They did not yet understand that he had to die
first in order
to rise from
the dead.
John
Easter
reminds us, in a most dramatic way, that sometimes events that seem so tragic
one minute, can in fact, turn out quite differently the next! First, let me quickly
tell you my own best personal Easter story. Then, I will tell you a couple of
Easter stories from my years as a priest. Hopefully, these short stories will remind you
of some of your own.
2002
was the worst year of my priesthood. It was the year the sexual abuse scandal
broke across the country. I never felt more powerless and more demoralized than
I did back then. For the first time in my life, I seriously wanted to quit.
Things
got especially bad in June of that year. I was sinking further and further into
a depression. By the time Fall rolled around, I asked to resign from my job as
vocation director and to take six months off to go somewhere and get myself together.
Well, the short it is this:
I went from the lowest point of my priesthood to one of the highest points.
Some amazing things have happened in my life since then, things that I could
never have imagined in 2002. I am
certainly not bragging, because I know it was not my doing. However, I am amazed! Looking back, I believe that God was actually
preparing me to do the work I have been doing, and am still doing today, even when I was at my lowest
point! My old "dream" of what was supposed to happen had to die
before this new "dream" that I could never have imagined could be born!
Over the last fifty years,
I have ministered to hundreds and hundreds of people who have lost jobs, homes,
spouses and relationships. At their darkest hours, they thought the could not
go on or could never be happy again.
Many of them have contacted me, years later, to tell me about getting the best
job they ever had, about building the new home of their dreams, about finding love
again with an even more loving spouse or new best friend. In all those cases,
an idea about how life should be had to die before something even better could
be born.
Even the sexual abuse
scandal is a case in point. I am convinced that we will look back on all this
shame someday and see that it paved the way for a more safe environment for all children, whether in churches,
schools or homes, that it paved the way for an more open and honest church than
we have known for many, many years!
They did not yet understand that he had to die
first in order to rise from the dead.
Ever since Jesus had been
laid in the tomb that first Good Friday, his disciples had been sinking into a
deeper and deeper depression. Most had taken refuge behind locked doors and
some even headed out of town to hide away in places like Emmaus. It was some of his women followers, always
the brave ones in these kinds of situations, who went to the tomb that first
Easter morning.
Jesus had been taken down
from the cross and put in a tomb in a hurry. Work, even properly burying the
dead, was not allowed from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown because it
violated the Jewish Sabbath. Mary had to wait till the Sabbath was over, but
she got there as soon as she could. In fact, it was still dark that Sunday
morning when she arrived at the tomb.
Mary did not get up early
so as to get a good seat to watch the resurrection. Like everybody else, she
thought Jesus was dead and that was that! She merely wanted to finish giving
Jesus a proper Jewish funeral. She brought the traditional bags of spices to
help keep the smell down, something she did not have time to finish on Friday.
She, no doubt, expected to return to the tomb after a year to collect Jesus’
bones and put them in a stone box, called an ossuary, so as to make room for more burials in the future. After
all, the tomb where Jesus was buried was merely on loan from a
sympathetic man named Joseph.
Neither Mary nor the other
followers of Jesus expected a resurrection that morning! What they really thought was: “It’s all over!”
Their lives, once full of hope, had been thrown into chaos and confusion. They
were so deep in their loss that they had no way of knowing that morning that
the lowest point in their faith was about to turn into the highest point of
their faith. They had no way of knowing
that what they discovered that morning would become the basis of a faith that
would spread all over the world and eventually be shared by us here in Louisville, Kentucky,
two thousand years later!
The message of Easter is
simple and profound. Today’s breakdowns
could possibly be tomorrow’s breakthroughs. It almost sounds corny, but I have
seen it so many times as a priest, both in my own experiences and in the
experiences that I have witnessed in the lives of the people I have
served. Fidelity to God, and to the path
he has called us to walk, will always be a matter of death and resurrection.
The grain of wheat must always be buried in the soil before it can sprout and rise out of the ground to produce
many grains of wheat.
Death and resurrection,
then, is not merely an historic event. It is even more so, a template for
living. After a lifetime of little “dyings and risings,” all of us will be
invited to let go of all of this so that we can experience all of
that – and that that is eternal happiness with the risen Christ.
They did not yet understand that he had to die
first in order to
rise from the dead.
