Resurrection Makes You Better

Time has bothered me lately. I can't seem to put things in order. I try to remember the last seven years and when the memories come to me, I can get the year when something happened, but not the month; I get the month but not the year; sometimes neither the month nor the year. I just have the event. The sequence is all a blur. Did this happen first or last, was this near to when that happened?

              A blur.  I was bothered.

              I know what it is.  The last seven years had a fair amount of trauma and trauma scrambles time, shakes off the fetters, the strings we use to hold all things together, trauma cuts the cords. Our memories become an anchorless boat caught in a storm, a river in flood carrying things along with no business being carried along.

              This bothered me so much I decided to make a timeline of my own life since 2018.  Started emailing my kids.  When did you move to Colorado; when did you move to New Orleans; when was Elias born; when was Nadia born?  Suddenly the timeline took form, the course of events became a chronology.  There was birth and death; graduation, ordination, enlistment.  Relationships began; relationships ended.  There were marriages.  Pups lost and a pup found.

              As will happened with such an organizing exercise, memories intruded, images came uninvited.  Some were delightful; others not.  It was almost like my consciousness said, “hey, this was your idea pal. You opened the door.”  Some of these folks felt no need to knock.

              But the one moment, the most persistent memory rising above the crowded room was Jerusalem in March of 2020.  And what I remember most was jogging. 

              At the end of each day of touring we would return to the hotel in west Jerusalem.  We were about a mile from the old city.  After touring, in the hour before dinner, I put on my jogging clothes, headed out. Jogged from the hotel to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and back again. 

              There is something you should know about my jogging.  It's not fast.  My goal in jogging is to not fall.  Given my lack of balance and distractibility, gravity has found me, and it really hurts.  So when I jog it's not fast. 

              Funny aside, people cheer me when I jog.  It's not uncommon as I am jogging for me to hear, "you keep going."  Or, "way to go."  Sometimes people will say, "good on you; don't give up."  At first I thought this was Jersey being Jersey, a bit of a dig.  When I realized people in other states and cities and countries did the same, I no longer took offence. 

              The memory pressing most was jogging in West Jerusalem on the sabbath in March of 2020.  As you might imagine such athletic activity is frowned upon in the Hasidic neighborhoods on the sabbath.  As I jogged on the sabbath, bearded heads with long tassels and felt hats turned.  I could see them begin to shout, to chastise my obvious infraction.  But I remember how they stopped short, they seemed to ponder me for a moment and think, "mehhhh, he's not really going fast enough.  Let that one go."

              Yet, what really sticks with me was how each time I reached the Holy Sepulchre in the old city it was empty.  Just a few pilgrims.  The Holy Sepulchre is not supposed to be empty.

              The Holy Sepulchre is the most sacred spot, site, place, church in all Christian history, tradition.  In one church is the site of the crucifixion, the preparation stone, and the sepulchre, tomb of Jesus.  Constantine buried his mother Helena here.  Big. 

              The sepulchre, the tomb, the empty tomb as the angels proclaim, is the holy of holies.  It's a small stone hut really, small crypt in a large rotunda.  Usually the small stone crypt is swamped, encircled by pilgrim upon pilgrim, pushing and pressed together waiting for their thirty seconds in the tiny, candle lit stone slab replete with icons.  The swirl of pilgrims is like Pentecost without a translator.  Russian, German, Spanish, Chinese, Taiwanese, even French and Italian. 

              In March of 2020 having escaped the judgment of the Hasidic in my jogging style, I walked the Holy Sepulchre with a few confused pilgrims.  What in the world is happening? It's empty. When our group visited the Holy Sepulchre, someone said, "this is not bad.  You made it sound so crazy."  "Yeah," I muttered, "this is a new crazy."

              As memories will do, one invited the next, and this one invited another.  From the empty church I remember walking the empty halls of Newark Airport and feeling the eerie specter of what it meant for the world to shut down. And then standing in an empty sanctuary on Easter, streaming an Easter service on the internet trying to imagine all the people watching from home, imagining them as I stared at empty pews. 

              For safety's sake the memory of Easter in 2020 has been stored away, kept on a high shelf, in a backroom, with no tag, no title.  Easter is supposed to be the day when you rejoice; Easter is the day when we call each other to believe: courage has not only prevailed but triumphed; Jesus has conquered death. Hallelujah.  He is risen.  Risen indeed.

              Easter 2020 didn't feel triumphant; seemed hollow to promise conquering of death as a pandemic exploded.

              The Gospel of Luke has a unique Easter message.  Matthew, Mark, and John: Easter is a promise, a bidding: go home; go to Galilee; you'll find him in Galilee.  Go home.  Softly and Tenderly is a great Easter hymn as verse after verse finds the chorus, "come home; you who are weary come home."  Matthew Mark and John all find Jesus at home in Galilee. 

