Dancing in the Tomb
By
Sally Harris
(Isaiah 65: 17-19, 24-25; John 20:1-18)
Surprising God like Mary,
we come to the tomb expecting
death, despair and
darkness.
May the light of Your new
day surprise us, like it did Mary.
God turn our weeping into
dancing. Amen
yesterday
morning came:
I put the leash
on Sadness
and took him
for a walk in the rain;
I turned the kettle on
and watched my hopes
steam away;
I stirred my life
and gorged on its
bitterness. [T. Shuman]
Overwhelmed
by sadness…
I
just wanted to sit in the darkness of my bedroom and weep…
Weep at the loss of one so kind…
so strong…
so bold…
so loving….
so needed in a world full of …
death and the predictable…
the cookie cutter versions of humanity
with thin,
tight smiles,
veiled eyes and carefully constructed
scripts that betray
a learned friendliness,
Ahh..hh..
death of life:
the
superficiality;
the duplicity;
the disparity….
humanity’s
inhumanity
Somehow Jesus
brought light into all this darkness…
somehow he
breathed life into dead traditions
connecting…
reconnecting…
healing…
bringing
wholeness
offering a
balance,
a clarity,
an honesty
Our world needed
someone like Jesus….
Doesn’t yours?
You know…
one fully alive
….
living
authentically,
walking humbly
with their God
saying what they
mean and meaning what they say….
Alas… perhaps
the mold was thrown away when this One died….
And
now I sit in darkness….
Looking
out the window…
at
a still dark Jerusalem….
I
note the scattered stars in the sky,
the
fires that dot the hills betraying the shepherds’ whereabouts,
and
vaguely I hear or maybe I feel the cool breeze rustling the trees…
and
indeed there remain a few sporadic orders shouted from a nearby Roman
garrison….
Nothing
of course like the chaos of the other day…
the
shouts and cries of crucify….
I
turn away, hoping to stop those hideous sounds and sights from entering into
the quiet tomb
I
have created for myself.
Quietly
in the mist arising from the cooling earth I recount my losses…
not
only of the person but now of all the relationships this person helped define…
the
community in the throes of treachery and rejection
the
rift that separates some of us from others…
those
we once trusted and believed in…
their
faithful acts now tainted by betrayal and denial.
My
heart is not strong enough for this;
I
plead to an…
absent
God…
a
God that forsook the one bright star of redemption
all
the other rifts of community,
of
friendship,
of
religious authority
that
sought to destroy such beauty
are
mere gashes compared to the gaping wound…
the
abyss created by this unknown,
unrecognizable,
silent,
non-existent
God
The sun will soon rise,
and I must pull myself out of this mourning malaise…
rising
to meet a sad new day where all hope has been drained out
and
I am left with only a vague sense of what to do now….
I
know I must be faithful to a promise I have made….
I
must see this through to the end…
I
will myself to walk to the shrine of death…
violence
and death…
the
gods we worship
the
gods that we most offer to one another…
threaten
each other with….
I
will annihilate you with my power,
my
sword,
my
words,
withholding
life
And
oh for shame,
the
one who saw such action clearly -
who
spoke against the sword;
claiming
the power of love,
of
creating love…
was
outdone by the power of hate and fear…
violence and death rule the world…
that is my Sabbath lesson….
numbed by the learning of it.
Oh…
perhaps my senses are not as numb as my spirit for suddenly I catch a whiff of
a fragrance
of
lavender…
perhaps
still lingering on my garments from another anointing.
Oh…perhaps
my mind is more greatly disturbed than I know…
am
I seeing things….
Are daffodils spreading their petals?
Are the trees fully clothed in blossoms?
Is the stone missing?
The
stone…
the
stone IS missing!
The
body IS missing….
I
must tell the others…
(choir sings gently - The Stone’s been rolled
away…)
Peter
and the beloved have been here and gone…
I
stayed by the tomb still caught in my tomb…
full
of grief…
weeping,
death
defining me…
not
life…
My
eyes were blurred with the pouring out of them…
I
did not believe what I saw –
I
did not believe what I was told –
no
one could convince me he was alive…
I
wanted to anoint his body….
Where
is his body?
where?
I
did not recognize him…
Why
did I not know him?
I
loved him,
anointed
him,
followed
him,
I
knew his movements,
his
voice….
Yes
I recognized his voice!
Love
called my name and the fear was vanquished…
oh
not the fear of death…
we
humans are accustomed to that…
we
live in the shadow of that…
the
safety of the stone…
the
trustworthiness of the tomb..
we
give death power and it renders us immobile….
My
real fear was of the rising…
of
the fearful light of Easter.
The
fear of living.
Fear
of life in a different world,
God’s
world,
where
even stones are moved.
(choir sings lively - The Stone’s been
rolled away…)
where angels
laugh as death
is kicked out of the
tomb;
and Jesus does cartwheels
through the graveyard,
splashing through
the puddles of our
tears
and into our hearts. [T. Shuman]
(Comments to
Sally at docks@SHAW.CA)
Trinity United
Church
1805 Larch St.
Vancouver,
British
Columbia, Canada
V6K 3N9
http://www.trinityunitedchurch.ca