Long Way Here

This Easter we look around and see a world of contradictions.
While one person experiences great joy, another mourns great loss.
While one person is overcome with laughter, another is overcome with tears.
While one person is filled with peace, another is filled with anger.
While one person experiences love, another experiences hate.
While one person recovers from this virus, another doesn’t.

The contradictions are real, maybe now more than ever. We have been told for several days that on Easter Sunday our nation will reach its peak for the virus. We have been told that this week and the next could result in a loss of life as great as 9/11. In New York it did. We are told that on Easter Sunday we will run reach the height of shortages in medical resources and beds, leaving many neighbors without a safe place to heal or very literally, breathe. 

The tyranny of the reign of sin and death is intersecting with the most holy of days in the Christian calendar in a way that reminds us of the depth of contradiction we feel. We grieve global and national loss while celebrating a different kind of life-redefining victory. We worry over our health while we worship our risen King. We know that throughout this world and our nation, our brothers and sisters in Christ are overcome by this virus and the terror it brings, while at the same time remembering that Resurrection Day will not be overcome. Death has been overcome by the empty tomb.

In all of this there is a strange paradox, a contradiction in what we see when we look back on the Cross of Friday from the Resurrection on Sunday. In Christ’s resurrection His woundedness becomes our healing, his ruin becomes our redemption, his loss becomes our gain, and his tragedy becomes our triumph. 

The resurrection tells us that darkness will turn to light, pain will turn to peace, brokenness will turn to beauty, and death will open up to resurrection life.

Death cannot take away life anymore because new life has already been given through death.

Christ’s first resurrected breath frees us from the chains of death.

A day or so later Jesus is with his disciples. John actually picks up this part of the story in his retelling of the gospel. In John chapter 12 Jesus tells his disciples:

“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. “I assure you: Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains by itself. But if it dies, it produces a large crop. The one who loves his life will lose it, and the one who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me. Where I am, there My servant also will be…”

John 12:23-25

Jesus knew what many of us sometimes forget but remember each Holy Week: the path to resurrection is always preceded by a kind of death. 

Many of us want new life, a new start, a new beginning; resurrection. But if we are to experience resurrection we must be willing to embrace a kind of death.

The dying Jesus talks about can be understood as a kind of letting-go. It is a letting-go of the things in which we have placed too much confidence or allowed to hold our hope.

Right now we have all been pushed into a kind of letting-go. We are letting go of a life we have known so we can hold on to life. We are letting go of face-to-face connections, of eye contact, of hugs from friends or family members we do not live with us, of nights out or meals at our favorite restaurants. We are letting go of gathering together in person to praise God and share in the Table. Over the past weeks we have even  heard stories of loved ones letting go of family members as they are carried away to a private room, some for the last time.

We know about letting-go maybe now more than ever. We see signs of it all around us. But there are signs of letting-go that are life-giving and, I think, look a lot like the kind of letting-go Christ calls us to embrace.

It’s the nurses, doctors, and medical staff, the mental health professionals and hosts of other medical professionals letting-go of their own well-being to tend to the well-being of others. And it’s the scenes of these same people standing on the roof tops of hospitals with hands held high or heads bowed for to pray for their patients and for their city.

It’s the scientists and medicine makers, and leaders of other agencies letting-go of time with their families in exchange for long hours as they work hard to understand this virus that has arrested us and find an antidote.

It’s the cleaning crews in medical facilities, the grocery store workers, postal workers, bus drivers, truck drivers and delivery persons, it’s the social services case workers and non-profit leaders letting-go of their own needs to make sure our needs are met.

It’s the teachers and educators letting-go of their traditional lesson planning to find new ways to educate children from one side of a screen while still taking time to parade through neighborhoods to cheer on their students or call and check in with parents to see how every one is doing. 

It’s the police and firefighters, paramedics, and caregivers of every kind letting-go of their own safety, and even the safety of our their families, so we can be safe.

It is in letting-go that we pick up what Jesus offers. It is in letting-go that we take hold of what gives life, purpose, and meaning. It is in letting-go of the things in which we have placed our confidence that we can place our confidence in Jesus as King.

Zechariah’s prophecy (9:9-10) announces the righteous and victorious King of Israel will come, not on a war horse like other kings, but on a donkey in humility and peace, bearing witness to a different kind of kingdom.

In the Christian tradition we understand that when Jesus enacts the promise he is performing an unmistakable political act on behalf of a new kind of liberation. It’s why Matthew tells us in his retelling of the event that it has thrown the whole city in turmoil as people were asking, “Who is this?” (21:10-11)

Acting on behalf of a new kind of freedom that threatens the principalities and powers that dictate the terms of freedom, and to do so in such a public way, is a dangerous thing.

We know this to be true.

On the day before Palm Sunday we remembered the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. We remember that the more public his declaration of freedom became, the more of a threat he grew, and the more his enemy pursued him, resulting in his death on a balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

In remembering Dr. King we remember Medgar Evans. We remember that the more public he made his fight for freedom from Jim Crow in Mississippi, the more his enemy pursued him, resulting in his death in his driveway.

We remember the Freedom Riders of 1961, groups of white and African American activists whose declaration of freedom put on public display in the American South led to horrific violence against them.

Going public with a declaration of a new kind of freedom that threatens the principalities and powers that dictate its terms is a dangerous thing. Dr. King knew it. Medgar Evers knew it. The Freedom Riders knew it.

Jesus knew it. He knew the weight of the liberation he would bring, a liberation like no other, and the weight of suffering and violence he would endure because of it. And he did it anyway. For every one.

I’m thankful he did.