It's Easter!

"The strife is o'er;
  the battle done;
The victory of life
   is won;
The song of triumph
   has begun:
Alleluia! Alleluia!"
--Latin Hymn, tr. Francis
Pott (1832-1909)

Every Easter the memory comes back. I had a chance to see the Passion Play in Oberammergau, Germany several years ago. The play opened with Jesus riding into Jerusalem for the last time. The play ended with the Resurrection. For almost six hours the audience followed the story of Jesus’ last days on earth.

 I was not prepared for the Resurrection scene. The crucifixion had been particularly graphic and disturbing. After Jesus’ body was carefully taken down from the cross the stage went dark.  Suddenly a dim light came on which illuminated a small cluster of weeping women. They stood before huge doors that represented the locked tomb. They knocked on the door. Nothing happened. Frantically they tried to pry the doors open. The doors did not budge. Suddenly an angel came on stage and without saying a word began to unroll a white aisle cloth from the closed door down the steps toward the audience. As the women looked on, the door creaked open and dazzling light slowly filled the stage and finally the whole room. Through that open door Jesus came. He walked down the steps. And from left and right laughing children came running forward, hugging Jesus’ legs. In the background a Choir sang.

I can’t improve on that Easter scene. It was as close to the wonder of the Resurrection as anything I know. Who can put this special day into words? Surely not the merchants hawking their Easter wares. Surely not the bunnies, the Easter lilies, the corsages, or those wonderful multi-colored eggs. Surely this day is more than the coming of spring and the end of winter.

Easter is light, hope, new beginnings, love and laughter. Somehow our old nine to five calendar pages are disturbed once again. The predictability of our days is thrown off kilter. And whether it is worry about money or retirement or health or children or just the troubled world-- most of us find ourselves pausing on Easter morning.

People who never darken the door of a church put on our finery and slip into some sanctuary. This is not the time for any preacher to chide those who only come on Easter morning. It hardly matters if they are dragged along by some wife or child. We all need something to shatter life’s flatness. A bad lab report. That funeral last week. Afghanistan, endless Afghanistan.   A disappointment so heavy that we wonder if we can make it. Like those women in the play we all know something about locked doors and sealed-up tombs.

And Easter comes. Saying that despite the darkness which is very real and the trouble we all carry, there is another word. There is light, so blinding it hurts our eyes. There is wonder so strong that we may find it hard to hold back the tears. There is joy and laughter at the heart of life despite its rawness and its difficulty.

What changed those petty, cowardly disciples and turned them inside out? There is no explanation except that Easter brought with it light, hope and new life for them and for their world. They wrote the story over and over until we have four gospels. They founded a church, which has endured despite its all-too-human members and preachers. That little group of first believers passed the torch until the greatest story ever told could be our story, too. Wishful thinking? Some say so. I choose to remember large open doors and a blinding light and at the center Jesus come back from the dead. But what I remember most after all these years is the laughter of all those children.

The 14th Station--Jesus is Laid in the Tomb

In the novel, The Living, by Annie Dillard, is a funeral scene where one of the characters, Norval, reads  pompously from Scripture, "O death, where is thy sting?" To which Hugh, sitting in the pews, thinks, "Just about everywhere, since you ask."

What do we say when we stand by the grave? Not much. The Preacher offers some word she hopes will comfort. But we don’t hear them. We don’t even see our surroundings. The flowers. The casket. The bright, sunshiny day. We sit there like we’re in a fog. We hardly remember the service at the church. Our loved one is dead and we don’t know what to do.

We’re like those two trudging, slowly trudging as if in slow motion to Emmaus. They had heard the Easter news—but they hadn’t really heard it. “We had hoped,” they told the stranger, “that he was the one to redeem Israel.” Are there sadder words in the Bible than these? We had hoped. But that hope had been shattered by Calvary and that awful death that Jesus should not have had to endured.

I have just finished a Grief Support Group. We sat around in a circle for eight weeks. We told stories about Mamas and babies and Papa’s and wives and husbands. All gone. And so we told stories and shed tears and comforted one another. But grief for some was still raw and they were uncertain of this terrible unknown journey. They identify with this last dark station. Jesus lies in the tomb—sealed shut by Roman guards so his fans would not take the body away and claim he was still alive. That mausoleum, that jar of ashes that grave with the headstone—we know don’t we? We know.

We stand here and ponder this last station. It isn’t the end—but who knows that when the tomb is sealed shut and you are still in shock and the tears come at the strangest times—what it really means. It means that Jesus was in the hands of the Father—the Father whose prayer he prayed toward the end, “Father into thy hands I commend my spirit.”

