4/4
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| Easter |
4/2
Good Friday. In keeping with the darkest day of the Christian year, the temperature drops down below 30 degrees. I go to the barber shop. My Easter shave. Which I didn’t do last year because the lockdown didn’t feel like Easter. So it’s been a year and a week since I’ve been fully shaved.
My barber is still hurting. Many of his customers have never come back, still gone from the Upper East Side. I lie back and enjoy the shave. Tell him it’s one of the three best things a man can experience. He laughs.
Outside again, my face feels especially cold. When I see myself in the mirror, I’m not sure how I feel. This will take some getting used to.
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| 125th Street |
I make the trip to buy everything I will need for Easter dinner I will cook for my family. On 125th Street, they are selling full face sunglass face shield, the latest covid accessory.
Forced back inside for Friday afternoon drinks.
4/3
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| Back at the Stadium |
Holy Saturday. Warms up a little in the sun. Meet my son on the subway platform to go to Yankee Stadium. It will be your fist visit there since September 2019, 19 months ago. Scalpers are asking extra tickets and it’s like dude, it’s all digital…another industry victim to Covid. To get in, you must show an ID, proof of vaccination or negative test, digital ticket and temperature check. Our club is pretty empty. No one behind the bar and no draft beer. (I’ve never figured that one out yet…). The Stadium is at 20 percent capacity and ticket prices doubled to compensate. Every other row is roped off and 4 seats between every pod. Weird but comfortable. We sit in the bleachers to catch the sun. The only semi crowded section is the right field bleachers where the “Creatures” are out in force again. Good to hear them do the “roll call” of the lineup at the beginning of the game. And...the Yankees win…..
A long night of cooking and cleaning, getting my dinner ready. I even dye some eggs with onion skins, the old school way. It feels good to be hosting my family.
4/4
Easter. And we are still virtual for church. My West Park friends were forbidden to have an Easter lunch at the church. That saddens me. I meet my friends from Beverley in Brooklyn via conference call yet again. We had hoped…and yet…
I’ve only got an hour after church to get ready for my family. We connect with my family in Berlin where something like chaos strangely continues to reign. We are all feeling worn out. We hear of then Croatian traditions of making a nest for the Easter bunny who will leave toys for the children. My grandson will leave children’s under wear, socks and other thoughtful items for the Bunny. (Which must the make their way to another family…) My grandson will rise early and make an Easter breakfast of hard boiled eggs and chocolate for his sister.
My mother will be allowed out of her assisted care facility and to my sister’s for an outdoor oj the porch socially distanced core family Easter dinner. Rules followed, she will not need to quarantine on return. Nevertheless, compared to last year….it's better...
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| The Easter table... |
Yes I’m actually with my family sharing food. Not alone on ZOOM. That is good. But we are not resurrected. We’ve taken one step out of the tombs and are awkwardly stepping out, blinking our eyes in the sun as we come. It is Easter, 2021.
My sermon:
Alleluia! Christ is Risen! Christ is risen indeed! Happy Easter!
I think this is the first time since I have retired that I have been able to begin and end a Lenten journey with the same community. On March 7th, we began Lent together and today that journey comes to an end. If you are like me, there were certain Lenten intentions that went the way of many New Year’s resolutions. But perhaps something came out of your Lenten experience, something that can be celebrated this morning.
Today we come to our celebration fo Easter with a sense of a new incomplete and still uncertain future. We need no more proof of this than that we are still gathered here on phone. A year ago the man who was then our President said he expected “full churches on Easter.” Well, we know how that turned out.
We know of death, Over half a million of us, including friends and loved ones gone. We know what it is like to be shut in weeks on end in lockdown and quarantine. And for elderly people like my mom in her assisted care facility, that lockdown has been like a tomb.
But with the coming of this spring, with vaccinations spreading, there is a growing sense of hope. Like little buds of flowers, we begin to stick our heads out to see what’s going on out there. This year, my mom can actually go to my sister’s house for Easter dinner. Last year, I cooked a meal for myself to share on a ZOOM gathering with family. Today I am hosting my family for dinner. We have a taste, the beginnings of resurrection.
Who was the first to go to the tomb? Mary, of course. The men had all turned and run away during that endless afternoon of execution on that hillside. The women remained. The men left out of disappointment. Let down that the revolution had not come. That he had not been the one.
It’s Mary who comes, out of a love that had no expectations but to be, Mary who comes to do the acts of love a loved one deserves upon their death. As always, women take care of business. And Mary is shocked to find the stone rolled away.
Who does she go to? Peter, the one Jesus had chosen to be the “rock” upon which his community would be built. So quick and impetuous to proclaim undying commitment and so quick to deny any relationship to Jesus at all. Somehow she knows he will still care. ( I believe it’s that very flawed humanity of Peter, imperfect but loving still that led Jesus to choose Peter. He knew Peter, like even the best of us, would screw up but still keep loving..) And who else? The disciple “Jesus loved.” The one who lay his head upon Jesus’ breast during the last supper. The one to whom Jesus commended his mother from the cross. Obviously someone very close and very special. A relationship of which we know next to nothing. Except this…Jesus needed not just to be worshipped. Jesus, like any of us, needed to be loved.
A lot goes on in and around that tomb. But I want to focus on that last scene with Mary. First she mistakes Jesus as the gardener..What does that tell us? That there was nothing special about Jesus’ resurrection appearance. He didn’t glow our have a halo. He wasn’t even wearing a brand new Easter suit. He looked like a common, ordinary working person in overalls, like a gardener.
She only knows it’s him when he speaks her voice, calls her by name, “Mary.” And then she knows. When someone we know calls our name, it sounds like no other voice can. When she hears the sound of his voice, she knows. We all have people in our life that when they say our name, we hear it like no other and know exactly who its is.
She wants to hold on to him, but she can’t. He’s got to move forward and so does she. We want to hold on to those we haver lost, and even though they stay with us, we have to let go, we have to move on. Like we have to move out of the grave of lockdown and back out into the world, and back into the world..
But as we go…see this…much of what we see in the resurrection story has to do with love and intimacy… our need for that. It starts with a savior who like his love for Peter, loves us in all our imperfections, Knows we are the ones to entrust his church to, And like Mary, he knows us like no other can and says our name in a way that we know he knows us through and through. In the days ahead, friends listen for that voice, listen for that voice.
But more…these will be wonderful days as we make our way out again. Wonder-full days. Let is not forget the things we have learned during our year of lockdown, our year of Lent. We are going to need each other. Especially as a church we are going to have to love one another and offer that love to any of our community who feel isolated, lonely or afraid.
At the end of the day, that is what conquers the grave., That is what love is all about. The love that goes on, the love that goes on.
Yes, these will be uncertain times. But we have taken one step out of the grave. More to come. And we are going together. And we are going with Jesus.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!
20 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. 2 So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” 3 Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. 4 The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, 7 and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. 8 Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9 for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10 Then the disciples returned to their homes.
Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene
11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look[a] into the tomb; 12 and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. 13 They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” 14 When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew,[b] “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). 17 Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” 18 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.
- John 20:11 Gk lacks to look
- John 20:16 That is, Aramaic
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