Easter

 

April 5, 2026

+ Although it might not feel like it out there, with all this beautiful fresh snow—ugh!—it is Easter.

 But let’s face it:

 Easter happens no matter what it may be like outside.

 Mary Magdalene, as we hear in our Gospel reading for today, comes to the tomb in the dark, in the cold early morning.

 That’s an interesting detail.

 She comes while it’s still dark.

 Because we need to remember—Easter does not begin in sunlight.

 It begins in confusion.

 It begins in grief.

 In the half-light where nothing yet makes sense.

 Mary comes to that tomb not coming expecting a miracle.

 She coming there to mourn.

 She comes to place sealed up.

 She comes to place that is a final place, a place of burial and disposition.

 She comes to a place where the story, as far as she is concerned, is over.

 But what does she find?

 She finds the stone rolled away.

 Even that’s not enough for her.

 She’s still confused.

 Who wouldn’t be?

 We, like her, would instantly imagine the worst.

 Someone has stolen the body.

 She is prepared, as we would be, for one more terrible loss on top of another terrible loss.

 I think many of us understand this well.

 We’ve been there.

 Few of us, I think, are comfortable with certainty.

 But we certainly understand that feeling of things being away taken from us.

 And when it happens, we try to make sense of it.

 What’s amazing about Easter is that it does not deny us that place.

 In fact, it begins there, in that place of loss and uncertainty and fear and darkness and cold.

 The Resurrection of Jesus is not simply some reversal of death.

 It’s not simply a return to the way things were before.

 It is something so much stranger than that.

 When Mary finally sees Jesus, what happens?

 She doesn’t even recognize him.

 Not at first.

 She mistakes him for the gardener.

 I think there’s something beautiful in that little detail.

 She thinks he’s a gardener.

 And maybe, in some way, he actually is.

 After all, in the resurrection, what is it Jesus does?

 He shows us what God has always done.

 God tends.

 God brings life out of the ground.

 God brings something new out of what seemed dead and finished.

 But it’s here, in this moment between Jesus the gardener and faithful Mary that everything happens.

 Everything changes.

 Jesus doesn’t explain anything to Mary.

 He does not give her some theological lecture.

 He doesn’t preach her a sermon.

 He doesn’t proselytize.  

 He simply says one word.

 One very important word.

 Her name.

 “Mary.”

 And in that moment, with that one word, everything changes.

 Because resurrection is not just an idea.

 It is a relationship between us and the one who has been resurrected.

 Resurrection is being recognized, and called, and claimed.

 Resurrection is about being known—truly and fully known.

 Even when everything has seemingly died around us.

 And in that moment of being known, of our name being called, we know what true resurrection is.

 This is what Easter is all about.

 That death doesn’t win.

 It doesn’t  get the last word.

 Life wins.

 Life triumphs.

 Again and again and again.

 We see it not only today, on Easter.

 We see it in the little deaths in our own lives every day.

 We see it when hope seems dead.

 When certainly seems dead.

 When love we thought would last forever ends.

 We don’t get the final say.

 God does.

 Easter shows us that God has entered into death.

 Not to avoid it.

 Not to soften it.

 But to break it open from the inside.

 And what comes out that broken-open death is not a restoration of the way things were before.

 But rather something completely and radically new.

 Something so incredible we couldn’t even imagine it.

 But let’s not be naïve about it either.

 The resurrection doesn’t magically wipe away everything that happened before.

 The resurrection doesn’t erase our wounds.

 When Jesus appears to the disciples, he still bears those wounds.

 His hand are still pierced.

 He has a wound in still in his side.

 These are not healed.

 They’re not hidden.

 They’re transformed.

 They’re transfigured.

 Easter doesn’t pretend that suffering did not happen.

 It simply states that suffering isn’t the end of the story.

 So if we’re feeling joy today, that’s Easter.

 But if we’re here with darkness on our hearts and worries in our souls, if depression and anxiety still plague us, that is Easter for us too.

 If we come here with doubt or grief or broken relationships in our lives, Easter is part of all of this too.

 Resurrection awaits all of us no matter where we are and no matter what we’re enduring.

 Christ is alive.

 He is alive in us.

 Not as some vague idea.

 But as a real Presence.