Years ago a friend lost his little girl with cancer. He was devastated and people from all over surrounded him and reached out. I wrote him a note telling him I did not know what to say but that I lifted him and his family up to the care of the father. Weeks later I received a reply, “Thank you or what you did not say.” So here, as in that little circle of mourners I just finished—there is not much to say. But this we know. He is one with us. He traveled the road we take all the way to the end. Along the way he wept for friends who should not have died. He wept over a city that did not know. And there on the cross, I think between the agony of pain--tears, more even than blood--trickled down his cheeks. So there is not much to say as we stop at this Station. Oh, we can talk about Easter and all its wonder. But not yet. This is the day to ponder our losses and our own finitude. Isaiah was right, “Surely he has borne our grief and carried our sorrows.”

(My gratitude goes to the First Baptist Church, Aiken, SC for sharing the prints of the Stations of the Cross, by the African artist, Bruce Onobrakpeya whose original work is found in Saint Paul's Church in Nigeria.)

 

  

The Thirteenth Station--Jesus Is Taken Down From the Cross

"It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness fell over the whole land until the ninth hour, the sun being obscured, and the veil of the temple was torn in two.
  And Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, 'Father, into thy hands I commend My spirit.' And having said this, He breathed His last."
                --Luke 23. 44-46

This may just may be the saddest station on our journey. The weight of this death slowly falls on those who loved him. Standing by this station we see the crowds have gone. Even the soldiers have left. Only a handful are there. It is so quiet you don't even hear a bird sing. The only sounds from that hill is the sobbing of women. His mother and the others. Jesus is dead. That body which healed the blind and the crippled is empty. Those arms that stretched out to the needy again and again cannot move. That voice that spoke to troubled hearts and seas and anxious friends is silent. Jesus is dead.

And Joseph of Arimathea comes to supervise the taking down of the body. He has offered his tomb--for the Lord Jesus had nowhere to lay his head. Even in death. And Nicodemus comes back on stage . We thought we'd seen the last of him. I'm glad they put these rich men in the story. For it means that everyone--even the rich and powerful--can find a place in this story. We need to remember that Jesus reached out to everyone. And he had touched something deep inside Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, too.

Tenderly they take Jesus' broken body down from the cross. Did they wince as they pulled his hands away from the nails and the feet, too? Did they pry the nails loose? No one tells us. Leonard Boff has said of Joseph and Nicodemus "their love won out over fear." They anoint the body and wrap it in a cloth of perfumed oils. And Mary comes forward. "Bring him to me,"she said.  I remember a poem, perhaps not the best, but which touches the emotion of that moment.

"Did Mary make a birthday cake 

For Christ when he was small,

And think the while she frosted it,

How quickly boys grow tall?

Oh sometimes years are very long,

And sometimes years run fast,

And when the Christ had put away 

Small, earthly things at last,

And died upon a wooden cross

One afternoon in spring,

Did Mary find the little toy, 

And sit...remembering?"

--Helen Welshimer, "The Birthday"

As we stand here pondering the sorrow of all those who have lost someone--this Station is for them. That mother in Chicago who lost her daughter in a drive-by shooting one week after her band played for the Inauguration. All those mothers that sit with heavy grief this Easter because some son or some daughter did not make it back from the war. We could go on and on. The sorrow of mothers this Easter flows like a dark river around the world. And yet--this was not the end. Even if our Lord had not come back the memories of all the good he did and the people he blessed would still remain. But this was not the end. We know it now. 

Dostoevsky reminds us: "What keeps me going is that I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that in the world's finale something so great will come to pass that it's going to suffice for all our hearts, for all the comforting of our sorrows, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity. And I want to be there when suddenly everyone understands what it has all been for."

"All those dead are to be found

in the dead Jesus.

The question of all of them rises as a cry to God:

How long, O Lord, how long?

And the Lord

who is merciful,

resurrects our hope,

transforming the question into a plea:

Thy Kingdom come...

on earth as it is in heaven!"

--Leonard Boff, Way of the Cross

(I am endebted to the African artist, Bruce Onobrakpeya for his powerful renderings of the Stations of the Cross. The beautiful sculptured piece of Mary and her Son can be found in St. Bernard Abbey, Cullman, Alabama.)

Station Twelve--Jesus Hangs on the Cross

"Listen.
Somethings is tearing, hearing a hole
Too wide for measuring
And something is grating, grating
As of a hinge, broken, and a door
Swinging in a deadly wind.
The lynchpin is pulled,
The ridgepole cracked.
Drown through the needle's eye
We are crushed by a weight
With no name, and pray
The world will not lie splintered
By Sunday
When all this will be explained."
  --Arlene De Bevoise, "Good Friday"

The twisting winding road stops here. Jesus is done all that he can do. And so they nail him to the cross and everything is different. The soldiers that day did not understand this. They saw dead criminals nailed up for all to see day after day. The crowds, mostly curious did not understand this. They only came to gape. Off to the side, heartbroken and scared was dear John the only one that came, and the women--always the women. And yet many have come to understand. This cross--this death has become the central symbol of our faith.

