Liturgies for Lent: The Tomb

"Spiritual wisdom has it that light is the truth, but there are many kinds of beauty in darkness, like the silver-golden glitter in the internal dark when we close our eyes, and at twilight, and at dawn,"
-Anne Lamott

Image by Whitney Leigh Carlson. You can find her work here: Holy Week Art cards for sale here.

Scripture for reflection

"Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2 So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!"

"Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”

“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.”  At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”

Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).

Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her."
-John 20:1-2, 11-18

"So justice is far from us,
    and righteousness does not reach us.
We look for light, but all is darkness;
    for brightness, but we walk in deep shadows."
-Isaiah 59: 9

"For now we see as through a mirror, in darkness, but then we shall see face to face; now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I also am known."
-1 Corinthians 13:12

Meditation: The Tomb

Of all the days in Holy Week, I have always been drawn to Holy Saturday.  A day to hold silence, and join with the disciples, the community of God who thought: This was it.  To revel in unknowing.  To walk with Mary, while it was still dark.

The first time I lost a child in my career was not even a full year into social work practice. I received an email from my supervisor late in the day on a Friday, just as I was about to close my laptop.  The family's name on the subject line.  The message beneath: Call me first thing Monday morning.  She knew I was on my way out of town, and did not answer when I called. She texted: This can wait.  Enjoy your weekend away.  Something was amiss but I could not put a pulse on it, until I opened up my personal email while we were on the road.  My church, heavily involved in the community sent a news alert out with the child's name and photo.  And this is how I came to find out that a 5-year old I loved was hit by a car while walking to his bus stop.  I started wailing.

I grew up in a faith tradition that was not okay with questioning God.  To be angry was downright unheard of.  The "If God brings you to it, he'll bring you through it" sort of thinking, the "God won't give you more than you can handle' theology.  When I wrestled intensely with theodicy, the problem of evil, in college, these safe platitudes crumbled to pieces.

In a season of tremendous traumatic loss, a college professor sat across from me and said, "Taylor, you get to be mad at God."  This, coming from a thirty-something year old man who had just been handed a Stage 4 cancer diagnosis, and told he had two years left, if that.  He went on, "When I am crying and angry, fists shaking, swearing at God, asking why I won't be able to raise my own children, when I am most honestly myself, that is when I am most fully loved, most deeply held.  God can handle this stuff."  

So this is what I did that night.  I was angry, and devastated and I told God so.  Parents are not supposed to lose their children.  This is not the order of things on earth.  In the days after, I walked into a funeral, the community ablaze in bright orange, this little one's favorite, the color of rising sun.  And I held space and breathed deep as this Mama sang her heart out, tears pouring down her face, "His eye is on the sparrow, and he watches over me."  Her two-year old dancing contentedly, at her side.

Something unlocked inside my soul, glimmers of resurrection perhaps, this is what hope feels like, I thought.  Against all the odds, an act of creation serves as a reminder: This is not all there is.  God is with. 

But still I'm left with this question, what is resurrection for the parent leaning over their child's casket?  Where is resurrection for the children burying their young father?  What does it mean to practice resurrection, even in darkness?  Even inside the wound?  Even when those of Jesus are still visible?

While it is still dark, we believe that death is not final, not all there is.

While it is still dark, we light one candle, a tiny flickering, a little sparkling light of holy defiance.

While it is still dark, we name our truths, or like Hagar, in exiled despair, name God.  We trust that we are seen in suffering.

While it is still dark, we discover that we are not alone in the wilderness.

While it is still dark, we see with new eyes what the light could never reveal on its own.

While it is still dark, we take waste, make soil, plant gardens in protest; there is still goodness, even unto death.

While it is still dark, we look up at the stars, and remember.

We bless the dark, this hard and hallowed teacher, we thank her.  Resurrection resides within her, like a womb, waiting to be born.

Resurrection practice

I'm struck by this image of the tomb being set within a garden.  That Mary mistook Jesus for the gardener.  How do we practice resurrection, when the way of this world too often bends toward injustice, decay, death?  "We are Easter people living in a good Friday world," as Barbara Johnson is credited saying.  What helps your heart feel fully alive again when you become hopeless, when you begin thinking this is all there is?

Some ideas: Plant perennials in the ground and watch them stubbornly pop up each spring.  Sing, dance, sway; after all, resurrection is bodily.  Sit by the water at dusk, and trust: Be still my soul, the Lord is on Thy side.  Get outside at first light, and feel the wind against your face, a fresh beginning.  Touch the budding trees and remember that they are older and wiser than we; their rootedness keeps us tethered to ourselves and to each other.  Their root systems nourish even those who are different than them.  Take a screen break, and gaze up at the sky, arms open wide, and cherish how tiny you are in the vastness.  Speak the good news to yourselves and your neighbors: a new world is coming. Hallelujah.

Prayer of petition

O Christ, daybreak of darkness
  Transform our war zones into vineyards
  Our remnants of death, into resurrection,
May these wilted petals stamped into earth 
  birth seedlings deep in the dark
  where the Spirit broods.