Our God Is A God Of Wild Possibilities And Unexpected Endings

“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming.” – Pablo Neruda 

Every year when Ash Wednesday comes around, Easter seems so far off to me. And yet, here we are once again concluding our Lenten journey with the incredible event of Easter. I do hope that it was a fruitful season for you.

If we were in a group setting, I’d ask the question, “What does Easter mean to you?” We’d all get in small groups and share, and I would LOVE to hear what you have to say.

For me, Easter is both a discrete event, an ongoing reality and something that we can practice.

As for the discrete event, we hear two passages for the “official” readings for today. In John 20 Mary of Magdala goes to the tomb in the early morning while it was still dark and sees that the stone has been removed. She runs to tell the apostles (who are hiding) and then Peter and John run to the tomb to find it empty.

In the account from Matthew 28, an angel appears to the two Marys who have come to the tomb, and the Roman guards are struck with fear. The angel rolls away the stone and tells them, “He has been raised from the dead, and he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him.’” Sure enough as they are on the road, Jesus appears to them and then later to the other disciples.

The truth is, we’re not sure WHAT happened on that day. All that we can seem to say for sure is that Jesus – who was killed as an enemy of the state/religion on Good Friday – was no longer in the tomb. In some accounts (like Mt 28), angels engaged people and narrated some of the details. In others (like Jn 20), it’s just an empty tomb. And soon after this, his disciples start having encounters with him (except in Mark’s gospel – the earliest – where the original manuscripts end with the women running from the tomb in fear and astonishment).

It bears noting year after year that it is Mary of Magdala (and other women, depending on the account) who is the first to witness Jesus’ resurrection and brings this message to the disciples. She is sometimes called, “the apostle to the apostles.” [Note: I was recommended a book by my friend, Bridget, called Mary Magdalene Revealed: The First Apostle, Her Feminist Gospel & the Christianity We Haven’t Tried Yet by Megan Watterson which I would recommend as a deeper dive into this topic]

This is not insignificant.  Once again the gospel is trying to teach us that good news is always coming from unexpected (and unsanctioned!) places.  In this case it is a woman who tells the men of her experience (an experience that they have not had).  And they believe her. We would do well in a patriarchal church to learn from this model of believing women and letting them teach and lead us. 

Furthermore, our gospel accounts tell us that it is the women who demonstrate such great courage and take personal risks in order to seek Jesus out. While the male apostles are in hiding, it is the women who remained at the foot of the cross, who found out where Jesus was buried, who went to anoint his body and who were willing to confront guards on the way. This is the kind of discipleship courage we could all strive to embody, and these women were, in fact, some of the early leaders of the church. Sadly this history has been erased and ignored.

But the Easter event was not just something that happened. It is something that keeps happening and is something that we are invited to participate in.

With Jesus’ victory over death, we now know that the powers of death will not have the final word – leaving us free to think and act in new ways.

Because our God is a god of wild, Easter possibilities and unexpected endings, we, too, start to throw wild cards of generosity, kindness and hospitality into the mix of this world.  Realizing that we are no longer bound by the past or by any harm done to us, we strive to pass that liberation on to others.  In fact that’s kind of a litmus test as to whether you have had a spiritual awakening or not.  A true spiritual awakening strives to be shared – not privatized – much like the 12th step in Alcoholics Anonymous which says that “having had a spiritual awakening…we try to carry this message [to others]…and to practice these principles in all of our affairs.”  Resurrection consciousness starts to seep into all areas of our life – not unlike what Paul says in the second reading from 1 Corinthians about “a little yeast leavens all the dough.” 

Remembering that Jesus’ resurrection was not just a personal reality for him but a political and social reality, we, too, begin to take this energy into the world with more vigor – engaging the powers and principalities that fuel the culture of death. Easter energy says “No,” to all the forces of empire that diminish life (and there are many) and urges us to place ourselves in opposition to the people and forces that benefit from human suffering.

This is, perhaps, more necessary now that it has been in some time – especially here in our country which is sadly living into Martin Luther King’s prescient words from 1967 where he said that the United States has become “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” We need some serious Easter energy these days!

There is really so much to be said about Easter and what it invites us to in this moment that it can’t be contained in a single blog post! It is a time of joy. It is a time of release. It is a time of boldness. It is a time of wildness. It is a time of blossoming and new life. And it is so much more.

And, perhaps, the best place to experience it is outside! At least in this part of the country, what was dead and buried under feet of snow is coming back to life! There is no more powerful message of hope and renewal than what is going on in the world around us these days.

So take heart, my friends. In this Easter season, let us remember that no tomb can contain us and the powers of death – no matter what they throw at us – will not prevail. As Pablo Neruda said, “you can cut all the flowers, but you cannot stop the spring from coming.” May we come to know this in our bones. With the resurrection, our spiritual spring is not only coming…it is here!

Our feral, unbound God is unleashed in this world again today – making a way out of no way. May we experience this tremendous gift and become vehicles for this energy all around us.