Resurrection & the spiritual practice of orienting to love
A homily for Easter 2024
Readings from the Catholic Comprehensive Lectionary.
My dear friends, over the past few weeks of lent, ideas have been percolating in our community about the meaning of suffering, of death, and of love — shaping our way to Easter.
On Palm Sunday, Jeanne pointed out that the same crowd who cheered for Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem was the same that jeered for Jesus’ crucifixion, or stayed silent for fear. How is it that we, human beings, shift so quickly from celebrating God’s Love as our guiding authority — a Love that challenges forces of patriarchy and power mongering — to hailing (or silently abiding) violence against God’s creation? In how many ways does this happen around us?
Lauren then challenged widely held ideas that when things go well for us, it is because God is with us. Is God not with those who suffer?
For some reason, contemporary Christian culture has co-opted God in a way that affirms the wealthy, the healthy, and the fortunate. It’s an idea that brings peace to some, and afflicts — even accuses others in their time of greatest need — as if their suffering or losses are deserved.
Even though many of us do not believe that God only answers prayers with positive personal outcomes, it’s hard to disentangle ourselves from the impact of prosperity gospel leakage into the well-water of widespread Christian belief. All of us probably have moments where we say to ourselves, “thank God,” because we recognize where we have narrowly missed some devastation. I certainly believe that gratitude is a powerful source of health and resilience, so I’m not saying we shouldn’t acknowledge goodness when we have it. But theologically, if we are to help one another through good times and bad, we need to accompany our gratitude with different questions. Not: why was or wasn’t I saved from this terrible experience? But: how am I to orient to Love when I feel so harmed or helpless, or when I see my neighbor suffer? When I think of Jesus in the garden of gethsemane and the women at the foot of the cross- I imagine them grappling with these questions.
Which leads me to a quote Tom shared from Pastor Don Wagner this week. He wrote, “God did not send Jesus to die, but to show us what living into resurrection truly is.” Let’s run with that.
God did not send Jesus to die, but God became Love-Incarnate in the person of Jesus, lived in intimate relationship, modeled the ways of Love in this life; and heartbroken, accepted death on a cross to show us that Love is greater than fear; that Life is more powerful than death; that mechanisms of empire are fragile by comparison to the eternal source of Creativity and Love that binds all of existence. God walked through human death to show us what living into resurrection truly is.
To live into resurrection, is to live in Love. It is to resist letting our lives be shaped by fear and death-dealing forces, and instead by our radical commitment to the ways of community care. It asks us to work for our mutual wellbeing with kindness, generosity, wonder, gratitude, justice, and faith. And it reminds us that we have a part in ushering in peace on earth as it is in heaven. Our part matters.
And yet — a life lived in Love is one full of feeling: of joy and expectation, of fulfillment, of peace, of disruption, of suffering, of loss, and of grief. How much do those who love have to hold!! As the poet Khalil Ghibran said:
“Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”
Or, to quote Winnie the Pooh,
“How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”
This is what I feel when I sit with images of Mary Magdalene on Easter Morning. I imagine the devastation of Jesus’ death; the trauma of all that she witnessed two short days before.
If I place myself in her situation, my heart shatters. Because to know love in the flesh and to lose love in the flesh is a devastating thing. What confusion, what joy, what mix of elation and wonder she must have felt to realize Jesus was beside her outside the tomb. In Love, he returned to her — even if for a moment.
We’re often quick to celebrate her place as an apostle to the apostle — and rightly so. But I think that we need to also marvel at her humanity. She was a living, breathing, person who loved the living Jesus — and she had to say goodbye twice. First, as a witness to his execution, and second — to his loving but lasting farewell. “Mary, you have to let me go.”
Let him go, and what?
Live. Mary has to go and live. She has to seek out her community, orient to Love.
That is what resurrection asks of us, too. That we orient to Love, especially when we find ourselves in the face of fear, suffering, and death.
To believe God isn’t with us in our suffering or experiences of alienation is to believe that God wasn’t with Jesus, wasn’t with Mary of Magdala. That’s not the message of the Gospel or the Resurrection. The Good News is that we can orient to Love, just like Jesus did, like Mary Magdalene did, even when we are in the most difficult situations. There we will find God, pointing us to ways of new life — often in ways we never would have imagined.
It reminds me of a quote that I held close to my heart in painful times: “Don’t give up before the miracle happens.” God isn’t the cause of our crucifixions; God is offering a hand through. Come, Live.
That said, I think it takes practice to live into resurrection; it’s a method for spiritual maturity. And, as my Great Gram always said, wholehearted living “isn’t for the faint of heart.” Not only does it ask that we orient ourselves to love good times and bad, but that we dare to know our grief and let it teach us, as we tend to one another in community.
So the Easter question I feel called to bring today is:
How will we be in the resurrections of our lives? When we are facing deaths and devastations of many kinds, how will we orient ourselves to Life — to Love?
Will we be together in community?
Will we hold our grief and that of others with tenderness?
Will we show up at the foot of the cross, and again at the tomb?
Will we let our tears fall, and labor on?
Will we be open to Love’s presence where we least expect it?
Will we be Love’s messengers?
How, my friends, will we live into the hope that Easter offers each of us?
