Thin Places: Finding Words for the Mystery of Easter

Luke 24:1-12

It was such a tender time for us then --- still, even after a couple of years since his dying.

Oh, the surprise of it had worn off some, this is true. And the grief was not so raw. Even so, with every joy and every struggle we could not help but wonder if it would have been different in some way if he still was.

And yet, it is also so that life went on. Indeed, our grief was somewhat eased with the new life which came with my nephew, Michael, who burst into our world less than two months after we stood together in a frigid January cemetery and commended my dad into God's eternal care. And yes, we couldn't help ourselves as we peered into his tiny face, and watched as he grew into a fearless toddler --- wondering if somewhere in the genetic makeup passed along we might get some glimmer of my dad. We thought we did, of course. It was, quite simply, our oh so very human attempt to grasp at eternity in the natural ways of this world. In much the same way we look for Resurrection every spring as well. Or at least we do in these parts of the world where we know the new life that comes with winter letting go.  And yet, the Promise of Easter is different somehow. It is more difficult to grasp, it seems to me, and so very hard to understand. For this New Life, this Resurrected Life, is outside and beyond most anything we have ever experienced in this world now. By its very nature, it flies in the face of all that can be explained.

And yet, on one occasion, it was young Michael himself who found words to speak of that which first and finally gives us hope. Indeed, he could not have been more than three years old when he sat at a table with his mother and older brother, Andrew. In those years, Sarah was doing all she could to keep the memory of our dad alive --- for Andrew, at least, who would have been but two on the day of his funeral. Perhaps Michael was feeling left out. Or maybe it truly was something more when he announced that he had met Grandpa, too.

"You did?!?" Sarah said, wondering at what he would say next. And Michael went on, "Yep," he replied. "I was coming down when he was going up."

In his childlike telling, it was as though they had crossed paths in some heavenly holding place in-between -- some wondrous place known only to God and long since forgotten by the rest of us for the time being. My earth bound mind pictures it as some sort of celestial escalator --- with a landing half way. And yet is difficult to say exactly what Michael spoke of then. Now a young man, he has no memory of that sharing and his certainty that day. But oh, we wonder still if he was on to something as he announced his experience of a place which sounds forth this truth: in our living and dying and all that comes before and after? God's beloved are held in the very heart of God.

The Gaelic say, of course, that there are 'thin places' between heaven and earth. Perhaps it is so that the very young and the very old or the very ill among us recognize these best of all. For instance, it is so that you and I who walk alongside those who are dying have watched and listened as visions are experienced and conversations are held with others who have long since died as though they were gathering right there themselves. Those of us who are still so very bound to this earth cannot see or hear them, but we find ourselves convinced that there is something more in the room than what we can possibly comprehend. And yes, there are other times and places, too, when we sense the 'holy' in extraordinary ways on any other given day. These are beautifully described here in this article in the The New York Times.

And oh, could there have been a place more 'thin,' than that first Easter Day when the women made their way to the tomb to find it empty? Although, they could hardly believe it and no doubt struggled to find comprehensible words for it, mustn't they have known that they were standing in a 'thin place' when they were reminded that it was foolish to look for the living among the dead? Oh, it is no surprise, of course, that Peter and the other apostles could not take in what the women hurried back to share, even as we shook our heads so long ago to hear the youngest among us point to something so wondrous. And yet, one has to believe that they knew there was something more afoot as in Luke's account, Peter ran to the tomb himself and left somehow changed --- amazed at what he had seen.

And so I wonder now how on this Easter Day as we gather in song and praise surrounded by the fragrance of spring and the sound of trumpets. I wonder how it is that we will experience these places, our places now, as 'thin.' I wonder how and where heaven will meet earth this year.

It is all mystery, of course. The sort of mystery that words perhaps cannot quite capture. And yet we seek to speak them still. Like young Michael. Like the women at the tomb to so long ago, we, too, have been captured by this mystery and though our words may stumble, how can we not speak of it? And in the speaking? By God's own doing, perhaps others will find themselves in a 'thin place' as well. Oh yes, maybe through our words, heaven will be brought just a little bit closer to earth. Indeed, maybe in the telling, others will sense the presence of the Risen Christ as well.

• When and where have you experienced 'thin places?' When have you sensed the truth of God's Promises? When have you known the Presence of the Risen Christ?

• Sometimes we are those who have received this good news and sometimes we are those who are called to share it. In those times, how has your faith in God's Promises been shaped or changed?