The Cross reminds of a story that A.E. Hotchner told in his book, Papa Hemingway. Gary Cooper, famous movie star, winner of a multitude of awards was a good friend of Ernest Hemingway. Cooper, despite his fame, led a notorious life of women and booze. Later in life he suffered a nervous breakdown and as he recovered he slowly began to visit the Catholic Church and became friends with the Priest. After a long time he joined the church and was baptized. Hemingway heard the news and couldn't believe it. He kidded Gary Cooper about getting religion. Cooper made a joke out of it too. They both laughed.

 Later Gary Cooper was diagnosed with lung cancer and toward the end he was very sick. Hotchner, a friend of them both, visited Cooper one day in the hospital. He was very weak and Hotchner knew his friend did not have long to live. But Cooper raised up and said, "I want you to give Hemingway a message for me." And he was hit by terrible racking cough. "Tell Ernest that day when he made fun of me for joining the church and I made light of it too, I want him to know..." And Hotchner that Cooper reached across his bedside table and found a small wooden cross. He kissed it and said, "I want Papa to know this--tell him that this was best thing I ever did." He died not long after this.

"Lamb of God that 

takes away the sins of the world

have mercy on us--one and all."

(The linoleum-cut print, as have all the others on this Journey were done by African artist,  Bruce Onobrakpeya. The original work hangs in St. Paul's Church in Nigeria.)

We Remember the Fallen

"'...Have many gone from here?' 
'Yes.'
'Many lost?'
'Yes, a good few.
 Only two teams work on the farm this year.
One of my mates is dead. The second day
In France they killed him. It was back in March ,
The very night of the blizzard, too. Now if
He had stayed here we should have moved that tree.
And I should have sat here. Everything
Would have been different. 
For it would have been 
Another world.'"
 --Edward Thomas,"As the team's head brass"



This is the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the War in Iraq. Anniversaries are a good time to look back and remember. And so today I remember the fallen and this war that should never have been fought. The waste in human resources and money that could be spent to help this country is staggering. Let us remember.

4,500 American service persons killed

30,000 wounded

190,000 civilian casualties killed

Two million dollars spent on direct governmental expenditures

Leaving behind two broken countries

Not speak of the suicides, the broken homes and a torn up America

"After every war
someone's got to tidy up
Things won't pick
themselves up, after all.

Someone's got to shove
the rubble to the roadsides
so the carts loaded with corpses
can get by.

Someone's got to trudge
through sludge and ashes,
through the sofa springs,
the shards of glass, 
the bloody rags.

Someone's got to lug the post
to prop the wall,
someone's got to glaze the window,
set the door in its frame.

No sound bites, no photo opportunities
and it takes years.
All the cameras have gone
to other wars.

Te bridges need to be rebuilt,
the railroad stations, too. 
  Shirt sleeves will be rolled 
to shreds.

Someone, broom in hand, still remembers how it was.
Someone else listens, nodding
his unshattered head.
But others are bound to be bustling nearby
who'll find all that
a little boring."
--Wislawa Symborska,
"The End and the Beginning" (partial poem)
(translated from Polish)

Station Eleven--Jesus is Nailed to the Cross

"And when they came to the place  called The Skull, there they crucified him and the criminals, one on the right and other on the left. But Jesus was saying, 'Father forgive them; for they know not what they are doing.'"                
                       --luke 22. 33-34    

We have almost come to the end of the line, we pilgrims. We’ve followed Jesus from a rigged trial and awful scourging until they pushed the cross beam on his shoulders. We watched him fall and fall and fall and remembered those other falling so close to us. Too close. There was a lump in our throats as he saw see him peer from blood-streaked sad eyes at his mother who stood close by. Could one smile carrying a cross—I think he almost did when he saw the dear, dear daughters of Jerusalem standing near and open-mouthed and stricken with grief--but with eyes of love. He smiled because not many who said they loved them came—but they were there. We tried to avert our eyes as they stripped every garment from his bruised, wounded body. But our eyes kept coming back hoping this Lamb of God who we understand can take away the sins of the world will have mercy on us too. We need it, don’t we?

