A song for the Sabbath....... Psalm 150, John 20:19-31.
Since the last Easter Sunday, I have called us an Easter people, an Easter community - we really have been invited to be an Easter blessing to one another; we have learned the powerful Easter mystery which will not let us remain the same. It is that, as Fran said in her Easter sermon “We cannot understand Easter’s joy without beginning with the grief.” She continued on, saying, “We need to put ourselves in the Easter Saturday (Holy Saturday) depths of sorrow, and watch each character (which can also mean each of us in our own congregation, as well) slowly realize the truth. Then, and only then, from the roots of grief, can they see the absolute triumph of Easter.”
We have gone through the unforgettable, spirit-filled and love-sustaining, amazing and beautiful, terrifying and trembling, deeply emotional Holy Week. It was indeed a Holy Week for us. Our Holy Week started with the Palm/Passion Sunday. We were invited to ponder upon the meanings which are derived from the coexistence and dissonance of the joyous palm waving and the passion. Our suffering and sorrow were bracketed by hosannas and alleluias for the day, or we experienced it as hosannas and hallelujahs bracketed by moments of pain and grief. Then we had Maundy Thursday night which we kept as a prayer vigil for Christ’s passion and our own, holding Fran in our hearts and praying hands as she lived the fullness of her life to the end. On Good Friday, we stripped the altar at the end of the service, like taking Christ down from the cross and undressing Him for his burial. We turned off all the electric lights and blew out the candles, and departed in deep silence.
In most Holy Weeks, we tend to forget about Holy Saturday and spend little time wondering what Jesus’ first disciples did, how they felt, what they talked about, on the morning following the first Good Friday when they buried Jesus. I particularly wonder about the women disciples. I imagine they must have gathered together on the Holy Saturday, as the three of the four Gospels witness that they went to the tomb together as soon as Easter Sunday’s dawn broke, bringing loads of spices and ointment jars. Fran was right when she said in her Easter sermon, “The Holy Saturday marked 24 hours of pure grief and shock. In Jesus’ time, on the Sabbath day no work was permitted, so the women disciples could do nothing to care for Jesus’ body but wait through the day. All the disciples probably sat trying to make sense of what had just happened.”
On the last Holy Saturday, March 30, four women of our congregation gathered at the church early in the morning. Their hearts were heavily, heavily saddened. Their sorrow was acute. Fran had died at 6 AM on that day – on Holy Saturday, the Sabbath day. The thing which amazes me still is these women’s unwavering faith. Even while they were deeply affected by acute sorrow and grief, they knew exactly what to do. They did not lose focus. They were centered. They were stronger in their brokenness. They did not just stand still or be numbed. Bless their hands! Bless their feet! Their feet were in motion. Their hands were busy. They finished changing the decoration of our blessed sanctuary to the Easter one. One of them made phone calls to the homes of almost every member – more than 70 calls – . The other went to Fran’s home, and washed her body.
Fran died, on Holy Saturday, you know. The Sabbath day. Is it just a coincidence? We can’t control the day. Our church’s women and men were just like the first disciples. They had to wait and did wait through the day like the first disciples of 2000 years ago, then were greeted by the Easter morning’s clean, and clear, cloudless blue sky which was beaming the sunshine to the earth.
As I talked to the children this morning, not only last Sunday was Easter; this day is also Easter. To the secular world, Easter may mean a long holiday weekend, or the Happy Bunny Day. To some of us Easter may have meant the most joyful day of the Christian year. Joyful occasion. Happy occasion. It’s confusing to be invited to experience the exultant joy of Christ’s resurrection, at the very same time we are deeply steeped in grief.
Kenneth Carter says this week, the Second Sunday of Easter, is called, “Low Sunday.” There is in the life of a church a movement and momentum toward Easter Sunday, and then inevitably a scattering, a rest after the intensity.
