no dead creature can do this, and the scandal of Holy Saturday is just this: Jesus of Nazareth died our very human death.
The power by which Jesus was raised – the power of God, creator of heaven and earth – is not the same kind of power that arrested and crucified him. It is not an infinite supply of might, which we might be tempted to attribute to the Almighty. This is not a story about the “good guys” being stronger than the “bad guys” because God is on our side and not theirs.
The Resurrection is the mysterious working of a categorically different power than the world can grasp – power welling up from a divine Source made available where, to whom, and between whom the world least expects it. In the presence of this power, Roman soldiers become like dead men and a pair of women are armed with the proclamation of the gospel.
This power is like the roots of a tree which slowly but surely crack and rearrange every sidewalk pavement we create.
Second, the Risen Jesus is always the crucified-and-risen one.
This Jesus Christ, whom God raised, died the excruciating death of a political dissident. When Jesus is brought before Pilate, accused of claiming to be the King of the Judeans, he makes no reply in his defense. But the Roman imperial middlemen and Judean Temple authorities in collusion with them intuited that the power of God at work in Jesus was a direct affront to the power they claimed to wield. Not its rival, in fact, but its antidote.
Political ideologies of domination and will-to-power that lay claim to authority founded on the victory of God in Christ profoundly misrepresent the Resurrection we celebrate today.
They erase the wounds from Christ’s hands, feet, and side only to inflict them afresh on the true kindred Jesus names in the Beatitudes: the poor; those who mourn; the meek; those who hunger and thirst for righteousness; the merciful; the pure in heart; and the peacemakers.
They discard the “weakness and foolishness” of the Gospel proclaimed in every sentence written by the Apostle Paul.
That is not Resurrection because there is no cross.
Political elites, ruling classes, powerful majorities, and those seduced by their vision and values have inflicted wounds upon the Church in every age. Their misappropriation of its message for their own ends has compromised its vital spirit. This is especially true of the powerful in our own day and in our own land.
But Christ was, is, and ever shall be a healer.
There is a way to lay hold of the Light and Life he promises. Countless saints have followed it. Major injuries to a body or mind can be healed over time through accurate diagnosis, good medical care, and reparative therapy.
The word therapy comes from a Greek root verb: “to attend, to do service, to take care of.” Therapy is never juridical or retributive. It does not concern itself with whether the wounded deserve to be healed, but with finding and coaxing forth the health and wholeness within, however marred or twisted by the pain of our human journey.
If fear and great joy are struggling for supremacy in your heart this morning, how does it feel to receive the risen Jesus as one who comes to attend to you; to do service to you; to take care of you . . . rather than as one who has come to evaluate; to discriminate; or to punish?
The crucified-and-risen Christ knows your wounds as his own. He has not come to rub salt in them. He comes, again and again, to touch them with his own and raise us up with him: “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”
Gabi, you asked me: “If Christians believe in a God who is love, why are so many of them so full of hate?” The question came from your lips, but it is a question in the hearts of many, many people.
Like any organism, even a mystical one, this Body of Christ on earth is constantly subject to failing and falling short of its high calling. The work of nourishing, strengthening, training and re-training that Body is endless on this side of eternity, and is sustained only by the living Spirit of Christ, who makes all things new. That is as true of this Episcopal Church as it is of others; there is no room here for self-righteousness.
But we have taken a stand for the gospel of Love.
What we have been doing in this chapel since dark o’ clock; what we have been doing this Holy Week; what this community strives to do day in and day out, and what communities like this do Sunday by Sunday has real potential to soften hearts, dethrone the world’s values, and coax forth the healing and wholeness within. It is there. It is our call to invite it out into the light.
We are sent in the name of a divine therapist to deliver the accurate diagnosis; to offer the right medicine; and to invite others into a regimen of spiritual therapy that heals our ancient wounds.
Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified.
He is not here, for he has been raised, as he said.
Come, see the place where he lay.
Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’
This is my message for you.
Alleluia, Christ is Risen!