 Calling us each by name.

 By our own name.

 And in doing so, Christ restores us.

 Christ makes us whole.

 This is the good news of Easter—

 the stone has been rolled away.

 The tomb is empty.

 Death has been harrowed.

 And the risen Christ stands among us still, calling each of us by name, and leading us out of the darkness into an incredible new life.

 Realizing that causes to respond how?

 We respond by saying,

 Alleluia!

 Christ is risen!

 Christ is risen indeed!

 Alleluia!

 

Holy Saturday

 

April 4, 2026

+ One of the things, as you know, that I’ve been doing over the last few years to counteract the toxic news and doomscrolling I sometimes  partake of is I’ve been reading books.

 Lots and lots of books.

 Over 200 last year.

 Almost 50 this year already.

 It’s been great.

 It’s been great for my mental health.

 It’s been great for my brain.

 And it’s been great just reading amazing books.

 One of the books that I’ve read in this time that quickly became my favorite novel is a violent, bloody novel by a writer I’ve become obsessed with, Cormac McCarthy.

 The novel is called Blood Meridian.

 I love this book!

 Why? You might ask.

 It’s an ultra-violent book about scalp hunters in 1859 Southwestern US and Mexico.

 “You’re a vegan, peace-loving, pacifist, Father Jamie,” I hear you saying. “What about this book do you love so much?”

 That is the million dollar question.

 I don’t know.

 All I can say is it captured me as few books ever have.

 So much so that last year, when I was in Arizona, I actually sought out actual places referenced in the novel.

 One of the places I looked for was an extinct volcano near Flagstaff.

 I think I found the one McCarthy is referencing in Blood Meridian .

 In the novel, he writes of this volcano this way,

 Where for aught any man knows the locality of hell. For the earth is a globe in the void and truth there’s no up nor down to it and there’s men in this company besides myself seen little cloven hoof-prints in the stone clever as a little doe in her going but what little doe ever trod melted rock? I’d not go behind scripture but it may be that there has been sinners so notorious evil that the fires coughed em up again and I could well see in the long ago how it was little devils with their pitchforks had traversed that fiery vomit for to salvage back those souls that had by misadventure been spewed up from their damnation onto the outer shelves of the world. Aye. It’s a notion, no more. But someplace in the scheme of things this world must touch the other. And somethin put them little hooflet markings in the lava flow for I seen them there myself.

 I even wrote a poem about this visit to the volcano referenced in this passage.

 It’s in my new book, S/O/M/A

 SUNSET CRATER VOLCANO

 

“Where for aught any man knows the locality of hell.”

—Cormac McCarthy

Blood Meridan

 

It’s all blackened—

black as the soil broken up in clods

freshly tilled for the spring

by plows.

But this is not soil.

It’s rock—

this “fiery vomit”

dried and molten

in its after-effect.

 

Despite my persistent heresy,

my universalist anti-infernalism

I too can gaze like the Judge

into the cone and see,

in the sharp, black stone,

cloven-hooves

and a glimpse into damnation.

Adiabolic as I may be,

I too have known damnation.

I have been marked by its weal

and carry within me its burns,

its scorched scarring.

 

Maybe that’s why this feels so

home-like, so familiar,

as if this is some lost homeland.

Maybe this is a return from the exodus,

a steady trekking back

to a place I never knew

but from which I rose

bitter as sulfur.

  I use two words in that poem that may have caught your attention

 “anti-infernalism”

 and

 “adiabolic”

 Anti-infernalism means not believe in hell.

 And  adiabolic means not believing the devil.

 Think atheist—how atheism is not belief in a god.

 I’m not an atheist.

 Well, if we’re talking about a bearded white man sitting on a throne in heaven giving our judgements, well, I’ll be honest: I don’t believe in that image of God.

 But in just the same way I definitely don’t believe in a metaphysical being with horns and a pitchfork and cloven hooves who sits on our shoulders tempting us to do bad

 I believe in evil, mind you.

 I think evil is real.

 But I don’t believe in the images we have collectively created of the personifications of the evil that keeps us weighed down under some ugly moral halter.

 So then, you ask, why is this whole Harrowing of Hell so important to you?

 Well, it’s simple.

 I love this day in Holy Week.

