Seasonal Resources Eastertide
Easter Message 2010 – “The Garden, the Gate”
This is the Gate of the LORD -- the Righteous shall enter through it (Ps 118:20) There are some tools in your workshop that you use more than others, whatever your craft may be. If you’re a carpenter, your whole set of bits, blades and bars may stay nice and shiny, while that one twisted screwdriver always seems to find its way into your hand, into your work. Twenty other drivers could never take the place of that one trusty tool, that faithful friend that makes almost any job finally fall into your hand. Pastors have tools, too, though our workshops are more often the realm of books and keyboards, brass and linen, bread and wine. There’s a book on my shelf which so often finds its way into my coat pocket, as I travel to house blessing, bedside conversation, bridal celebration, or final rest. The Occasional Services Book it’s called, not because it’s used so seldom, but because it is a tool for the pivotal occasions of life, those times when the Word of God is either invited to speak or has to push its way in. And it’s a special page in that book I’d like to reflect on for a moment, a rain-soaked, snowbitten, wrinkled page, and that page’s most crucial phrase: This is the Gate of the LORD -- The Righteous may enter through it. Of course, the page is from the Burial service, the reason for its sad condition. I’ve thumbed it open in garden cemeteries from coast to coast, from blazing sun to sheeting rain, in snow, sleet and icy cold. I’ve seen it baked in heat of summer, or blown back and forth in a high wind. I’ve stood with it on hill and in valley. It’s sometimes been surrounded with mourners, other times mostly alone. Sometimes it’s just it and me. In the recent past I’ve used it more than usual. Read its words over the remains of some of our church’s dearest friends, and strangers who have come into our gates looking for help, for a word of comfort, to do right by their beloved. I’ve heard myself say, “Chuck, Dorothy, John, Helen,” as I’ve said so many other names of so many other members and friends over the 20 years my book and I have joined in this sad yet necessary work. And just this past week we add still more names to our remembrance: Robert Huber. The swift Lenten hand of Death swings and strikes, and again off to the Garden we go. Memorial Park, Green Hills, Forest Lawn – all the alternative nomenclature for this singular kind of garden – the grave. The Gate, padlocked and seemingly irreversible. --------------------------- The Garden Gate. In John’s Gospel the garden figures as a central player in the resurrection story. Mary Magdalene comes to the garden alone, to find a stone rolled back and a Jesus seemingly spirited away – by enemies or friends she does not know. Peter and the unnamed beloved disciple, incredulous at her report, hot-foot it down to the garden to see for themselves, crouching and peering into the darkness of the crypt to see folded graveclothes but no occupant. Mary follows them, peering in to witness the angelic proclamation that “He is not here. Why look for the living among the dead?” She wheels around to see the figure of a cemetery caretaker through her veil of tears. “Where is he?” she pleads. Like a confused and grieving family member at an overcrowded ER, she begs for information, for directions, for a clue as to where her beloved might be found. “Tell me where he’s been moved, and I’ll take care of his remains.” “Mary.” One word, her name called out as it had been so many times before. “Mary, hear; Mary, remember; Mary, believe.” And all she can say in response is "Rabbouni," “dear Teacher.” HE LIVES! And this faithful women, who enters the Paschal Mystery to perform ritual service to a dead Rabbi becomes the first Witness to a world utterly changed by the miracle of Easter. HE LIVES, and now I can live anew! ----------------------------- This is the Lord’s Garden Gate... ...the Righteous may enter. Scholars tell us that this psalm was originally a song of thanksgiving to God for the King’s military victory. “This is the Day the Lord has made” and “Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the LORD” – these phrases spring from this psalm of triumph. On Palm Sunday we heard those very words applied to Jesus in his triumphal, monarchial entry into And again, at the Easter Vigil, these words mark a turning point. The liturgist, having led a procession of the baptized around the outside of the church, pounds on the door and demands entry. “Open for me the gates of righteousness, that I may go in and offer thanks to the LORD!” And a thrice-said reply floats back from within the door, “This is the Gate of the LORD -- the Righteous shall enter through it!” The Garden Gate. Through which only the Righteous may enter. We Easter people confess a Gospel truth as deep as eternity, and as embracing as any human experience can be. We scream it into the gaping maw of nothingness called Future, and dare the darkness to prove us wrong. We stand in the midst of the sad wreckage called mortality, regret and decay, and live on in the hope of the One who rolled the stone, who burst the three day prison, who crashed the Gate called Death, bearing its sting and assailing its claims over us and all flesh. The Gate. Stony and still. Earthen and deep. Watery way, shrouded in shadow and flecked with light. A fearful place, because to step toward it means admitting that deepest Truth which the world prefers to paper over with goods and services, ways and means, this and that. That the soul which sins must die, that the dead must needs rise, that the God of life became Lord of Death, and Way for the Righteous. Not Gatekeeper, but Gatecrasher, opening for the blessed dead the portal to Always. My prayer for you and for me this Easter Season is that we will hear the angelic proclamation a bit differently this year -- less expected, less formulaic, and more what it truly is: a clarion call from the mouth of the Eternal One: This is the Gate, the the This is the Day, the Way, the Lord whose name is Way, has made! Enter, O Righteous, into the life of the Righteous Lamb So freely granted, so surely won. Enter, and live -- forever! Blessed Eastertide, Holy Pascha. May this sacred Week of Weeks grasp us and hold us, arrest us and release us, bring us to our knees and to our feet, to find our footing and out voice for our mission in the world. For, as the writer to the Hebrews reminds us, Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us Therefore let us keep the feast with the unleavened bread Of sincerity and truth.
Other Web Resources for the Easter/Pascha Season:
|