              John has the most beautiful homecoming, fishermen fishing, a lakeshore breakfast, and a reconciliation worthy of all brokenness, if you love me, feed my sheep.  Matthew has a mountain, not too subtle nod to the Sermon on the Mount.  And Mark, Mark's easter is a dare.  If you believe, go home.  If you believe, go home.  Luke's Easter is unique because there is no home to go to.  No bidding to go to Galilee.  Just a memory.  Remember what he said when he was in Galilee.  Peter goes home, but home where?  Home from where he last laid his head?  Luke feels homeless. More band on the run than banding together.

              In Matthew Mark and John the resurrection has an element of restoration.  This is important.  When things fall apart, and things do fall apart, you may not believe it will happen soon, but you need to feel hope, trust things will come back.  The world falls apart, our life can be broken, but we will heal; we will be restored.  This is the great task of being a parent.  Helping the teenager who has felt the weight of life no longer being sure, life no longer being what comes next, helping them see, life won't always feel this heavy, life will be unencumbered again, life will be easy again.  Just not today.

              Luke, Luke doesn't deny this hope.  The Easter of Luke is not a pessimism or realpolitik.  His message, though, is without clear restoration.  Luke offers a resurrection as moving beyond, going ahead, as Dylan said, "don't look back."

              When I think back on the last seven years, when I finished the chronology, there were parts of life lost and then restored.  Fears realized, but then hope prevailing.  It wasn't as if the chronology was a balance sheet.  I didn't feel like I was soulfully or spiritually in the black or in the red.  It was though the first time I heard Luke's Easter account and thought, Okay.

              It has taken decades for me to hear Luke's Easter account.  I must admit I was not a fan.  It seemed like an unnecessary nod to the apostle Paul. Luke's Gospel is intertwined with Paul and his wandering, his journeys, his shipwreck, homelessness.  In Luke Jesus is always walking.  He doesn't sit down.  Doesn't find a place to be.  I love Jesus.  But I really love Jesus when he sits down.  In Luke Jesus is always on the run, on the way, heading out. I like walking . . .  a lot.  But I also want a place to sit, be at home.  Luke says, if you want to follow Jesus, no home for you.

              You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and the ends of earth.  The resurrected Jesus says this in Jerusalem in the Book of Acts.  Luke never speaks of Jesus going home after the Easter resurrection.  No Galilee.  Easter without home coming.  No Softly and Tenderly.  No, O Sinner come home.  Luke says, “hey, keep going.”

              Luke's Easter takes more courage than I can muster.  I need the restoration, the ones I've lost need to be found, the wounds need to be healed, the bitter cup cast aside for the cup of joy.

              Remember what he said when he was in Galilee?  I do.  And I want to hear him again in Galilee.  I want to go home. 

              Again, time has bothered me lately.  It's all jumbled up and it's more than a five-letter-word.  I am not looking to make sense of time.  Stopped trying to make sense of this a long time ago.  No. I just need to find the sequence, chronology of a world turned upside down.  I just need to know if it was June or July, '21 or '22.  Didn't seem like a big ask.  And then, stage left, enters Luke.  Let the resurrection be enough, he says.    Restoration, it will come.  But for now, live into the world born anew.  Don't try to find it again.

              Let Easter be life, your life, the life of those you love and those you don't; let Easter be lived ahead.  In this bidding I heard something I never imagined.  What if restoration is not something made again; what if restoration is something made anew? What if life can't return, but it can be found again?

              It turns out, this is why I jog.  In May I will jog again in Metuchen.  People will shout from cars.  "Keep going." People will shout across Roosevelt Park at me.  "Don't give up." Commuters will look with pride upon me as they walk faster than I jog to make the 8:14 train to the city. God has crafted me as a tool to inspire many.  Jogging will commence in May. 

              Today, today I am almost ready to trust the Gospel of Luke.  Almost ready.  His Gospel is so hard.  Matthew makes me ponder; Mark makes me ready to act; John makes me ready to retreat to a cabin in the woods and listen to the wind.  But Luke?  Luke's Easter account, his good news, is so daunting, so brave, so brave I balk.  Life is forward, he says; restoration is not behind you, it is up ahead, a new life, a new way, a new world. 

              I am almost there.  And then there is a voice saying, maybe just go home.  Back to Galilee.  Just for a time.   

              I love Galilee.  It is a happy place for me.  Feels like California in the spring when the Santa Ana winds wash the land clean of smog and worry and wrongdoing.  I remember my place in the hills of the San Miguel.  I remember sunsets, canyons, innocence kept and lost.

              You may have a Galilee as well.  A place where deep memories of joy are collected, wait in repose.  Matthew, Mark and John bid you, come home, sit for a while in memory restored.  Luke says, get up.  It's time the world was born anew.  Time for me and for you to keep going.  Easter morning is ahead. Get up.  Restoration is not something made again, but life made new.  Amen.