The Tomb Where New Love RisesRead Time 9 min

EASTER SUNDAY OF THE RESURRECTION OF THE LORD
Acts 10:34, 37-43
Colossians 3:1-4 or 1 Corinthians 5:6-8
John 20:1-9

There is a rhythm to all of creation. How does the crocus know to usher in the springtime and the fall aster to color the closing of the season? How does the cloud know when to burst with rain? How does the heart know when to fall in love? Our lives are subject to rhythms beyond our knowing.

There is a deeper rhythm as well, one at the heart of all the others. It is the call to life even at the depths of death, lest death think it has the final word. It was the Lord Jesus who revealed it in his dying and his rising — the very throbbing of God’s Spirit that insists on bringing life from the throes of death. And there are hints of it all about us, hints (first breaths?) that the God who raised Jesus to life also raises us out of the deaths of everyday living.

The hint to resurrection takes place whenever we find life at a time when we expected there could only be death. It is the mystery of falling in love when we thought love could never be found, and it is that same love lost for a time and then found again, as if for the first time.

It is the moment of quiet and peace in the middle of a hectic and crazy day that comes as a gift from out of nowhere, only to see it fade as someone slams the door and calls out “I’m home.” And it is also the “I’m home,” the people we love. That too is what we seek, a returning home to that place where love becomes real after life has bruised and battered our best efforts.

It is watching the teenager, over whom we pulled out both hair and patience, become the daughter or son we are proud to usher into adulthood. It is seeing them take on the values we sought to instill and then saying to ourselves that it was worth it all, worth the sleepless nights, the disagreements over curfews and expectations, the tears and the fears.

It is the memories we muse over, of times long past when our young futures were only beginning, and our dreams had not yet been stolen by time. They are times now long past, even though it is our musings that make them seem as real as only yesterday’s, and long enough ago that we forget the unpleasant clutter that was a part of those times as well. Such musings then become a grace by which we believe once more that the dreams can yet be forged into real life.

It is the long lone walk when we wondered whether we should be faithful to the commitments we had made, then deciding we would, and now looking back and realizing it had been the right decision, the only one we could have made and still been true to ourselves. That, too, has been the resurrection taking place even now in our time.

It is hugging the child close as she weeps for her dog who just died and then realizing that our grief over our losses is simply the back side of love. Indeed, if we did not grieve, we would wonder if we had ever truly loved. It comes to us then, in that moment, that perhaps all love eventually finds its way to grief, love enfleshed in tears, the tomb where new love can dare to rise again because we think the risk is perhaps all worthwhile.

It is the drear of winter blown clear by the winds of March so that springtime may show its face and renew our drooping spirits. Then we return to wandering wooded paths sown with trillium and jack in the pulpit and columbine. It is the season when we grow giddy with its warmth, when life returns out of a season of death undone.

It is messing up our lives, sometimes terribly so, to the point when we think it can never be made right again, only to find forgiveness making it so.

It is God’s good earth marred by our indifference and abuse, then seeing it begin to heal as we make amends and change our ways.

It is being mired in a problem that sees no solution, and so we are led to surrendering the thought that it might ever be solved. Yet from that surrender comes the spark that gives birth to what had been unimagined. It is then we wonder from whence it came.

And that is perhaps the surest sign of resurrection — when we wonder from whence it came, only because it’s at that point that we know it hasn’t come from us.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

When in your life have you expected a kind of death and found instead life?

Where today are you in need of finding a hint of the resurrection?