Holy Saturday

April 11, 2020

Matthew 27.57-66

+ Yesterday, in my sermon for Good Friday, I quoted the great Bishop Barbara Harris who once said,

“We are an Easter people living in a Good Friday world.”

I think that quote is very true. But, for me, I think we are actually an Easter people living a Holy Saturday world right now. Because, let’s face it: that’s exactly what our collective life seems like right now. Like one long, prolonged Holy Saturday.

Here we are today in a church stripped of everything symbolic.

The cross hangs before us, veiled in black.

The altar is stripped.

The aumbry, that held just a few days ago the Body and Blood of Jesus, is now empty, its door wide open.  

The sanctuary light, which gently reminds us of the holy Presence of Jesus in that Bread and Wine, is extinguished and has been taken away.

For those of us who delight in the Presence of God—who strive and long for the Presence of God—who find our purpose and meaning in the Presence of God—today is a bleak day.

That Presence seems…gone.  Or, at least, hidden from us.

For now, in this moment, on this Holy Saturday morning, time seems to sort of stand still.  We are caught in this breathless moment—between the excruciating death of Jesus on the cross yesterday and the glorious Light that is about dawn on us tonight and tomorrow morning.  

For now—in this moment—we are here.

See, it does feel like a world in which a pandemic rules and we live in anxiousness. We seem to be waiting for…something.

On this Holy Saturday, as we look around us, we might be asking where is Jesus?

Today he is not where he was last week or even a few days ago for us.

On this day, we remember that his body was lying there in the dark stillness of the tomb, wrapped and broken and bloodied.

But where is Jesus?

Not his body.

But…him?

This day gives me an opportunity to preach about one of my all-time favorite topics—the so-called “Harrowing of Hell.  

The Harrowing of Hell is that wonderful concept in which we ponder Jesus’ descent  to hell to bring back those captured there.  For me, this is what’s it’s all about.

Hell.

That place we thought was the end all of end-all’s.  

That place that we dread and fear and cringe from. That place in which lies every one of our greatest nightmares and the most horrendous things we could even possibly imagine.  That black, bleak, miserable place.

What I love about today and this Harrowing of Hell is that the fear of this place is broken.   The fear that there is a place in which God’s love and light might not be able to descend is broken open.  Jesus goes even there in search of us, those he loves. 

Now, this imagine carries over into our own immediately lives.  Hell, for us, is not necessarily that metaphysical place of eternal punishment. Hell is right here, in our own lives. In our own minds.  In our own day-to-day lives.

We all know what our own hells are and how isolating they can be.

We know how impenetrable they seem.

What today shows us that there is no such thing as an impenetrable hell.

At least not for Jesus.

No matter how dark, how terrible our hells might be, Jesus will come for us there.

Jesus will descend to us, wherever we might be.  And from that place, he will take us by the hand and pull us out.   Because that is what Christ’s love is able to do.

So, where is Jesus at this strange time in our lives? Is he off somewhere in some high heaven? Is he ignoring us in our fear and anxiety?

No.

We know where he is.

He is here.

Right here.

He is with us.

Even in this dark an strange place.

Even here in this time of pandemic and sickness.

We know that nothing can separate us from that love of Christ.

Not even the deepest hell.

It is incredible when we think of that.  

And, for me anyway, it fills me with such hope, such joy, such love for Christ that even the bleakness of this morning doesn’t seem so bleak.

Oh yes, Jesus has died.   He truly died—he truly tasted death and partook of it fully.  And we too must die as well. We too will taste death and partake in it fully.  

But the fact is that, not even death can separate us from Christ. That place wherein we find ourselves, lost, lifeless, without hope, is the place in which we cannot escape Christ.

In the hells of our lives, even there Jesus comes to us.  In those places in which we seem so far separated from God, from the love that God gives us, from the light God shines upon us, even there Jesus will come to us.

No matter how far separated we might seem from Jesus, Jesus will cover that great distance and come to us.

Even here.

Even here he will find us and take us to himself.

Even here, he will even die, like us, to bring us back to a life that will never end.

 That is what Holy Saturday is all about and that is certainly why I love this day.

 So, on this Holy Saturday, when all seems bleak and lost and without purpose, let us remember: Jesus is at work even in those moments when we think he might not be.

The Presence of God is with us even when it seems furthest from us.  

In the darkest moments of our lives, the bright dawn is about to break.

Let us wait patiently and breathlessly for it.

