Tag: easter

Easter Morning 2022

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My body woke me up at grey sunrise this morning, and I immediately registered heavy dread in the pit of my stomach. Easter morning. But this wasn’t the familiar heaviness brought on by remembrance of Jesus’ horrific crucifixion. 

As I tried to set my thoughts aside and sink back into the temporary reprieve of sleep, my stomach continued to churn. I have to go to church today. I have to sit in a pew with leg-bouncing anxiety. I have to slap on a face of makeup and hope my bright lipstick distracts too many people from noticing my vacant, drifting eyes above it. 

I tried the well-worn fork in the path of my thoughts to redirect them. Easter isn’t about church and pastors and starched shirts and happy smiles; it’s about a grey sunrise that revealed heartbroken women making their way through the jarring contrast of a flowering garden to a familiar cold dead stone covering a tomb. It’s about Jesus.

And there was a thought that finally calmed my roiling stomach. Those women’s emotions were familiar to me. Their experience didn’t conflict painfully with what I felt, like a pastel Easter service with its lilies and church smiles did. 

Those women felt sorrow and death and disillusionment. They had been rejected by the religious leaders of their day who taught them wrongly about a “God” who did not care about or know them. They had lived in the fringes of society because the religious leaders of their day would not look them in the eyes, would not welcome them into the temple, could not cast out their demons or forgive their sin. And those religious leaders had taught them that their God would treat them the same way. 

But in spite of all that, these women had met Jesus. 

Jesus did not wound them in the name of religion, or worse, in the name of God. He had recognized their sin and brokenness and healed them. Accepted them. Loved them unconditionally. Stood between them and their accusers. 

As the gray morning lifted and brightened through my bedroom window, I remembered again the unerring peace Jesus brought those women. In their darkest moments when their faith felt dead and hollow, Jesus had been there. When his dear friend Mary anointed him with oil a week before his death, he silenced her accusers and told them generations would remember her faith. When his body was later wrapped for the tomb, her perfume might still have been there, faintly noticeable underneath the horrific smells of torture, blood, and sweat. When his mother Mary was alone and grieving at the foot of the cross, Jesus gasped out for his dear friend to love and care for her like he would his own mother. And when another Mary, one of his most devoted followers, sobbed insensibly in that flowery garden in the gray Sunday dawn, she felt some of the emotions I still often feel. Abandoned. Conflicted. Hopeless. Alone. Unloved. She felt like her faith had betrayed her. 

On that morning, no priest or religious leader came to her in her brokenness. The men who’d claimed to believe just as fiercely as she did were huddled together for safety somewhere far away, and she WAS alone with her grief and lament. 

Except she wasn’t alone. Jesus met her in that garden. He called out HER name so that when she couldn’t recognize anything through her tears, she could know he was with her still, again, never to leave her this time. 

Even when she returned and the men did not believe her, even when she endured fear and persecution at the hands of the religious leaders, even when she could no longer feel Jesus’ familiar touch in the days to come, Mary would never forget how Jesus called her by name and comforted her in the garden. 

So for those of you who fell asleep last night anxious about being in church today, if you woke up like me, sick to your stomach this Easter morning before you even knew why, remember Jesus in the garden. If religion has hurt you, if you carry shame spiritual leaders have put on you, if your church trauma keeps you at home or keeps you disassociated if you are at church, remember Jesus. HE is not the same as church who has hurt you. Those leaders did not act in his stead, and they didn’t reflect his character in the way they harmed you. 

In fact, when Jesus was perhaps his most angry in the gospels, it was because he found people abusing his temple—using it for profit and keeping people out who should have been welcomed in. When he turned over their tables, spilled their money, and chased them with whips, the people asked him what sign of authority he had to show for doing such things. “Destroy this temple and in three days I’ll raise it back up,” he said. He was talking about the temple of his Body. 

Friends, the church is not a building. It’s not religious leaders who have used or abused or abandoned you. It’s Jesus himself. And when his body, or his image and his character are destroyed for us, even if the religious leaders were the ones who distorted him for us—remember that he rose again and lives still as the same gentle shepherd we read about in the gospels. HE is the one who will meet you in the garden. And his true church—the people who truly make up the Body of the church today—are the ones who will meet you in your tears on those greyest dawns when you feel the most broken. 

The Panic of Pandemic and the Peace that Passes all Understanding

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The world is out of control right now. Thousands of deaths, uncounted infections, countries closing borders, travel bans, quarantine, economic downturn, runs on grocery stores. Some of the world’s most treasured cities look like ghost towns. “Coronavirus refugee” has entered our vocabulary as people caught traveling can’t return home, or those who have the means flee their homes willingly. Schools and religious institutions shut their doors or find creative ways to meet.

For the first time in living memory, our world faces a truly global pandemic.