 Outside of Easter, this is the day I love best.

 I love this strange silence at the heart of Holy Saturday.

 The shouting crowds are gone.

 The cross stands empty.

 The body has been taken down and buried.

 The world, for this one moment, seems to be holding its breath.

 It seems like nothing is happening.

 Awww. . . but it is.

 We have been told that on this day—this quiet, hidden day—Christ descends.

 He descends into hell.

 Not the hell we’ve been shown in cartoons, with fire and pitchforks.

 He descends to the place of the dead.

 The place of absence.

 The place where hope has gone to die.

 He descends to where Adam is.

 Where Eve is.

Where the dead are. 

 That is what we see in the ikon.

  He goes there not as a victim, not as someone destroyed and defeated.

 He goes there as a victor, as a conqueror.

 The early Church loved to imagine this moment.

 They said that when  Christ entered the gates of death, he broke down those doors.  

 The locks shattered.

 The iron bars bent.

And Christ—still wearing the wounds of his death—reached out his pierced hands.

 Not to judge.

 But to raise up those who are there. 

 And he took Adam by the wrist, not even waiting for Adam to reach back, and pulled him up from the grave.

 They imagined Eve, and all her sorrow, being lifted into light.

 They imagined that no one was too far gone.

 Not even there.

 Especially not there.

 This whole morning is all about the fact that there is no place Christ will not go.

 No darkness he will not enter.

 No depth he refuses to reach.

 So, you’re still saying, “I don’t get it, Father Jamie.  You don’t believe in hell. So, what are you appreciating about this day?”

 I say I don’t believe in some metaphysical hell, some cavern under the earth with fire and brimstone, with pitchforks and devils and cloven hooves.

 But I do believe in real hell.

 The hell we have all experienced.

 The hells we as human have created.

 Maybe that’s what I love about Blood Meridian.

 It is a novel about hell.

 Hell on earth.

 Hell of our own making.

 Let’s face it, we all know something about that kind of hell.

 We have descended to those depth ourselves at times.

 We know the hells that are not spoken about out loud.

 The grief that feels like a sealed tomb.

 The guilt that clings to us like grave clothes.

 The pain that burns us like a crematory fire.

 The sense that something in us, or someone we love, is totally beyond repair.

 We know what it is to feel cut off.

 To be buried.

 To be forgotten.

 To be snubbed.

 To be ostracized

 To not be heard.

 To be treated as less-than.

 That is hell.

 Real hell.

 And into that hell, Christ descends.

 Again and again.

 Right now.

 Still.

 Not later.

 Not after we’ve fixed ourselves.

 Right now, when we are here, held in the prison—the very hell!—of our anxiety and depression.

 But precisely when we cannot move, when we cannot hope, when we cannot even pray.

 Christ comes to that dark and terrible place where we are most lost.

 And when he does, he doesn’t stand at a distance.

 He doesn’t shout instructions from above.

 He enters into it fully.

 He comes to us.

 He stays there with us.

 He enters into our hells completely, all the way down to its very bottom.

 This is what I love about this day.

 I love the fact that God is not only found in light.

 God can also be found in the deepest darkness.

 There is no place to which we can go—no depth, no darkness—where God cannot find us and bring us out.

 I truly believe that.

 Holy Saturday is all about the fact that even when nothing seems to be happening, everything is happening.

Right there. 

Beneath the surface.

 Let’s face it.

 Resurrection doesn’t begin tomorrow on Easter morning.

 It begins here.

 Right now.

 In this place.

 In this silence.

 In this hidden space.

 It happens here in the breaking open of what we thought could never be opened.

 If it feels like our faith feels dim, if it feels like our heart feels buried, if to feels like the world has gone quiet and we are being ignored and discarded and forced out, when we are being ghosted by people we love or respect, let’s never forget this fact.

 We cannot mistake silence for absence.

 Christ is not idle.

 He is there, searching us out.

 He is breaking down the doors of our own personal hells.

 He is calling our name, even in this moment in which we thought were lost forever.

 Christ is still doing what he did then:

 He is reaching into the dark,

 He is taking hold of our hand,

 He is pulling out of the darkness, out of our own personal damnations.

 And saying to us,

 Come.

 Let’s go from this place.