Good Friday

April 10, 2020

Isaiah 52.13-53.12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 4.14-16; 5;7-9; John 18.1-19.42

+ The main theme in my sermons for this Lenten season was the theme of brokenness.

Brokenness. 

In many ways, that is what this day is all about.

Brokenness.

The Jesus we encounter today is slowly, deliberately being broken.

This moment we are experiencing right now is a moment of absolute and complete brokenness.

Brokenness, in the shadow of the cross, the nails, the thorns. Broken by the whips.  

Broken under the weight of the Cross.  

Broken by his friends,

Broken by his loved ones.

Broken by the thugs and the soldiers.

Broken by all those who turned away from him and betrayed him.

 In this dark moment, our own brokenness seems more profound, more real, as well.  

We can feel this brokenness now in a way we never have before.

Our brokenness is shown back to us like the reflection in a dark mirror as we look upon that broken Body on the cross.

 A few weeks ago, on hearing the death of Bishop Barbara Harris, I shared a quote she shared, that really spoke to many people, including myself.

Bishop once said,

“We are an Easter people living in a Good Friday world.”

This Lent, this time of pandemic and collection fear, has truly shown us what a Good Friday world is.

Today, on Good Friday, we know what a Good Friday world feels like.

We’ve been living it.

Yes, we have known brokenness in our lives.

We feel a kind of collective brokenness right now in our society.

We feel a collective brokenness in this world of pandemic and anxiety and fear.

There have been moments, recently when we may have felt like maybe it seems God has abandoned us, has deserted us, has turned away from us.

We have known those moments in which it seems sickness and death have prevailed and we feel helpless in the face of it all.

We have known those moments when we have lost someone we have cared for so much.  

We have known those moments of darkness in which we cannot even imagine what light is even like again.

But, for as followers of Jesus, we are an Easter people.

We live, always, even in the darkness of pandemics and sickness and death, in the light of Easter.

Even today, we know it—the Easter light— is there, just beyond our grasp.  

We know that what seems like a bleak, black moment will be replaced by the blinding Light of the Resurrection.  

What seems like a moment of unrelenting despair will soon be replaced by an unleashing of unrestrained joy.

This present despair will be turned completely around.

This present darkness will be vanquished.

This present pain will be replaced with a comfort that brings about peace.

This present brokenness will be healed fully and completely, leaving not even a scar.

In a few hours our brokenness will be made whole.

And will know there is no real defeat, ultimately.  

Ultimately there will be victory.

Victory over this pandemic and this time of quarantine and spiritual isolation.

Victory over everything we are feeling sadness over at this moment.

Victory over the pain, and brokenness, and loss, and death we are commemorating

This is what today is about.   

This is what our journey in following Jesus brings to us.

All we need to do is go where the journey leads us.

All we need to do is follow Jesus, yes, even through this broken moment.

And, in following, we—Easter people that we are—will know joy—even a joy that, for this moment, seems far off.  

Maundy Thursday

April 17, 2013

 Exodus 12.1-14, 1 Corinthians 11.23-26; Psalm 22; John 13.1-17,31b-35

+ Normally, on Maundy Thursday I preach the Holy Eucharist.

Holy Communion.

That would be under normal circumstances.

We are obviously not under normal circumstances.

And to preach about Holy Communion when our congregation can’t gather together to actually eat and drink together at this altar, seems wrong. It doesn’t feel right to preach about that. Not now. Not in this time of pandemic and worldwide illness.

Next year, yes.

But now. No.

Instead, I am going to preach about something I should’ve preached about in the past but have not.  I realized recently that I have never fully addressed this issue, at least not from the pulpit.

But Covid-19 has brought some issues to surface that I realize I need to address. There are a lot of issues that Covid brings to the surface. But one in particular ties in to what we are doing during these three holy days leading to Easter Day.

That is the issue of anti-Semitism. Namely, the anti-Semitism that we may perceive from our readings during these three holy day before Easter. Anti-Semitism is something I hoped was in the past. Something we did not need to deal with anymore.

But Covid has brought it up again.

Yes, we hear the old accusations from some extremists who believe that this pandemic was caused by Jews.  It seems this happens, historically, every time there is a plaque of some sort. Somehow the Jews always get blamed for such things. And the root of that anti-Semitism is, I hate to say it, based in our Christian beliefs.

In our readings from the New Testament during Holy Week, the Jewish people in Jesus’ time do not come off looking very. There is an obvious bias by the authors of these Gospels toward them.  And that is disconcerting.

