Eastertide reflection
Over the past few months, I’ve taken several trips through Virginia’s rolling hills. Follow Highway 81 along gentle slopes, and you’ll be flanked on either side of the road by grazing cattle, nesting calves, friendly black, white, and red herds. Their sweet faces buoy me and call to mind my favorite verse of scripture, “But for you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings; and you will go forth and frolic like calves from the stall.” Anytime I see cows, happy on their sunny hills, I feel God’s revelatory hand on my shoulder. A little surprise. Just for me. In the most ordinary of sights.
In her meditation on Psalm 8, Marilynne Robinson recounts the moment Mary Magdalene encounted the resurrected Christ. ‘Woman, why weepest thou?’ He appears in the very ordinary form of a gardener. “Jesus seems to be teasing her toward delight and recognition, ready to enjoy her surprise, in something like the ordinary manner of a friend. The narrative asserts that he is a figure of unutterable holiness, only pausing to speak to Mary before he ascends into heaven, yet it is his very ordinariness that disguises him from her. Splendor is very well for youths and angels, but when Jesus takes up again for a little while the life he had wept to leave, it is the life of a plain man.”1 A little surprise. Just for her. In the most ordinary of sights.
I became a Catholic, in part I guess, because I can’t shake the pagan out of me. The anamnesis of the Body and the Blood, the Heavenly Mass joining the apocalyptic angel chorus, the veneration of the Saints - the corporeal, gritty, even gruesome aspects of catholicism seem right for a religion of both this world (and the next). So when folks might chirp about the pagan continuity and symbols baked into Christian Holy Days, I don’t bristle. Surely God can be found in Yule trees and winter solstices, Fertility’s rabbits and eggs — ordinary, earthly things.
After a few years in Reformed spaces, post-Enlightenment protestant sentiments began to chafe some of my more worldly (and otherworldly) lusts for worship. I like talking to the dead; I want incense to cling to my clothes after church; I need to kneel before a crucifix, not a barren cross.
It is Eastertide. I am trying to write to you about the resurrection.
But I cannot stop thinking of death and her sting.
Most Americans prefer their religion sanitized. They would rather adorn themselves with the instrument of God’s death — an empty, glittering, geometric cross, instead of our sacred Head, now wounded — God himself, battered, bruised, bleeding, thirsty, dying. How telling.
Last week was Holy Week. On Good Friday millions of Americans reflected on Christ’s journey to the Cross. God fell once, twice, three times during His deathward climb to Golgotha. On Easter Sunday, I watched a video of a young boy in Gaza. He had repurposed a wheelchair into a cart to carry gallons of water to his family. Exhausted, he fell under the weight of the water haul. He picked himself up, then curled onto a concrete ledge, and sobbed. He looks just like my God.
Those who have ears to hear, let them hear; eyes to see, let them see.
‘Were you there when they crucified my Lord?’ The only African-American song in the Catholic Liturgy of the Hours asks us to bear witness to the death of God. The powers of this world ask us to turn away, attend to your chores, conduct your commerce, center yourself. The heralds of the coming kingdom beg you: turn towards suffering.
Holy Week asks us to reflect on Jesus’ abandonment. Judas betrays Him, Peter denies him, even the the Father forsakes Him. And yet, Jesus is not alone. The women attend Him until the end. His mother and John remain at His feet. Simon of Cyrene puts his own shoulder to the cross.
Somewhere, (Mariame Kaba, maybe?) I read an organizer talking about the frustration of putting on events that only the same core group of people kept coming out to. Every protest, every call to action: the same dozen or so folks. Another leader in this community lamented, “no one ever shows up.” The organizer offered another perspective: even though it is always the same folks, some people do show up and that small few do matter. ‘Don’t erase yourself from history.’2
Jesus was abandoned by many, but He was not alone. Those who remained, they mattered. Those who remained would be the first to encounter the risen Christ. Those who were there when they crucified my Lord were the first witnesses of His glory.
The powers of the world, from Joe Biden to the United Nations have abandoned Gaza, but in our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians. Gaza is not alone. The Prophet Malachi tenderly describes the joy of skipping calves, and tells us why they are so happy: and you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet.
I don’t know Arabic, but I used to know a little Koine Greek. The word the early followers of The Way used to describe their eye-witness to the Life, Death, and Resurrection of God was μάρτυς. In English: martyr.
In 6 months, there have been more than 30,000 martyrs in Gaza. My faith professes I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.
My God, I shall keep asking You for this.
Consider the olive tree. Slow-growing. You’ll see small, sporadic fruit as soon as three years into their life, but it will take nearly a lifetime to experience a stable harvest. Every olive tree planted is planted for someone else.
Right now, we are reaping the revelatory harvest of seeds planted for us.
Right now, we are planting the liberatory seeds for someone else’s harvest.
The world to come.
O, sometimes it makes me tremble.
Marilynne Robinson, “Psalm Eight,” from The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought.
I wish I could remember where I read this, but my mind is fuzzy these days and I still have a few books in boxes from the move to PA. If you know the origin of this exchange, please let me know.