Yet even at the
grave, we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!
The road ahead: Is it really a dead end, or does it lead
to grace? That question is raised by the juxtaposition of two signs placed
within a few feet of each other half a block from my church, Grace Episcopal
Church. Both signs point in the same direction. One of them, erected by the
state department of transportation, is intended as a warning. “Dead End” is what it says. The other
sign, pointing to the church, is meant as an invitation and a welcome. Whether
you continue on the road or search for another way depends, I suppose, on what
you are looking for and which sign you trust.
The events of holy week pose essentially the same
question as the two signs: Do they lead to a dead end in the arrest and
crucifixion of Jesus, or is grace at work in spite of how things look? Once
again the answer depends on what you are looking for and what signs you trust. I
have heard it suggested that Judas, reading events through his hope for a king like
David—that is, a king who would be a strong political and military leader—had
foreseen only a dead end on the horizon. Feeling his hopes betrayed, he became
the betrayer. Surely the others must also have feared a dead end at first. But
they stayed the course, and slowly they began glimpsing signs of hope—first
Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb, later Thomas in the upper room, and gradually
others. Jesus appeared to them, spoke to them, ate with them along the road. Their
lives with the earthly Jesus would never again be the same, but the grace of
the Risen One was there to comfort and sustain them in new and surprising ways.
The Easter story has been more immediate to me this
spring than usual. Four weeks into Lent, my goddaughter’s husband, only in his
thirties, lost his struggle with acute leukemia. He died less than two weeks
shy of the date scheduled for him to receive a bone marrow transplant. He died
exactly a week before the birth, on Good Friday, of their second child, a
daughter. The untimely loss of her young husband, the love of her life, must
seem the ultimate in dead ends to my goddaughter. And yet smack into the aftermath
of her unspeakable grief has come a new life. What a profound final gift of
love her husband has left her and their two-year-old son.
Does the arrival of the baby diminish her grief? No, I
think not. Only the passing of time will do that. But neither does her grief
keep her from embracing this new child with delight and joy. My goddaughter
will undoubtedly live for a while the way the followers of Jesus lived in the
days and weeks after the first Easter, that is, in the tension that comes from
holding both great grief and great joy simultaneously. My prayer for her is
that through her tears as well as her joy, her sadness beyond telling as well
as her devotion to both of her young children, she will know the sustaining
love and power of the Risen Christ.
What about you? Is there a place in your life that looks
like a dead end? Stay the course. Look again. You too may see signs along the way
that point to grace.
PS: A hymn text by a 19th century Scottish
poet Horatius Bonar, speaks to the reading of signs, both in the physical world
and in the Easter story. Here are the verses found in the Episcopal Hymnal 1982 (#456):
O love of God, how
strong and true,
eternal and yet ever
new,
uncomprehended and
unbought,
beyond all knowledge
and all thought.
O wide-embracing, wondrous Love,
we read thee in the
sky above;
we read thee in the
earth below,
in seas that swell
and streams that flow.
We read thee best in
him who came
to bear for us the
cross of shame,
sent by the Father
from on high,
our life to live,
our death to die.
We read thy power to
bless and save
e'en in the darkness
of the grave;
still more in
resurrection light
we read the fullness
of thy might.
Bonar’s poem can be sung to several tunes. My favorite is by 20th century composer, Calvin Hampton:
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