 So stopping at this eleventh Station we see he has climbed his last hill—broken his last bread—put his arms around the last of the children he laughed with. This is almost the end—but not quite. And so here they hammer and hammer and hammer the nails into his hands and feet. God, how it must have hurt. The crowd was used to crucifixions it was the Roman way of keeping them in line. And it worked.  But somehow this cross, this nailing was different. For from that hill has come a great river of hope for every sin and every sorrow. Those out-stretched, nailed-down hands have touched us all.

This Station reminds me of my own nail story. I was asked to speak at a Good Friday service at the Hospital. I took along some carpenter nails and passed them out and talked about nails. Christ’s and our own. All those nailed-down things in our lives. The dead end streets. The unfulfilled dreams. The constrictions that life places upon all of us. Months later our church took a wrong turn. I was having a hard time as Pastor there. My wife kept saying, “Get out! Get out—this thing is going to kill you. I can’t stand to watch what is happening to you anymore. Do anything but don’t do this.” And I wondered how long I could stay.

With so much going on I was visiting the hospital one day and a nurse aide, a black woman got on the elevator. As the door closed she asked, “Aren’t you Dr. Lovette?” I nodded. She said, “Didn’t you preach down here on a Good Friday last year?" I said, “Yes.” She said, “I remember. I still got my nail. I think about it all the time.” The door opened and she was gone. She didn’t know what she had done for me. I had given her a nail. And she gave it back to me. Looking back now I know that moment in that elevator was one of the graces that kept me going.

Look up at this Station. Ponder the nails. God knows, we’ve all got more than our share. Who knows—those special nails may keep you going, too.

(I am indebted to African artist, Bruce Onobrakpeya for his 14 linoleum-cut prints I have followed on our Lenten journey this year.)   

The Tenth Station--Jesus is Stripped Bare

"Yea, dogs are round about me; a company of evildoers encircle me; they have pierced my hands and feet--I can count all my bones--they stare and gloat over me; they divide my garments among them, and for my raiment they cast lots."
                     --Psalm 22. 16-18

 People do not linger long at this tenth station—now closer to the end than the beginning. No wonder we turn away. God—or God’s son is as weak and vulnerable as he will ever be. Years before Isaiah captured this truth: “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not." We hide our faces too at this stopping off place. This is no PG or even R-rated Station—this is an X-rated scene. The soldiers stripped every last garment from his wounded bloody body. And he stands, reeling before God and everybody naked as the day he was born.

No wonder we turn away. We want our God to be clothed perhaps like Pope Benedict with his Prada shoes, golden cloaks and bejeweled scepter. Pope Francis puzzles us.We want God’s cross to be decoration—perhaps set with a single diamond. We want our God to be the powerful one who fills TV churches and football stadiums to hear some football player or beauty queen talk about Jesus in glowing terms. We want our God to be covered in lilies and alleluias and Easter splendor.

But not here. Not yet. It may seem like Sunday—but Friday is surely coming. We cannot turn our faces away from this ugly tenth station. The soldiers stripped him bare. And in this stopping-off place he is one with the weakest and the ugliest and the most shameful. And so we don’t linger long in that room where he/she writhes in agony until her/his gown shows everything. We don’t like to look at the sordid ugly face of pain and woe. There is no dignity here—naked and vulnerable as he is. And so whoever it is that has ever been stripped bare of all their trappings—naked and ashamed—he is one with the victims of every indignity:

 Illegal

queer

nigger

wet-back

sissy

stupid

fat

ugly

whore

retarded

bastard

sorry—no-good

lesbo 

dumb

bitch

welfare queen.

 .

We cannot turn away from this naked vulnerable Jesus. For here we ponder one of the greatest of the God-mysteries. He stands with every shame and every humiliation and every injustice.  Which means, I think he is with us all—this broken naked Jesus really does have the whole world in his hands.

Not only the loss of love of self—which we all know—not only the stigmas we carry in our bodies—which we all despise...not only the snubs and slights that hurt so terribly—that have crippled us all. Whatever indignity the world pours out on any of its children—God is there. No wonder the Carmelite nun found its powerful truth even behind locked walls of a convent: “I came upon earth’s most amazing knowledge someone is hidden in this dark with me.”  We cannot ignore this tenth station—it takes us all in and that may be the wonder if it all.  

(I am indebted to the First Baptist Church, Aiken, South Carolina for sharing these beautiful renderings of the Stations. They are the work of the African artist, Bruce Onobrakpeya whose  renderings can be found in museums,galleries and private homes throughout the world. The artist was a pioneer in printmaking, elevating the technique to a level recognized as a major art form. These 14 Stations were first linoleum-cut prints. His original stations can be found in St. Paul's Church in Nigeria.

The powerful sculptured piece, entitled "The Prodigal Son" is by Sculptor, George Grey Barrard and can be found in the Speed Museum, University of Louisville, KY.)