• It is so that birth and death, living and dying is fraught with mystery. And how much more mysterious is that which we are called to proclaim on Easter! For you, what words, what stories best capture and convey this mystery?

An Easter Story

Luke 24:1-12

It is my favorite Easter story, this one. For even though it didn’t happen on Easter it is a story of such defiant hope borne of righteous anger it surely had its roots in Easter, even if it didn’t happen then.

No rather, this took place May the spring after we buried my dad in January.  As I remember it, it was a hard winter – both inside and out as we stepped into our grief and yearned for the beginning of healing. Oh no, it surely was not an easy grief, and I know no one carried it more deeply than my mother did.

And so it was late in May and she and my sister were here out purchasing flowers to be planted in her gardens at home.  And they decided to circle around, as was their practice, to stop at the cemetery on their way home.  To be sure, they had been there any number of times since that icy cold day when we traveled there in procession behind the hearse. Still, what met them then just seemed to make it all like that first day.  For as they approached his grave, they were met with an open gash of brown much like it was when we first left it a few months before.   Apparently those in charge of the grounds had not yet gotten around to spreading grass seed or laying sod.  Where he was buried stood out like an open wound in that green expanse of grass. 

Now you should know that this section of the cemetery is that part where the stones lie flat on the ground.  It is easier, of course to keep it looking nice with a mower I know, so it follows that you’re not supposed to be planting things the caretakers will have to work around.  Only in her grief and outrage, Mother didn’t care.  In fact, one might safely say that something in her snapped. She was weary by then of grief and loss and struggle and this visible reminder only made it worse.  My sister Martha said she marched back to the car and dug around until she found a hammer.  She spoke of how they carried those flats of bright spring flowers to the grave and using the claw of her hammer, one by one, on her knees Mother planted them there in that open wound of earth.

            Perhaps I love this story so because it was so unlike her.  Normally she would follow the rules, but as you know, love and outrage all mixed up together sometimes break all the rules.  Oh yes, I do love this story because it is a story of such defiant hope lived out with the claw of a hammer and spring flowers.  And yes, I love this story for Martha said that on a later visit when she was there alone to water that garden, someone in charge of the cemetery approached her and told her those flowers would need to be removed. And Martha quietly told her they’d better not.  Oh, no they’d better not.  For that defiant hope was borne of righteous anger and so they’d better not.  Oh yes, it is so that I love this story for it points to the first Easter which broke the rules in ways even more profound and permanent and brought life where there was only death.   And something like my mother only deeper still I know, the resurrected life we celebrate on Easter was also perhaps borne of God’s own righteous anger which allows us now still today to hold fast to a defiant hope that never ends.

For think of this with me.  When those women first traveled to the tomb they were still following the rules of all that was and ever had been.  When people die, we bury them and in all cultures and in all times and places we do so with all the dignity we can muster as we do our best to honor those who have died.  So they were doing what they had always done, what people who have loved and grieved have always done.   They gathered up the spices they would need and they went to the cemetery expecting to find a body to be tended one last time. 

Only they were met with this remarkable news that God had broken all the rules.  That Jesus wasn’t there.  They were asked, in fact, why they ever even thought they’d find him there for the living aren’t to be found among the dead.   Oh yes, they found they had no need for hammer claw for the earth had already been moved, the stone had been rolled away and what was dead, the one who was dead, was alive again.

You and I, of course, live still in a world where signs of death and decay and neglect abound and where we find ourselves kneeling in the dirt forcing life where it seems death reigns.  It was just as true on the day when Jesus died so long ago.  And oh how God must have wept that Friday n Jesus suffered so.  Oh, how deep his grief must have been at what the world can do, at what the world still does to the innocent among us.  But God’s own righteous anger rose up… and instead of turning that righteous rage on those who were guilty of this crime,  God simply did what God always does. God did the unimaginable.  The impossible.  And suddenly Jesus was alive again.

 And so for you and me and all the world, the promise of this Easter day is that the day will come when we won’t need to dig hammers out of our trunks and use up the flowers that were meant for home.  Oh no, that day will yet come the brown gashes in the earth which remind us of our deepest losses will be filled in with so much more than spring flowers which live and die again in just a season.  And that day is one we get a glimpse of even now as we follow along with those women to the tomb and join our death defying hope with theirs as we hear the question answered deep in our own hearts, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?  He is not here, but has risen!”  For Alleluia, Christ is Risen. Christ is Risen Indeed, Alleluia! 