So, in response, if you are able to access our bulletin for tonight, you will see this statement.  It’s an important statement.  And if you haven’t read it, I’ll read it right now.  The Statement reads:

Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew. Christianity began as a movement within Judaism that took time to form and evolve into the institutional Church of today. There were areas of contention and disagreement among the Jews in Jesus’ time, and the leaders of the early Jesus movement did not shy away from hostile rhetoric against their detractors, as evidenced by a number of New Testament passages.

The Greek term usually translated here as “the Jews” varies in meaning and application, alternately referring to the most powerful Jewish religious leaders; Jews of the region of Judea specifically; or to those Jews who had reservations about Paul’s mission among Gentiles. In essence, “the Jews” functions in the New Testament as “the other” against which Christianity came to define itself.

When the Roman Empire adopted Christianity as its state religion, Christian rhetoric against Jews gained power, and Christian texts inspired anti-Semitism, most notably during the Crusades and the Holocaust. In our modern context, it is important for us to remember that while New Testament writers took issue with Jews who disbelieved in Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God, these texts do not take issue with anyone’s race or origin. Nor do they prescribe for us, in contradiction with Christ’s central purpose, mistrust or hatred of non-Christians.

(I, by the way, did not write that statement, but found it elsewhere and found it helpful for Holy Week)

This is important for us to hear. And it is important for us, on this night in which we observe and commemorate a very Jewish tradition in which a very Jewish Jesus and his very Jewish followers lived.

This Last Supper Jesus celebrates on the night before he died was a Passover meal.  He was observing of that very Jewish feast.

 And he,  an observant, Torah-keeping, kosher Jew, was doing what was right for he has an observant Jew.

How we tend to forget this as Christians, I do not know. I do not know how any follower of our very Jewish Jesus can still be an anti-Semite.

But I do know this.

We followers of our Jewish Jesus, need to make reparation for anti-Semitic statements made by Christians and even our Gospel writers.  We need to stand up and speak out when he hear them or see them. And it seems we are hearing them and seeing them now more than we have in the last five or ten years.

Our Jewish Savior expects nothing less from us than making it a very real mission in our lives to speak out and protest anti-Semitism in this world.

It is uncomfortable then, for those of us who have made this commitment, to read and hear these scriptures in which Jews are spoken of so adversely.

But we need to remember that it wasn’t the Jews who killed Jesus.

It was the Romans who whipped him.

It was the Romans who mocked him.

And It was the Romans who nailed him to the cross and pierced his side with a spear.

And yet, there is no anti-Roman discrimination.

In fact, Rome now is the very center of the Roman Catholic Church!

The fact is, on this Maundy Thursday, unless we are only observing what we hear and commemorate tonight and not acting on what we find wrong in these false understandings of our Jewish sisters and brothers, this is all just empty. And Jesus would rather have us not observe it.

But if we observe the events of tonight and the next several days through a Jewish lens, we find it takes on such significant meaning.

This Jewish Jesus will tomorrow be tortured and then will be nailed to the Cross.  He was nailed to that cross in fulfillment of Jewish scriptures and the Jewish expectation of the Messiah and the divine Son of God.

The holy concept of the slain Lamb of God is a reference to the lamb that was slaughtered in the temple in Jerusalem as a sin offering.

So, for Jewish followers of Jesus, his death took on deep, very Jewish meaning.

On that cross Jesus tomorrow will die and be laid in a dark tomb.

On Saturday, it will be there, laid out, broken and destroyed.

But on Sunday, that physical Body will be raised by God out of that darkness.  It will rise out of that destroyed state.  It will come forth from that broken disgrace and will be fully and completely alive and present.

Jesus himself, this victim of anti-Semitism, will rise above that brokenness and live.      To see all of that from a Jewish perspective not only helps us make sense of these incredible and amazing events.

It also helps us to understand that all of these things were planned by God for ages before.  And this is a truly holy way to celebrate this holy night.

Yes, we are not able to gather here together to share the Body and Blood of Jesus as we usually do. But we are still sharing in his Body and Blood spiritually. We are spiritually partaking of this Passover meal, this sacrifice of the Lamb of God, this service of Thanksgiving to God.  And because we are, we are being spiritually fed.  We do come away with a sense that Jesus is present and that he goes with us—each of us—all of us—from this altar and from this church building, into the world.

