Letting the Light of Easter In

 

At that very instant, as they (Cleopas and his companion) are still telling the story, Jesus is there, standing among them!

Jesus: May you have peace!

They’re startled and terrified; they think they’re seeing a ghost.

Jesus: Why are you upset? Why are your hearts churning with questions?  Look—look at My hands and My feet! See that it’s Me! Come on; touch Me; see for yourselves. A ghost doesn’t have flesh and bones, as you can see that I have!

Then He shows them His hands and His feet.

Now their fear gives way to joy; but it seems too good to be true, and they’re still unsure.

Jesus: Do you have anything here to eat?

They hand Him a piece of broiled fish, and He takes it and eats it in front of them.

Jesus: I’ve been telling you this all along, that everything written about Me in the Hebrew Scriptures must be fulfilled—everything from the law of Moses to the prophets to the psalms.

Then He opens their minds so they can comprehend the meaning of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Jesus: This is what the Scriptures said: that the promised Anointed One should suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, that in His name a radical change of thought and life should be preached, and that in His name the forgiveness of sins should be preached, beginning in Jerusalem and extending to all nations. You have witnessed the fulfillment of these things.

 

I have a squeamish stomach.  When people show me a scar or stitches, when they give me a detail account of how long the needle was or a play-by-play of their surgery, I consciously plaster a smile on my face and mentally say, “Don’t faint, don’t faint, do not faint!”  So, when Jesus on Easter eve shows the disciples his wounds, I must confess that my stomach is a bit unsettled.  But I find it fascinating that Jesus comes back with the woundedness of Good Friday.  Easter, Resurrection, and new life pouring forth from the tomb which becomes the womb of God’s love, does not mean that the pain of the past is erased.  This has been true from the very beginning.  In the Genesis creation poem, Genesis 1, it is God and chaos hanging out, chillaxing together.  When God creates from the chaos or in cahoots/collaborating with the chaos, never does Genesis 1 say that the chaos was completely eradicated or eliminated.  Chaos persists and still exists.  This we know to be true from reading the newspaper today.

Jesus echoes and amplifies this truth by still bearing the woundedness of cross.

There is a holy invitation for you and I to name and claim our woundedness in these days.  The woundedness of racism, sexism, discrimination of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters, the ways we are hurting/harming the earth, and our continued discounting people who are politically or economically or socially different than us. 

We all have a shadow side.  We all have things about ourselves we’d like to change.  We all have moments when we wonder, “Why in the world did I do that?” 

Jesus shows his woundedness giving us permission to do the same prayerfully and intentionally with God (this is what prayer is all about - but that is a topic for another meditation).  Some of my shadow side includes: perfectionism, using sarcasm as a defense, and pushing myself too much.  We sit with our shadow side letting the Easter light in, trusting in God who loves us fully.  Remember from last week the great line of the Hymn, The Summons, “Will you love the you you hide if I but call your name”?  The parts of ourselves we push down so we don’t have to deal with it.  Hold those in the Easter light of God’s emphatic, “Yes” to love – loving you fully and wholly in these days.

Prayer: God let your unconditional and unceasing love embrace and enfold me today, giving me courage to let your love loose in my words and actions today.  Amen.