Easter 2022 The Primacy of Love Part 3

Easter 2022    The Primacy of Love Part 3

 

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

Since Maundy Thursday evening, we have been on a journey of Love. We come from Love. We belong to Love. We return to Love. Love is all around. We rise from the waters of Baptism, and the first words we hear, just as Jesus did that day in the River Jordan: You are God’s Beloved!

God is well pleased with you!

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

Mary Magdalene, her associate Joanna, and Mary the mother of James are perplexed. What has happened to our Lord? They run off to tell The Eleven that the tomb is empty. Two men in dazzling clothes reminded us he had said he would rise again!  After joining the others in dismissing the women’s witness as an idle tale, Peter runs out to see for himself. Indeed, the tomb is empty! He goes home to sort it out. How could this have happened?

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

Only the poets among us can imagine what has happened and how it has happened. Marie Howe dares to describe what was going on in the tomb before the women arrived:

Easter

Two of the fingers on his right hand

had been broken

so when he poured back into that hand it surprised

him – it hurt him at first.

And the whole body was too small. Imagine

the sky trying to fit into a tunnel carved into a hill.

He came into it two ways:

From the outside, as we step into a pair of pants.

And from the center – suddenly all at once.

Then he felt himself awake in the dark alone.[i]

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

Sounds about right. The Love of God in Christ is like that. No small tunnel of a tomb carved into stone can contain it. It must have been surprising, amazing and astonishing, even to him! He who had repeatedly said it would happen. But even he who, as evangelist John points out is the source of all creation, even he cannot possibly know exactly how love’s attraction really works all of the time. To awaken in the dark, all alone. Alone after all that crowd that had followed him into the City of Peace, which had become in no time at all the City of Brutality and the Violence of those who somehow believed Love could be hammered to death. Violins. Violence. Silence.

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

Imagine, just for a moment that we are there – as evangelist Luke means to take us there in the here and now. The last few days have been a whirlwind, and danger was lurking behind every stone of the city’s historic walls. What do we bring to the tomb? What do we expect to see? Are we capable of being amazed like Peter? Or, are we perplexed, like the women? What do we bring to the tomb of the crucified One?

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

We bring…Easter Baskets! Filled with candies and toys, and money, and whatever we can put into our baskets. Our Easter Baskets. My dear friend and poet, Pamela Pruitt sees through it all:

 

 

Easter Baskets

Each year

We try

To bring

Our Easter Baskets

To God

With all

Accomplishments,

Inside.

 

But,

They are

always

Empty

Because

One cannot Measure

Love

In a

a

Box.

 

God smiles

At us

Anyway.

Filling our baskets

Instead

With

the

Forgiving breath

That continues

To inspire

All our efforts.[ii]

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

One cannot measure love in a box! One cannot measure the love, and breath, and mercy, and forgiveness of God at all! There is a Wideness to God’s Mercy! By the inspiration – the breathing in – of the Holy Spirit, all is gift. The gift is Love. Love that cannot be measured. It is love that reawakens us anew, renewed, restored, always to begin again, and again, and again! All that we have, all that we are, is gift, freely given to us by a God of gracious Love![iii]

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

This is the heart of Resurrection Life – Like Christ, always we begin again! We are God’s Beloved. God is well pleased with us. We come from love, created in the image of God’s gracious, immeasurable Love. We return to love. And we are created to be the love that is all around. This is the deep secret of all life throughout all the created universe.

 

Jesus departs from his lonely and empty tomb to be with us and to call us to follow him so that we might do something beautiful with our lives and bear much fruit.

 

Easter says: The world needs you, the church needs you, Jesus needs you.

They need your light and your love.

 

Know, my sisters and brothers, there is a hidden place in your heart where Jesus lives!

Let Jesus live in you. Go forward with Him.

 

Alleluia! Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen indeed, Alleluia!

Alleluia! Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen indeed, Alleluia!

Alleluia! Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen indeed, Alleluia!

 

And so are we! And so are we!

Amen!

---

[i] Howe, Marie, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (W.W.Norton, New York:2008) p. 24

[ii] Pamela Pruitt, Dec.15, 2021

[iii] Delio, Ilya, The Primacy of Love (Fortress Press, Minneapolis:2022) p.55