So, let us gather spiritually around this altar tonight.  Let us spiritually share in the Body and Blood of our very Jewish Messiah.  Let us humble ourselves in our hearts And in our hearts, let us be truly fed.  And let us go from here, humbled and fed, to speak out, the defend those who need defending, to stand up against those who oppress our Jewish sisters and brothers and anyone else who are feeling oppressed. And, in doing so, we too are sharing the holy Presence of Jesus with others.

Palm Sunday

April 5, 2020

Matthew 26.14-27.66

+ Here we are this morning at the beginning of Holy Week. And let me tell you, this is the weirdest Holy Week I’ve ever experienced.

Usually, without fail, I begin this week with a big mix of emotions. But this year…I don’t even know what I’m feeling.

This strange year.

This bizarre and unprecedented Lent.

Certainly, this week is the apex of the entire Church Year. Everything seems to lead either to this week or away from it.

But, I don’t even know what to say about this Holy Week. The fact that we are not all gathered together here this morning and that we won’t be gathering this week, just makes it all so…different…so unreal.  

Of course, we will do the best we can this week.  We will celebrate our liturgies as we always do, though they will be pared down considerably. We will observe the last events of Jesus’ last earthly moments before his crucifixion, as we always do, though we will be doing through social media together.

That’s all the surface “things.”

This coming week will be a hard one because the virus will possibly intensify this week. This coming week will be hard because more people will get sick, and more people will die.  This coming week will be hard because the quarantine is taking a toll on all of us. We can only socially isolate ourselves for so long before we start feeling its deep effects.

And to top it all that off, for us who are Christians, we must also walk with Jesus on a journey none of really want to walk with him on, especially not now. Not right now.

We, as followers of Jesus, as people who love Jesus and balance our lives on his life and teachings and guidance, are emotionally tied to this man, after all.

This Jesus is not just some mythical character to us.  He is a friend, a mentor, a very vital and essential part—no, he the very center of our lives as Christians. He is our Savior. He is our tie to God, our connection with the God who loves us.   So, to have to go through the emotional rollercoaster of this coming week in which we have to see him betrayed and murdered is hard on us.  

 And today, we get the whole emotional rollercoaster in our liturgy and in our two Gospel readings.  Here we find a microcosm of the roller coaster ride of what is to come this week.

What begins this morning as joyful ends with jeers and bleakness.

The Jesus who enters Jerusalem is the Jesus who has done some incredible things in the past few weeks, at least in the very long Gospel readings we’ve been hearing over the last few weeks.

Three weeks ago, he turned the Samaritan woman’s life around.

Two weeks ago, he gave sight to a man born blind.

Last week, he raised his friend Lazarus from the dead.

This day even begins with us, his followers, singing our praises to Jesus, waving palm branches in victory.  He is, at the beginning of this week, popular and accepted.  For this moment, everyone seems to love him. But this procession of his is different than the normal procession of a monarch.

The great theologian Marcus Borg wrote this:

“[Pontius] Pilate’s procession embodied the powers, the glory, and violence of an empire that ruled the world. Jesus’ procession embodied an alternative version procession and alternative journey...an anti-imperial and non-violent procession.”

Such a procession, as wonderful as it seems, is, however, dangerous.  Such an anti-imperial, non-violent procession is a threat.

And as a result…within moments, a darkness falls.  It all turns and goes horribly wrong.   What begin with rays of sunshine, ends in gathering dark storm clouds.  Those joyful, exuberant shouts turn into cries of anger and accusation.  Those who welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem have fled.  They have simply disappeared from sight.  And in their place an angry crowd shouts and demands the death of Jesus.

Even his followers, those who almost arrogantly proclaimed themselves followers of Jesus, have disappeared.  Their arrogance has turned to embarrassment and shame.  Even the Samaritan woman, whose life he turned around, the man born blind, and his friend Lazarus have disappeared and are nowhere in sight.

Jesus, whom we encounter at the beginning of this liturgy this morning surrounded by crowds of cheering, joyful people, is by the end of it, alone, abandoned, deserted—shunned.  Everyone he considered a friend—everyone he would have trusted—has left him.  And in his aloneness, he knows how they feel about him. He knows that he is an embarrassment to them. He knows that, in their eyes, he is a failure.

Throughout this coming Holy Week, the emotional roller coaster ride will get more intense.

On Maundy Thursday the celebratory meal of Passover will turn into a dark and lonely night of betrayal.  Jesus will descend to his lowest emotional point after he washes the feet of his disciples and heads out into the garden of Gethsemane.

Friday will be a day of more betrayal, of torture and of an agonizing violent death in the burning hot sun.

