The sun is finally
shining in southwestern Minnesota, and spring seems only a breath
away. I don’t want to think about all of April still waiting,
always holding the possibility for one more blizzard before winter
finally gives up its hold.
The warmth is all
the more welcome thanks to temperatures that can’t seem to make up
their mind. Old man winter has been taunting us with unusually warm
spells in strange months, followed by a return of the cold that seems
to want to make up for its absence through sheer brutality of
temperature and wind.
The kindly sun gave
such welcome reprieve from the natural coldness of the land I live
in. He came when I least expected it, letting me revel in his smile,
coaxing me out of my natural environs and out into his beautiful
world. So, when the sun was hidden, when he was taken away and the
world was plunged back into cold shadows, everything seemed twice as
dark, twice as bitter, as it would have without the warm interlude.
Who could know that the sun was not gone forever, only hidden for a
while?
But, yesterday
morning, the sun was back! The breeze was soft, and all creation
called me to celebrate.
I jogged to the
corner of two county roads and felt like flinging my head back and my
arms wide, offering a laughing embrace to the sun, the budding trees,
this world of renewed life.
What a perfect time
of year to celebrate the return of the sun!
Now go back to the
paragraph that begins, “The kindly sun…,” and replace every u in “sun” with an o, for the significance of this time is
not only in the return of summer.
Jesus had been
walking the land of Palestine, ministering, teaching, leading,
blessing, rebuking. His faithful followers included not only the
twelve disciples, but others who believed, men and women, some of
whom ministered to the Lord through financial support and the
provision of life necessities. Here was a group of people who knew
little other than that their lives had been burst in upon by a light
that they hadn’t formerly known was lacking. They had lived the
drudging day-in and day-out of an occupied people, wresting an
existence for themselves somewhere between their land and their
rulers.
And then, Jesus
came.
He came preaching
abundant life, offering water that quenched all thirst forever, bread
that filled to the uttermost. He lived the prophecies of old,
embodying all they had watched for since the time of Abraham and
Moses. Here was a man with enough compassion to be a king, enough
deity to serve. He was the sun on their faces and the relief of the
burdens.
And then he died.
Don’t skip ahead.
Before there was a Sunday resurrection, there was a Friday
crucifixion.
Oh, there had been
warnings. The religious leaders had been wanting Him out of the way
for a long time. He had even tried to let them know what was coming,
but they hadn’t believed Him. Surely, this was another of His
teaching devices, another parable or parallel. Surely He wouldn’t
waste everything He had accomplished by letting His enemies catch
Him! He had already avoided their grasp numerous times, almost as if
He had closed their eyes or weighted their arms so that He easily
eluded them, much like Elisha had when
the king of Aram sought tocapture him. Could not the one who opened eyes also
close them, who gave movement to limbs also take it away?
But, oh!, that
Thursday night, in the garden, betrayed by His own! Surely the
heartsick disciples ran back and told the women all that had
happened. Their Lord, caught! Arrested! On trial!
All that long night,
surely they clung to the hope of His acquittal.
Yet, as Friday
dawned, He was still under arrest.
But can you kill one
who gives life? they must have wondered. As He dragged that wooden
beam down the Via Dolorosa, back torn from the whip, face bloody from
the thorny crown, eyes swollen nearly shut from beatings, did the
inevitable begin to weigh on their souls?
As the women
watched, as nails pierced the hands that had healed them, as another
was driven through feet they had washed, did they still look to the
heavens, watching for the justice that would surely come on the wings
of angels?
The skies were
silent.
Silence above, but
not beneath, as other bystanders began to curse Him, taunt Him. “
He saved others; can He not save Himself?” How cruel are
the jeers that echo aloud those silent questions that had already
taken root in their own spirits!
And He died.
The earth shook with
the calamity. The sun fled. The creator had been killed. The light
had been extinguished.
They went home,
those brave, broken-hearted women, but not before they had seen where
He was to be safely entombed. They had before gladly found a place
for His head to rest; they would not neglect this final duty for His
broken body.
How long and dark is
the night where there is no hope! How heavy the soul of those who
resent their own hearts’ persistence in beating life through the
body. How restless the person who cannot sit, cannot
stand, but must only lie prostrate in wordless supplications of
mind-numbed grief.
Where the sun has
warmed, the cold of its absence is most keenly felt.
That following
Sabbath day must have been the longest of all Sabbaths.
Did they attempt to
follow the prescribed rituals? Did they seek comfort through the
familiar? Or did they see a reminder of Him and His teaching in every
hour of that day?
However they spent
those interminable minutes and hours, at last the sun relented and
went down, announcing the departure of their holy day. Maybe then
they sought the blessed relief of unconsciousness, or maybe they knew
that sleep would once again elude them and they instead began to
prepare for their final ministry to their Lord. Whichever they chose,
“
while it was still dark” they were ready.
I can hear the most
cautious of them – perhaps Joanna or Mary, the mother of James –
cautioning against going too early. Danger lurked for a woman (or
even a group of women) in the night shadows of first-century
Palestine. Finally that dear, careful woman was convinced, “It is
as safe now as it will be at mid-day,” her guarded mind at last
giving way to the urgent pleadings of both her anguished heart and
grieving friends.
They clutched their
anointing spices to their tunics, arms prickling from the chilly
morning air, hurrying in groups of twos and threes through the
shadowed streets and out toward the last place they had seen their
Master and Teacher.
They had heard many
stories in the past three years from those who sought out the Lord.
They knew of families who had traced Him simply by listening to
stories of healing and asking which way He had gone. Those families
wanted to hear His words or to beg His cure for a daughter, a son, a
sibling, spouse, or parent. How many times those families had heard
the disappointing words, “You just missed Him!”
But today, this
Sunday morning, those words were given to them, “
He is not here."
What? How can He not
be here? Where does a dead man go? If the dead are not in the tombs,
where are they to be found?
And then, the
joyously unthinkable.
“He is risen!”
Risen?
The word
tugged at a string of memory, of his sayings regarding His death and,
yes!, His resurrection! Those words that they had dismissed in the
glow of His health and had forgotten in His last gasp of life –
were they true? Did they mean even what He had said?
From the time of
Adam’s sin, death had had the final word. Even
the Shunammite’s son, though once brought back from its clutches, had
eventually died again. How were they to understand when death itself
worked backwards?
They did not grasp
all the theological points, all the ins and outs and ramifications of
their discovery, but they knew that their beloved Shepherd lived
again.
Later, as He appeared to one of their own, to the disciples,
and to the other believers, later they would reflect on all this
meant.
Later, they would see the world-reaching implications of what
had been revealed to them.
Later, they would look back on this first
Easter morning as the brightest of their lives.
But now, at this
moment, as they rushed back to the city as the first carriers of the
gospel, now all they knew, all they cared about, was that this was
indeed an oh-so-beautiful morning!
