On Sunday afternoon we walked the trail along Tischer Creek and my husband Tim took this amazing photo. Beautiful icicles stubbornly clung to the branches leaning over the rushing waters of the creek. Afterward as I looked at the picture I thought of the John Prine song, “Make Me and Angel”
Make me an angel that flies from Montgomery
Make me a poster of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing that I can hold on to
To believe in this living is just a hard way to go
We have needed to hang on to something this last year as it has been such a hard way to go. So many people have died in this Pandemic including John Prine. I need Holy Week this year as a way to remember it’s always been this way, a hard way to go. Even Jesus said, “It is over” as he hung from the branches of the cross. Yet, was it over?
Mary Magdalene must go back to the tomb to really see if it is over. She has work to finish, a body to bind up. Maybe doing these rituals of grief will offer a little healing to her own brokenness. So she goes as scripture says “early in the morning while it was still dark”. The Easter story begins in the dark. All our resurrection stories begin in the dark, don’t they? We have gotten up and wandered in the dark until the dawn, just like Mary. We too have been unable to sleep through our nights.
Mary is drawn to that empty place, drawn enough to stoop and look into this tomb. In the cool, damp dark, she sees two angels where Jesus’ body had been. They ask only, “why are you weeping?”. Why? The same question we often ask ourselves.
Mary leaves and goes out into the garden where she senses someone behind her. In the transforming light of dawn, she turns and blurts out, “Sir, if you have taken him away, tell me where you have taken him?” She does not recognize Jesus. In her brokenness, in her grief, she only sees a gardener. It is not until Jesus says her name that hope returns to her heart. The grief begins to melt away and she can stop clinging to the wooden branches of the cross. All of this happens outside, in a garden. Branches of life bloom as death melts away in the dawn. It is like the first garden of Eden where life comes from where there was no life. After the whisper of her name, Mary can move on and sing the good news of love and life, “Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed!”
After our walk by the creek on Sunday, I went and shared the Passover and Easter stories with some kids at a local detention facility where I had been invited to come as a guest speaker. I brought some Matzo with me thinking they surely have tasted the bread of affliction, and a little show and tell never hurts either. I told them this flat bread was like the same bread Jesus ate just before his death because he had been celebrating Passover with his friends. They and we need to know there is so much in these stories of faith and in our own stories. We can dare to join the songs of hope sung in Spring’s re-creation, in the stream’s waters surging over the melting ice. This is the one thing we can hold on to.
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