• What is your favorite Easter Story? What makes it your favorite?
• This time through it struck me that God must have been angry that Jesus had to die and that he channeled that anger into life again.  This is a new or perhaps just a deeper thought for me.  Does it make sense to you?  Why or why not?
• In those other places we encounter them, how might we bring life again to those deep brown gashes which mar God's good creation? How might our righteous anger be lived in hope?  

Never Again Just Covering Up the Marks of Death...

Luke 24:1-12

I hadn't expected it when I drove out to our local funeral home that Saturday afternoon.

I had just officiated at the memorial service of a man. They were not showing his body, in fact he was soon to be cremated, and so close family stayed around after the service so as to go and view him  one more time.  I asked if they wanted me to go with them and since they did I walked behind them.  We made our way through the garage of our local funeral home into a room I had never entered before: that mysterious place where the bodies of our loved ones are received and made presentable to us so that on the day of their burial we can have, perhaps, a better chance of remembering them as they once were. 

As we were making our way back out the funeral director stopped me to ask if I would like to see Annie.  Annie was in her 90’s when she had died a few days before.  Although I did not know her well, still I had known Annie for probably thirty years. I knew that my own schedule would probably keep me from attending her funeral a few days later so I quickly said yes.

It turns out she was on the other side of the plastic curtain from the man we had just stood beside, already in her casket.  She was wearing a beautiful turquoise jacket and her hair was nicely done. She looked as much like herself as one who has died, can, in fact.  It was as we paused there that the funeral director drew my attention to her hands – commenting that he had not yet had a chance to tend those yet.  And to be sure, they were not ‘done’ yet --- they were bruised and discolored --- not at all the hands of one who is alive. 

I was taken back in that moment to another time, another family, another vigil where the one they loved had just died.  As we waited for the hospice nurse to arrive that afternoon, they stayed close by and, unlike most I have known, marveled to watch the hands of their loved one change … to see the color of life itself receding and disappearing.

Oh to be sure, in her hands I could see the suffering that had been Annie’s to bear in her last days. Her hands were surely not alive, but of course, the rest of her was not either.  Funeral directors are often able to do wonders, but all of their padding and make-up only offers the illusion of life as we remember it.  They do not, of course, actually bring back to life what moments before was dead.

And so it is Easter, this day when the women made their way to the tomb to prepare for burial the body of Jesus which had already been buried in the rush of the Sabbath which had been bearing down upon them that late Friday afternoon. Only when they got there, there was no plastic curtain to push aside, there was no stone to roll away, for the one on the other side had already made his way out.  If we stand still within this, it is so that the story shared by the “two men in dazzling clothes” was utterly unbelievable.  Of course Jesus was dead. Why wouldn’t they look for him there, for that was precisely where they had left him not more than three days before.  And indeed, by the time they left him there, life had already left his hands, his feet, his face, his heart. 

It would have been as though we had stepped back to see Annie that Saturday a few months back and the curtain had already been pulled aside and her casket empty.  We would have been confused, angry, and no doubt every bit as terrified as those women were so long ago.  Indeed, it’s a wonder to me at all that those first witnesses to the resurrection were even able to begin to comprehend and repeat the amazing words of these two strangers.  “Why do you look for the living among the dead?  He is not here, but has risen.”

It is, indeed, a wondrous announcement that is ours to share again this Easter.   For any of us who have stared at the hands of a loved one and watched life leave them, we can imagine the amazement they must have felt as the women and Peter approached the empty tomb that first Easter morning.  Oh yes, I have to say that for me, too, sometimes this wondrous truth that Jesus defeats even death is still sinking in. For all of the times I have joined in the Easter Alleluias, it still is hard to comprehend that God does what is in no human way possible and to realize that death no longer has the last word for God really does bring life again.  The sort of life that not only has blood coursing through our hands and feet and hearts again.  The sort of life which never again will leave its mark of suffering on us.  Oh yes, that day will come when there will never again be a need to cover up the marks of death, those lifeless, bruised, discolored hands of Annie or anyone else. For death itself will be no more.

1. How do you think you would have reacted had you accompanied the women on their trip to Jesus' tomb that first Easter day?
2. What is the meaning of the Easter story for God's people today?  How about for your neighbors?  Your community? The world?
3. How is it that we communicate what our imaginations can only begin to grasp ourselves?  How do we speak of resurrection in a world which is so very familiar with death?
4. What is the gift of the Resurrection Promise for you this year?  How do the words "He is not here, but has risen," come as gift to you now?