It’s interesting to consider what “plague” has looked like in different eras of history. All of the sudden our minds are thrown back to the Black Death, the Spanish Flu, and other diseases without name or medical diagnosis that have shaken our civilizations. We remember stories of Christians tending the sick at risk of their own health. We call up dark images like the plague doctors in their beaked masks and compare them to the yellow hazmat suits and breathing masks of our modern imagination. We consider the suspicion neighbors and friends must have harbored toward one another as soon as a black cross was spotted on someone’s door, and we compare it to the sideways glances we see when someone coughs too loudly.

These human experiences are not unique to our generation and Coronavirus. Plague, pestilence, pandemics… they always conjure up panic and suspicion like some sort of black magic. They make us suspect even the air we breathed freely only the day before.

Pandemics pull back the curtain and expose humanity for what we really are, and what we find there can be both vile and hopeful—at once uplifting and depressing. We see the ugly faces of poverty and brokenness and all the harm they cause in our communities. But we also see the good neighbors who bring groceries to vulnerable community members. We see panic and greed at their worst, but we also see altruism shining like a light in the darkness. Widespread diseases shake our illusion of control and remind us how small we are in this universe after all. They deeply unsettle us, destroy our routines, and cause us to question unshakable assumptions about our safety, health, and security. But in trying times we are further exposed as the creatures we are, made in the image of God. We see sacrificial care, unconditional love, creative ingenuity, and unwavering compassion. These qualities can only come from a good Creator and his reflection in us.

Watching the Coronavirus pandemic unfold from my home here in Uganda has felt at times like an out-of-body experience. Our country as yet has no documented cases. But border security is tightening. Many travelers from infected countries are quarantined upon entry. People change their cultural habits to better protect themselves, their families, and neighbors at high risk of contracting the virus. The many cultures surrounding me that deeply value formal greetings have adjusted to elbow or fist bump greetings instead of the traditional handshakes. Hand washing stations—even ones as simple as a bucket with a tap—have popped up outside of markets and businesses. People gather in smaller groups to minimize social interaction.

But some things have not changed. Some aspects of life carry on unaffected. Our Sudanese brothers and sisters pray every Sunday in every church for three things: peace, the Church, and the sick. Many of them are refugees, and even the ones who aren’t still live in a culture with much fewer illusions about controlling illness and death or powerful governments. This Sunday I stood with bowed head, listening to the smooth Arabic words tumbling on as we prayed. When we prayed for peace, we asked the Lord to bring peace to warring countries, and to protect innocent people in volatile areas. when we prayed for the Church, we asked God to strengthen our brothers and sisters in areas where they can’t meet because of the virus, and for our Father to shine light and hope through us to the hurting world around us. And as we prayed for the sick, we asked the Lord, like always, to have mercy on those with malaria, with typhoid, with diabetes and malnutrition. Nothing else changed except we calmly added coronavirus to the list. The faith of refugees—in a God who withstands war and disease and famine and drought unchanged—cannot be shaken by any sickness, however new or unknown it may be.

Other things remain the same too. We keep our jugs, jerry cans, and tanks full of water, because dry season or collapsing infrastructure could both stop our water just the same. We live largely non-electrified lives, and the simplicity saves us the stress of wondering when the power will be cut or worrying about charging appliances and devices that don’t add much value to our lives in the long run. We keep basic medications in our house and live on simple medical know-how already because good doctors are hours away, coronavirus or no.

But some things have changed. The president of the country just asked for a month of precautionary measures: meet in small groups, close schools, worship in homes instead of churches, don’t hang around in markets more than necessary. New border regulations have stranded teammates out of country. Expat friends working with different organizations can be here one day and gone the next because their passport country demanded them back home, or their employer ended their contract, or all foreign personnel are evacuated as a precaution.

Most recently I got an email from my company asking me to consider the future. IF the virus comes, and IF I contract it, what scenarios am I comfortable resigning myself to? If medical evacuation isn’t an option and in-country medical care can’t meet my needs, am I content to stay with that knowledge? Would I prefer to relocate to an undesignated location with better health care for an unspecified amount of time? Those emails made the virus on its global stage suddenly very personal and immediate. I was forced to consider what measures I would take and plans I would make. I had to consider the what-ifs of the virus making it into Uganda. I considered what good I could do if I chose to stay or go. I considered my refugee friends who are immunocompromised and have no option of evacuating to save themselves or their loved ones.

In the end, my decision was to stay. It was a decision knowing I stayed with empty hands and not much to offer my neighbors and friends if or when the virus does come. It was a decision to stay and commit to quarantine or sickness, to limiting my social interaction and ministry, to grief and lament, to solitude and solidarity, whatever may come.