We may hope to have a little Sabbath this week, to rest, though momentarily, from the last Holy week’s intense and acute journey. We would definitely like to have a little break, before we have Fran’s funeral next Saturday. But today’s Gospel presses us to wrestle with the implication of belief, unbelief and doubt. This Second Easter Sunday’s Gospel wants to challenge us to go more deeply into the meaning of resurrection faith. It throws to us a question – how to open to the Resurrected Christ’s greeting, the great invitation to the deep Easter Peace. Jesus greeted his first disciples, “Peace Be With You!”
If Easter Sunday is a day to proclaim our faith in bold and broad strokes – (this is what Fran offered for us, in her Easter sermon) Low Sunday, which is today, allows us time and space to explore the nuances of such a faith.
It’s really interesting to find a connection between praise and prayer. … And Psalm. I think these days I love to gather and line up all the spiritual words starting with ‘p.’ Palm, passion, praise, prayer, Psalm. Bless ‘p’! And we shouldn’t forget those following two words also starting with p which I speak most, every day at my home – ‘peace!’ as my first son’s name is Peace, and ‘pee-pee?’ to my younger son, who is currently being potty-trained. Ah, well, we are human.
I have asked how we invite and welcome the deep Easter peace. And my answer is praise. Remember that we uttered the word ‘praise’ 21 times this morning when we were reading and singing the Psalm. “Praise to the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary! Let everything that breathes praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!”
The Psalmist says praise is the chief end of everything that has breath. Praise can be a prayer which emanates from your heart. The Psalmist says praise is like a breath we breathe in and out every minute, every second. You might have heard at least one time that praise is an imperative. It means that we don’t praise just because or only when we are really happy, worrying about nothing, free of grief.
The real triumph of the Easter faith, which Fran sustained until the end of her life on this earth, is that even when we are stuck in a place of despair, fear, terror, sorrow, we can praise God. Of course, we may not do it immediately, right there, right at the center of the deeply afflicted heart and the situation, (we are human, after all). But as Fran said “like a West-Coast spring unfolds very, very slowly,” every being takes their time, everything has its season to grow into the fullness of itself – completion - like a butterfly transforms into its full and whole beauty, having gone through all the painful transfiguration journey from egg to caterpillar to constraint in a cocoon, then to become finally a complicatedly patterned winged, thin paper-like beauty - , it takes time for us to get there, to the Easter joy, … to make us able to sing again and hum a hymn for the Sabbath, a hymn for salvation, a hymn of true joy, a hymn for praise - but only after following the painful steps.
And quite often, a spiritually strong person can praise God even when he or she is seriously impacted by the evils of the world, by the terror and the injustice of the world, in the midst of great suffering and affliction, because they know, they sing that God is good, God is great, God is the creator of the sheer miracle of creation, even though all we can see, all that surrounds us right now in this moment may be evil doers and injustices. The Psalmist takes in the daily round of morning and night, the fabulous horn of the wild ox, the luxuriance of palm trees and cedars. How about a sheer miracle of creation – a butterfly’s journey which is shown on our new Easter banner, dedicated to Fran last Sunday?
Looking at the magnificent work of God’s hands can give us a depth of comfort and invite us to a deeper peace: the deep peace of the calm earth, whether it is a butterfly fallen on the floor of your living room, whether it is the bright light-green of the moss jumping out in the mist, whether it is the one day you sit crying, under the cherry tree in your yard in the warm Spring breeze, or whether it is when we look up to the bright, brilliant blue sky of the last Easter Sunday which blessed our grieving hearts, while we were bidding farewell to Fran, these things can comfort us and gently persuade us to praise. Praise. Praise! On piano and harp,with tambourine and dance, with strings and pipe, with a pipe organ and bagpipes, with acoustic guitar or electric, with a bass drum or a djembe, with the First Nation’s language, with Korean, Chinese, bring them to sing. Bring them to praise: to praise that God is good, that God’s work is magnificent, and that “Alleluia! Jesus is Risen! Life will triumph over death!.”
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