Thursday, May 10, 2012

Longing for Easter

                The only death you need ever fear is the death you already died in baptism.  What lies ahead is totally, and completely, the life you live in Christ.  And in Christ, there is nothing to fear. . . for as he was raised, so also are you.
                Preaching the resurrection was difficult for me this year, more difficult than most years.  I recognize the difficulty at anytime of preaching the great festivals of the faith.  As we hear of the Word made flesh in Bethlehem, of the cross and the empty tomb, and of the rush of the mighty wind and the tongues of fire, who are we that we can add to the witness of the centuries?  That’s my struggle every year at Christmas, the Resurrection of the Lord, and Pentecost.  What possibly can I add to the proclamation that has come down through the ages?
                But this year the struggle was even harder for me.  The struggle was rooted in the depth of my own experience.  On Christmas I brought communion to the home of my physician and friend who was dying of cancer.  Lent began with his funeral.  And Holy Week was marked with two more funerals.  In the midst of all this my own emotional struggles dating back to childhood paid another visit.  The result was total exhaustion and a profound feeling of emptiness in the days and weeks following Easter.  Good advice from caring people helped me to decide that some time off was not only advisable, but necessary.  And so, somewhat rested, I’m resuming the pace of ministry.
                Over the last few weeks I’ve been reflecting on the cross and resurrection.  One thought that overwhelmed me is that it is a whole lot easier to preach Good Friday while living in the light of Easter, than it is to preach the Resurrection while still walking through the darkness of Good Friday.  I love the theology behind the opening paragraph of this blog.  It is rooted in the conviction that death has already lost “its sting”, that we already participate in the new life of the risen Christ, and that we have been set free from all reason to fear.
                I wish that I could reflect on Good Friday like our parents and grandparents used to remember walking to and from school, you know, “uphill both ways in raging blizzards with five foot snow drifts”.  Would that Good Friday was a distant memory of a difficult time now past, and that our lives now truly reflected the new life lived in Christ, specifically, the risen Christ.
                But we find ourselves straddling these two realities.  By faith we live as Easter people basking in the light of the risen Christ.  And yet, this mortal flesh, indeed, the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; 23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.[1]  For me, life too often involves groaning inwardly for the redemption of my mind.
                I have struggled throughout my life with Dysthymia, i.e., chronic depression.  In another generation I would have been considered just one more melancholy Scandinavian.  I long to be able to wake up in the morning with the joy of Easter dancing in my mind.  Yet, there is that ever present cloud of the Good Friday world.  I watch the residents of our Memory Care facility next door struggle with their ever increasing cognitive impairments.  I see young and old struggling with conditions that are chronic by nature and simply won’t go away with the dawn of a new day.  And of course there is this world, still groaning in travail, still suffering as it suffered in Jesus’ day.
                And so we wait.  We wait as people of the Easter promise, and yet also, aware that this promise is for us still a future hope.  That hope, my friends, will need to suffice for now.





[1] The Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. Nashville : Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989, S. Ro 8:22-23