As I prayed through that decision I played and sang through precious words of faith from my hymnal, words like, “His word shall not fail you — He promised / Believe him and all will be well / Then go to a world that is dying / His perfect salvation to tell!” and “Whenever clouds arise / when songs give place to sighing / and hope within me dies / I draw the closer to him / from care he sets me free / his eye is on the sparrow / And I know he watches me.” I found peace and comfort in the Lord’s presence and in obedience to him founded on faith in his unchanging character. My imperfect faith in a perfect God is the only thing that can bring my heart to sing in worship, “Oh when I come to die, / Oh when I come to die / Oh when I come to die / give me Jesus. / Give me Jesus, / Give me Jesus! / You may have all this world, / Give me Jesus.”

But these words of worship come from a faith founded in an immovable God. He is not surprised by any virus or pandemic we may experience, and the death, the sorrow, and the fear that come with it do not take away one iota of his love and compassion for us. He is still the God that heard King David’s cry for mercy and stopped the Israelite plague at the threshing floor of Araunah (1 Samuel 24). He is still the God that passed over Israelite homes and showed his unmerited mercy by sparing their firstborn children. He is still the God who stopped a plague in the Israelite camp when he was worshipped between the living and the dead (Numbers 16).

He is still the God of Habakkuk: “His splendor was like the sunrise; rays flashed from his hand, where his power was hidden. Plague went before him; pestilence followed his steps. He stood, and shook the earth; he looked, and made the nations tremble.” And we can answer both the blessings and the trials God brings with Habakkuk, “Yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us. Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”

He is the same God who has led his people through the plagues of history, and we follow him still through this one. He passed over the Israelites and spared their firstborn. He offered himself as the perfect passover lamb to keep at bay the plagues of sin and death we fully deserve. As we come to Easter may we remember that sacrifice in a new light. And as we contemplate an Easter and Holy week shared only from our homes and separated from our church families, may we remember the small band of disciples who met together in an upstairs room. They were small in number because of persecution instead of plague, but their fear was the same. And Jesus’ answer to them just as well answers us: “‘Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’ And with that he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.'” In these uncertain and fearful times, we carry in us the Spirit of God himself to comfort and to calm, and to propel us out into a world in need of the hope we share.

The Sabbath Rest of Resurrection

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Easter is over. A lot of us have moved on with our lives. I happened to be on vacation for Easter, and instead of spending it with my refugee friends, I spent it in Uganda’s capital with American friends. In some ways it feels like I skipped Easter. The traditions were different enough and even my new habits and routines from Uganda were nowhere to be seen.

 

But in some ways, I didn’t skip Easter. My different situation and perspective helped me learn something new about it.

 

I spent Holy Week sleeping in a soft bed, using a fan, enjoying constant electricity and cool temperatures. I climbed hiking trails and clambered over boulders and looked out from a mountain ridge over a peaceful cape. I went skydiving and (after some of the loudest screaming I’ve ever done in my life), I was shocked into speechlessness as I gaped out over the land laid out beneath me—an inexpressible mural of ocean, beach, scrub, mountain, city, town, farmland. I was on vacation.

 

My Holy Week was spent in real sabbath rest from heat, from dry season, from conserving water and being on constant alert for the indicator light on the wall that means the electricity is on. It was sabbath rest that healed by body, mind, and soul, and filled me up to better serve. I worshipped on Easter Sunday in friends’ church. I was able to dance and sing and listen to the sermon with distance and disconnect from the people around me, my own island of worship and contemplation. But I also worshiped during the week in moments full of awe as I gazed out at beautiful landscapes, or as I cocooned myself in a soft bed with gratefulness overflowing into prayers.

 

I rested from my labors and gained a greater sense of resurrection.

 

Often my Easter celebrations have centered on the death of Jesus. The somber awareness of his gruesome death in my place has been a heavy presence. But this Easter I was able to focus on the resurrection—Jesus’ new life that came with the sunrise on the third day. He died that we may have life. But I have often forgotten the weight of his life. He lived that we may have life too. His new life is the firstfruits, the beginning evidence of the promise that we who follow can all partake. Because he lives, we live—abundantly. We can have fresh life, new life, rebirth, regeneration. He has conquered death and its power over us. His broken body moved with life again so that our wounds may be healed, so that our broken spirits may be made new, so that our hearts may be made whole.

 

The promise of Easter is new life amidst brokenness, pain, suffering, trauma, sin, and even death.

 

There is no better character in the Gospel’s Easter stories to illustrate this idea than Mary Magdalene.

And goodness, does that woman have a story to tell! One of the few women given a name in the Gospels, much of her story is still hidden from us. We know Jesus cast seven demons out of her. She had seen darkness, lived in it, been imprisoned and controlled by it. But our Lord set her free. She had a taste of his new life long before she saw it in full at the resurrection.