Saturday morning, while his body lies in the tomb, he descends to the depths of hell and from there will be lead those who went before into the depths. Not even the depths of hell are more powerful than he.  Saturday will be a day of keeping watch at the grave that would, under normal circumstances, be quickly forgotten.

Through our online liturgies, we are able to walk with Jesus on this painful journey and to experience the emotional ups and downs of all that will happen.

And next Sunday morning , the roller coaster will again be at its most intense, its greatest moment.  Next Sunday at this time, we will be rejoicing, though, yes, that rejoicing too will be subdued. Next Sunday, we will be rejoicing with all the choirs of angels and archangels who sing their unending hymns of praise to him from our homes.   We will be rejoicing in the fact that all the humiliation experienced this week has turned to joy, all desertion has turned to rewarding and wonderful friendship, all sadness to gladness, and death—horrible, ugly death—will be turned to full, complete and unending joy.

And that is the message we take with us during this temporarily bizarre time.

All of this will be turned around.

And we will, sooner than later, rejoice together with real joy.

Marcus Borg finished that quote we heard earlier in this way:

“Which journey are we on? Which procession are we in?”

Are we in Pilate’s arrogant procession?

Are we the crowd, are we the religious leaders who call for Jesus’ death because he doesn’t meet our personal needs?

Or are we in Jesus’ procession?

Are we following Jesus even in these dark, strange times?

We know the answer to that question.

Let us join Jesus’ procession, as uncomfortable and frightening we might be right now.   As we trek alongside Jesus during this Holy Week of betrayal, torture and death, as we journey through another week of uncertainty and anxiety, let us keep our eyes focused on the Light that is about to dawn in the darkness of our lives.

Let us move forward toward that Light.

Even though there might be sadness on our faces now, let the joy in our hearts prompt us forward along the path we dread to take.  And, next week at this time, we will be basking in Christ’s incredible Light—a Light that triumphs over the darkness of not only his death, but our as well.

5 Lent

March 29, 2020

Ezekiel 37.1-14; John 11.1-45

+ Sometimes the lectionary—those assigned Bible readings we have each Sunday—are weirdly prophetic. They sometimes speak exactly to the situation at hand. They sometimes perfectly mirror a situation in which we are all living.

Well, today is one of those days.

Today, our reading from Hebrew Scriptures and our Gospel reading reflect our own strange time perfectly.

The first reading, of course, is Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones.  It’s a great story in and of itself.  Ezekiel is brought by God to a valley full of dry bones and told to prophesy to them. As he does, they take on flesh and come alive.

It’s a great story for any Lenten season. But man! Does it speak loudly to us in this Lenten season!

And our reading from the Gospel today is the raising of Lazarus.  This story of Lazarus takes on much deeper meaning when we examine it closely and place it within the context of its time. And it’s a story I LOVE to examine and wrestle with.

One of our first clues that the something is different in this story is that, when Jesus arrives at the tomb of his friend Lazarus, he is told that Lazarus has been dead four days. This clue of “four days” is important.

First of all, from simply a practical point, we can all imagine what condition Lazarus’s body would be in after four days.  This body would not have been embalmed like we understand embalming today in the United States.  There was no refrigeration, no sealed metal caskets, no reconstructive cosmetics for the body of Lazarus.  In the heat of that country, his body would, by the fourth day, be well into the beginning stages of decomposition.  There would be some major physical destruction occurring.

Second, according to Jewish understanding, when the spirit left the body, a connection would still be maintained with that body for a period of three days by a kind of thread.  According to Jewish thinking of this time, the belief was the spirit might be reunited with the body up to three days, but after that, because the body would not be recognizable to the departed spirit because of decomposition, any reuniting would be impossible.  After those three days, the final separation from the body by the spirit—a kind of breaking of the thread—would have been complete.  The spirit then would truly be gone.  The body would truly be dead.

So, when Jesus came upon the tomb of Lazarus and tells them to roll the stone away, Martha says to him that there will be stench.  That’s an important part of the story as well.  He was truly dead—dead physically and dead from the perspective of his soul being truly separated from his body.

So, when the tomb was opened for Jesus, he would be encountering what most of us would think was impossible.  Not only was Lazarus’ spirit reunited with his body, but he also healed the physical destruction done to his body by decomposition.  It would have been truly amazing.

 And Jesus would truly have been proven to be more than just some magician, playing tricks on the people.  He wasn’t simply awakening someone who appeared to be dead, someone who might have actually been in a deep coma.   There was no doubt that Lazarus was truly dead and now, he was, once again alive.

