“On the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala came to Jesus’ tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark and saw the stone removed from the tomb.” “They saw the burial cloths … and the cloth that had covered his head… rolled up in a separate place.” “They did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.”
Death has raged through the community of peacemakers. No ordinary death, nor a natural one. It is a death all too many in the U.S. culture know. It is murder; violent, excruciating murder and each man and each woman is in shock. How do we move forward? How do we even do the basic things we need to do to survive in these days? We can barely breathe. It seems perhaps we have not been breathing. We are trying to. Do not ask us to do more. Do not ask me or my friends to carry on the peacemaking mission. We are in crisis. In one sense we are numb and yet, in another sense full of anxiety, confusion, dread, fear, and overwhelming sadness. All these emotions will have their way with us, for weeks, months, perhaps years. In time, the crisis of this murder will subside and rulers will return to indoctrinating us into the chronicness of murder – the next murder and the next one after that and still the next one – the chronicness of all murder, of the routine of murder, the normalcy of murder. The murder of Jesus was done so very long ago but murder has been so routinely done ever since, and murder was just done so very recently, and murder is being done as we speak, and will be done tomorrow. How do we attend to murder, to the violence that hurts us and keeps hurting us, the violence that in some manner kills we who physically survive it? Do we keep in our mind’s eye the image of the blood, keep in our nostrils the stench of the death? Do we form a crust, personally and socially, a kind of scab over our hearts, entombing it to protect us against the pain of this loss and any further loss? If we do, we will not keep our loved one’s beauty alive let alone their memory. They will exist as a cadaver in a coffin. We become, in some respect, professional morticians. We apply cosmetics to their violent death and to our scab. Can we face the raw truth of their violent death. Can we apply healing balm to our scab? Can we hope? We can and so we start moving again. We take action. We face the truth about who causes the chronic, routine, and normal violence and we confront them to end it. Hope gets us breathing again. Really breathing, deeply breathing. We start breathing in the Spirit, the Spirit of life and we are stirred. Hope has us flexing the muscles needed to end the murdering. Hope then has us honing our skills to keep at the joy of living. We embody radical, generative hope. We rise again and again, we resurrect and we resurrect again and again. We live in this culture of death and “understand he had to rise from the dead.’
“When I am up against insurmountable odds, the way I experience HOPE in my flesh and bones, when it hums through my being and quickens my intelligence and faith and trust, is when I grab the rope of an on-the-ground project or movement with others… And throw my whole self into it. Then, HOPE is not an abstract concept, Not a pie-in-the-sky wish, but a mighty Spirit flowing through me, Enlivening and sustaining me.” (Helen Prejean CSJ)
Prayer: Beautiful Spirit, keep us hoping.
Question: What is the on-the-ground project or movement I do with others, or need to start doing with others, that keeps me hoping?
April 09, 2023 Gospel John 20:1-9 Easter