 

Who knows what she had seen or done. Who knows what fears haunted her dreams or what broken thoughts of her own insufficiency dogged her days. Her life before Christ would have reeked of death. Her life with the demons would have sapped her strength and left her feeling lifeless.

But we do know that she found peace in Jesus’ presence. She was with him often in the gospel accounts. Luke chapter 8 tells us that she and other women that Jesus had healed followed him and the disciples and provided for and supported the men out of their own time and their own pockets.

 

But precisely because Mary was no stranger to suffering and brokenness, we find her among the few faithful at the foot of the cross. John and four women were there. Mary was one of the last to see him alive, and she went to the tomb as soon as possible to care for his body. She was well acquainted with the pain of death and the comfort a friendly presence could be.

 

But what she found there, at that place of death, was a resurrection power to be reckoned with. Mary had seen the worst the world had to offer. She had endured trauma physical, mental, and spiritual. She watched her Lord tortured to death. She was the first at the tomb, and finding it empty, she ran to the men to tell them. She ran back with them as they came to see for themselves. They believed he had risen. But her grief was perhaps too deep, and her memories too strong of the power death held over her old life. After experiencing so much trauma, sometimes you grow to expect it. This was the way of the world. How could she have expected the best thing to have ever happened to her to last anyway?

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Once, what feels like a lifetime ago, I played Mary Magdalene in my church’s Easter play. Maybe my teenage drama was a little too much for our tiny church production, but I remember putting myself in Mary’s shoes, under her head wrap, and it did something to me. I thought a lot about her emotions and about the devotion she had given to Jesus. Her whole life was wrapped up in his. And with his death she was broken beyond belief. I didn’t have to act for the tears to well up. I begged and pleaded with the gardener. I tripped at Jesus’ feet when he said my name and called His name out in a ragged voice in response. Mary must have felt dead until she witnessed that resurrection herself and was filled with hope.

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In a tear-jerking interaction, Jesus appears to Mary at the climax of this story from the gospels. She cannot believe he is anyone but the gardener. Maybe she couldn’t see well through her tears. Maybe she couldn’t understand through her grief. Maybe her trauma was too heavy. But she begs this man just to tell her where the body is—she’ll move it herself if that’s what it takes to give him dignity in death like he gave her in life.

 

But then the truth shines on her like the sunrise and warms her soul in a flush of new life. She finally understands that this man is Jesus when he speaks her name. Have you even been loved so deeply by someone that just to hear them speak your name gives you new strength and reminds you of your value, of how much you matter to them? Jesus spoke her name. He recognized her life as a precious thing to him, and in speaking her name, he spoke life over her. And she wept at his feet.

 

The life-giver, the one who bore her heavy burden, the one who freed her from darkness, the one who had begun to heal her wounded life and heart—the Resurrection and the Life—he stood before her, with fresh wounds of his own. He chose to appear first to a woman desperately in need of new life.

 

Jesus appeared first to a woman. But not just any woman—one who understood what it meant to be broken and what an incredible gift resurrection would be.

 

The broken are the first to recognize the healer, and the dead are the first to recognize new life, so Jesus chose Mary to be his voice. Go and tell my brothers, he commissioned her. Some call her the first evangelist, or a preacher of the gospel. Whatever the case, she proudly announced to the men and the women, “I have seen the Lord.”

 

Mary was given the task only on person in history could have—to be the first to break the news of resurrection. To be that messenger, Jesus chose someone who knew the weight of suffering and trauma and so knew the miracle gift resurrection and life would be.

 

When I say I learned about resurrection this Easter, I mean that I came to Holy Week and to our remembrance of the cross weary and heavy-laden. I came bearing trauma that was not my own because of my friendship with refugees. But my soul did not leave this year’s Easter feeling the deadweight of the second-hand trauma I saw and heard about daily.

 

This Easter taught me about resurrection. It taught me about new life and the immeasurable value of resurrection. It taught me not to settle for anything less than the life-and-death difference I should seek from my new life in Christ. And true sabbath rest abounds in worship at the feet of the Lord of the Sabbath, who conquered death to give our souls rest and refreshment from the death that can seem to fill this not-yet-redeemed world. This Easter taught me that the broken, poor, marginalized people around me have a greater understanding of the joy new life can bring and the dignity it gives to even the lowliest, like Mary Magdalene.

 

So if you have been weary and heavy-laden…

Let these remembrances of Easter refresh you. Seek time to mourn the death and lifelessness that has crept into your new life with Christ, as Mary Magdalene did at the tomb. Mourn for it, and then listen for Jesus to call you by your name, to speak new life into you. Read these stories in the gospels for yourself, and remember the resurrection power that came that Easter sabbath day long ago when Jesus shook off the grave clothes and arose. He arose to bring new life in the midst of death. May you seek it, and find it for yourself.