Now, at first glance, both our reading from the Hebrew scriptures and our Gospel readings seem a bit morbid.

These are things we don’t want to think about.  Certainly not right now. Not now when we are surrounded by a deadly pandemic. Not now when people are dying in droves of this terrible illness.

But, let’s face it. They do speak loudly to us. We are living in a valley dry bones right now. Or it does feel like it right now.

We are sequestered.

We are isolated physically from each other.

We are in quarantine.

And it feels as though there is nothing but bones and uncertainly around us.

It feels like a very desolate time.

And to top off that desolation, we are rapidly heading toward Holy Week.  Next week at this time, we will be celebrating the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem.  We will be hearing the joyful cries of the crowd as he rides forth.  Within 11 days from now, we will hear those cries of joy turn into cries of jeering and accusation.

For us, Holy Week this year will feel doubly desolate. We will not being gathering here in this building to commemorate these events. There will be no washing of the feet on Maundy Thursday. We will be sharing the Eucharist spiritually, yes, but not physically.

To just add even more to it all, we will be hearing about betrayal, torture, murder and death as Jesus journeys away from us into the cold dark shadow of death.  These images of death we encounter in today’s readings—as unpleasant as they are—simply nudge us in the direction of the events toward which we are racing, liturgically.

During Holy Week, we too will be faced with images we might find disturbing.  Jesus will be betrayed and abandoned by his friends and loved ones.  He will be tortured, mocked and whipped.  He will be forced to carry the very instrument of his death to the place of his execution.  And there he will be murdered in a very gruesome way.  Following that death, he will be buried in a tomb, much the same way his friend Lazarus was.  But unlike Lazarus, what happens to Jesus will take place within the three days at that time required for a soul to make a final break from his body.

And this brings us back to the story of Lazarus.  We often make the mistake, when think about the story of Lazarus, that Lazarus was resurrected.

The fact is, he was not resurrected.

It was not resurrection because Lazarus would eventually die again. He was simply brought back to life. He was resuscitated, shall we say.

So, Lazarus truly did rise from the tomb in Bethany, but he was not resurrected

Lazarus' purported tomb on Cyprus

there.  He went on to live a life somewhat similar to the life he lived before.  And eventually, he died again. There’s actually a tomb purported to be Lazarus’ on Cyprus (though his actual bones, it is believed, have been lost).

But Resurrection is, as we no doubt know, different.  

Resurrection is rising from death into a life that does not end.  

Resurrection is rising from all the things we encountering right now in our lives—Covid, pandemics, sickness, death, anxiety and fear. 

Resurrection is rising from our own broken selves into a wholeness that will never be taken away from us.

Resurrection is new bodies, a new understanding of everything, a new and unending life.

Resurrection, when it happens, cannot be undone.

It cannot be taken away.

Resurrection destroys the hold of death.

Resurrection destroys death.

And the first person to be resurrected was not Lazarus.  The first person to be resurrected was, of course, Jesus. His resurrection is important not simply because he was the first.  His resurrection is important because it, in a real sense, destroys death once and for all.

The resurrection of Jesus casts new light not just on our deaths at the end of our lives.

The resurrection of Jesus casts light on where we are now.

God’s raising Jesus from the death shows us that we will rise from this dark time, this time of pandemic, this time of coronavirus, this valley of dry bones in which we now live.

All of this fear and uncertainty and sickness and foreboding is only temporary.  But the resurrection of Jesus and the life he promises-that unending life—is eternal.

The end is not a cross or a tomb.

The end is not a valley of dry bones.

The end is not pandemics or anxiety or fear.

The end is that Easter light.

The end is that life in which we will be raised like Jesus into a new and unending life.

We will be raised into a life that never ends, a life in which “sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but life eternal,” as we celebrate in the Burial Office of the Book of Common Prayer. Because Jesus died and then trampled death, he took away eternal death.

So, as we continue our journey through this valley of dry bones, as we journey through this time of uncertainty and anxiety, as we move through these last days of Lent toward that long, painful week of Holy Week, we go forward knowing full well what await us on the other side of the Cross of Good Friday.  We go forward knowing that the glorious dawn of Easter awaits us.  And with it, the glory of resurrection and life everlasting awaits us as well. We go forward knowing all of this in only temporary. But what awaits is eternal.

So, let go forward.  Let us move toward Holy Week, rejoicing with the crowd.  And as the days may seem dark and we may feel weary, let us keep focused on the Easter light that is just about to dawn on all of us.