The Goodness of the Resurrection

Watch the Recording HERE.

We left ourselves last week in a very dark place.  We closed our Sunday with Jesus dying on the Cross.  Now, we find ourselves on Easter morning.  A time of Joy and Life and Resurrection.  But if we’re honest, we find ourselves in a confused place.  We still don’t understand that Jesus has truly risen from the dead.  We’re still here, at the tomb-side, trying to figure it all, or anything, out. We’re asking ourselves.…where is Jesus?  He’s often not where he’s “supposed” to be or doing what he’s “supposed” to do.  

The more things are turned upside down, the more there is Truth to be found.  

Take Good Friday.  One of the biggest questions out there is: Why is it called Good Friday if it’s the day Jesus is tortured and dies on the Cross?  That’s kind of “disturbing”.  

The “goodness” is on Friday, not Sunday, not today, Friday.  Not with the resurrection, but with the death.  We usually celebrate the good and the sweet and the joy this morning, but it’s Friday that is “good”.  Once again, we’re confronted with the unusual and the unexpected.  What is good and what is bad is turned on its head.  This is a new garden of good and evil and it’s not so easy to put this new right and wrong into tidy little boxes.  

What is “goodness” begins on Friday with a big mess of incredibly not so good stuff.  Torture.  Pain. Death.  Also…deep trust, deep love, and deep forgiveness in the face of torture and death.  That is the good.  And it’s from this good that everything begins and grows and flourishes and can continue to grow and flourish.  Only in the complete death and destruction is there is a new beginning.  

Think about the butterfly.  When the caterpillar cocoons itself, it breaks down to a complete primordial goo that even scientists struggle to understand how that comes back together to become the alive being of the butterfly.  Think about the seed below the earth.  It has to break completely open, it’s almost a little explosion, to come fully alive and grow.  Perhaps a little big bang echoing the big big bang. Echoes.  

All the goodness and aliveness begins in the messiness and ugliness and scariness.  It begins in pain…in the utter destruction of one thing to become something completely new.  There is so much trust required to completely shed and destroy what is known, to die, to break open, into new possibility and new aliveness.  

Consider that Universal trust of a seed, of a butterfly, of Jesus.  That is Good.  

Here we are on Easter morning.  There is hope and resurrection, but there is still fear and confusion and grief.  It may be Easter morning, a time of joy and possibility, but the griefs and sorrows and losses don’t suddenly disappear.  Imagine that…after witnessing Friday to simply be un-grieved and un-sorrowed at the doorway of an empty tomb. The absolute unexpected!  Where is Jesus?  

We’ve all had our Easter stories. A few years back my husband was hospitalized the Saturday of Easter Weekend.  Come Sunday morning, we still didn’t know what was going on.  We had family coming to stay for Easter.  We had friends coming to stay for a vacation that was starting after Easter.  

By Sunday morning, I was tired, overwhelmed, and scared.  You can’t call off for the Easter Services.  It’s Easter!!

There I am trying to be ready for Easter Sunrise on the steps of the Church, in the cold and the darkness, waiting for the sun to rise.  There’s all these wonderful people showing up for the service and the sun.  Here we’re expecting this nice, joyful resurrection story and I’m saying the words of joy and yet crying.  I felt so bad, like I had failed my work. Easter only comes once a year and I felt like I had missed the meaning of Easter for everyone in my worldly cares. Here’s a secret: Pastors, Ministers, Priests, humans in all fields of work are human.  It’s why we’re ALL called to minister to one another.   

You know what?  The sun still rose and it was stunning.  It was that Easter that I realized that Grace/God (whatever you choose to call the divine) does a lot of the work, if we only have faith.  You know what else?  I was blessed to be surrounded by people doing God’s Work, ministering to one another and helping one another to get through…together. Everyone was ready to minister with their own special gifts.  And isn’t that what this life is all about?  Ministering, caring, and tending to one another?  All of us.  

In hindsight, I think it was the most Easter of Easters.  Sorrow doesn’t go away because the sun rises and the stone is rolled away.  Grief doesn’t end just because it’s now “good”.  There’s still the pain and grief and loss, but there is also joy and hope within the hurt and confusion.  It’s all one big beautiful mess.  That’s the aliveness of the resurrection.  

We tend to focus on the good stuff of Easter, but imagine actually being there—that’s one of my favorite ways to look at the Stories.  The tombstone is rolled away and Jesus is gone.  How terrifying is that?  

Even when we find that Jesus is there, he’s also…changed and not there.  He’s no longer human or really alive in the sense of human aliveness.  There is still a loss.  Everything has changed.  Everything is different.  And what happened Friday…doesn’t go away.  We know Jesus won’t stay long.  We’re soon to be on our own here on earth.

This is the time of mingled joy and sorrow.  Hope and despair.  It’s the raw messiness of life.  Where everything is there…grief, loss, pain, confusion.  Also, anger, frustration, helplessness, loneliness.  Also, joy and love and excitement…a better understanding of, or maybe just a knowledge that there is, Mystery.  Something bigger than ourselves.  Unknowable.  Things we can never truly comprehend or understand and that is beautiful.  Not easy, but beautiful.  It is Good.  

Isn’t that life?  Things aren’t compartmentalized into joy goes here and sorrow goes here, in nice tidy boxes.  Joy is for this time and grief is for this other time.  It’s all of life. Life and death and everything in between.  It’s the human experience and the Mystery beyond the human experience.  The soul experience when we just know that there’s something more.  We might not understand it.  We might not comprehend it, but it’s there.  We know.  The Mystery we experience when we suddenly are filled with Grace.  Big graces and little graces.  

Life is full of all the awful and scary things.  The scariness of the resurrection reminds us to hold close to the most precious of things.  Love.  Grace.  Hope.  Peace.  Possibility.  That we must completely let go and trust to be resurrected to the aliveness of being human and the more than human, soulful, experience.  

The messiness and mixing of joy and loss, hope and despair…give us meaning when everything seems hopeless and meaningless.  This is good.  This is the Good of a Good Friday.  This is the Good of an Easter Morning.

Time does not heal all wounds.  Time and compassion does.  The Passion and the Resurrection is the path to Compassion and Healing.  Compassion and Healing is that which will heal and resurrect the world into a place of love, peace, and hope.  The mystery of the resurrection reminds us that all things are possible.  We must hold to hope.  We must believe.  We must trust in the Goodness, even and especially, when it seems there is no goodness.  

Although Jesus leave us, as he said to Mary, we will not be alone: I go to my father and your father, to my God and your God.  We are not alone in the unknowns and scary and even the resurrections of life and living.