It's Easter, and Mary goes to the tomb. And I wonder why.
Why did Mary go? What did she plan to do? What did she think she would see? Did she go out as we all go to such places simply to remember and to cry? She goes, knowing there's nothing to do. Nothing can be done. She has buried her fondest hopes. All she can do is mourn all that has been lost.
Yet, knowing this, she went to the sealed tomb to weep for her friend, lost and dead. She went to mourn and to remember--to remember when he was still alive and the shining dream of all she wanted from him, all she hoped he would be and do, still lived in her heart. She went hoping to experience again the days when Jesus still seemed something special, where it still seemed that he might be more than just one more human life on this earth. She went to remember when it was possible to still believe that he was a gift of God, of grace, of mercy, and the hope of the future.
She went to remember the way his hand reached out to touch the heads of children and bless them. She went to recall his pleased smile when he saw people sitting before him eager to soak up anything, any word that he might say that would lift their hearts to touch and to be touched by something holy, something wondrous, something that would lift them beyond the burden of their daily chore. She went to remember the tear in his eyes and the catch in his throat on that day when the man fell at his feet and begged him to come and heal his dying child. She went to remember the fire in his eyes, his anger at senseless suffering and closed hearts. She went for that precious moment to recall the day he stood outside the tomb of his friend Lazarus and wept.
She went to look at the cold stone tomb and to imagine him lying there, still. It's a private time to let tears flow and to mourn her loss. But if that's why she went, I understand that. Yet what I don't understand is what she actually found, for you got more than a time to remember, more than a private place to recall precious memories. She got something beyond our comprehension, yet powerfully alive and real and wonderful.
And what did Mary get? She went to the tomb on Easter looking for a dead friend, only to find that she lives in a world more holy and blessed and wondrous than she could possibly imagine. She discovered that everything, no matter how mundane, how painful, how disappointing, is still mysteriously infused with the glory of God shining in the face of a living Jesus. And she hears Jesus call her by name and he lifts her face from the dust. Mary, in her hopelessness and distress painted a joy in her face and gained back her hope upon knowing that Jesus did not fail her.
When I think of Mary going to the tomb, weeping yet surprised by joy, I remember another woman who, with me, met the living Jesus who called us both by name.
Back in the Philippines just about few years after my ordination, I was comfortably sitting in a bus busy reviewing my notes on the talk I have to give to a group of young professionals later that day. The topic is about “The Easter Experience and professional life.” I went back to my notes in theology and read extensively from various spiritual authors to prepare for this talk. In one of the bus stops, a haggard looking woman climbed the bus clutching a small baby wrapped in a literally swaddling clothes. I concluded that this woman was so poor that she could not even afford to buy a decent baby dress. The woman looked terrified and distressed. From time to time, she would peek at her baby’s face and started to cry and asked the bus driver that if it possible not to make stops anymore as she needed to bring her baby in an emergency room. But the bus driver needed to earn his quota for the day and had to do the usual stops.
Knowing that the woman was all by herself, I went to her side and asked her about her baby. The baby is having seizure and non responsive. I took the almost weightless the baby from her. The baby is suffering from sever malnutrition. I asked the driver to stop the bus and I took the baby and her mother to a nearby private clinic. I stayed with the mother. I did not say anything. The mother sat there keeping watch over the extinction of her fondest hopes. This was a deathwatch. I sat with her, wanting to say something, to give some word of consolation, of hope, but what in heaven's name was there to say or to do? Not even a single a idea from the notes I have prepared for this important talk I have to give. I said nothing, but sat and watched the scene played to its close.
As I watched, I noticed the young woman finger a necklace it was nothing more than a dirty string strung about her neck, and I followed the course of the string as it went around the curve of her neck and down in front of her where she was fingering something at the end of the string. I couldn't see what it was, but then, suddenly, I saw it. It was a cross. It was fashioned from a piece of twisted wire she probably found along the road. Seeing this, I knew immediately what to do. I touched her arm and then I made the sign of the cross, large across the baby’s body with my right hand and the young woman's eyes went wide, and she quickly pulled back the blanket and tugged at my hand, pulling me down to her little one so that I almost toppled over her.
But what could she want? It was an instant before I knew. She wanted me to baptize and bless her child before dying. She wanted me to commend her little one to the arms of a mercy that had been so badly denied her in this life. And I bent forward, baptized the baby and laid both hands on that little head, and commended her to the care of Jesus, hoping in the next life she would find a gentleness that she never knew here.
After the baptism and the blessing, the young mother smiled slightly. Nothing was changed, yet somehow we both knew everything was different. Her little one would still die from severe malnutrition. She would still cry and weep.
So, too, all of us here today, there are still tears to shed, bodies to bury, hopes to surrender. Yet suddenly, this dark world contained more than the sorrow and frustration of helpless love. A power had been released in the world's darkness, and the tears we brushed from our eyes were not only of sorrow, but, strangely, of joy and hope and gratitude. We were transported beyond the dismal present to a future where everything was shaped, finally, by the mercy of God whose pleasure it is to wipe every tear from every eye. We entered a world where death no longer hunted her little one, because it had been swallowed up by the same love that transformed this world into a holy space where the living Jesus came and gave life and grace to a young woman, a dying child, and a stranger companion.
In that moment in the hopeless life of a woman, the risen Jesus stepped into the darkness of our hopeless hearts and he asked, even as he asked Mary at the tomb, "Why are you weeping? Do you not know I am here?"
It's Easter, and Jesus comes to you and invites you to an Easter vision where you take a new look at your life and the life of the world and realize that there are no ordinary moments. For every moment, every experience, no matter how grand, petty, or painful, is mysteriously charged with the presence of the risen One who says to you, "Why are you weeping? I am here."
He wants you to know that you live in a divine milieu where he continues to struggle and suffer and sweat and labor to give hope to the hopeless, purpose to the despairing, joy to the sorrowing, and life to the dead. Today, whether you live in darkness as dark as that of the woman in the bus or you live in the bright light of life's joy and strength, Jesus comes. He comes and speaks your name even as he spoke to Mary outside the tomb, even as he spoke to the woman and to me in the darkness of another tomb in that bus, "Why do you weep? I am here. You do not live in a world forsaken, but in a world where I work and hunger to give you life."
Easter still represents the faithfulness of God's enduring and steadfast love despite the worst situation we are in. My presence at the woman’s side did not do anything to save the baby but gave her the strength to endure those moments of fear and loneliness and hopelessness knowing that she was not alone to face the moment that her baby finally dies. It was an Easter moment for me and the woman. When everything is over with her baby, after a good cry, she turned to me so serenely and calmly said: Thank you for being here. Your presence is an experience for me that in my anguish and desperation and suffering, Jesus repeats to me the words he uttered to Mary Magdalene: Why do you weep? I am here.
Friends, everyday can be an Easter experience for all of us. Every time you tap somebody’s shoulder for encouragement, it is Easter. Every time you visit a sick in the hospital or help an elderly or the disabled cross the street, it is Easter. Every time you paint a smile and encourage a person, It is Easter.
I did not make it to the conference to deliver my talk that day. I was actually busy living my talk not with professionals but with a poor woman; not is hallowed halls of the university auditorium but in that shaky bus and the gloomy clinic in that one obscure moment.
No comments:
Post a Comment