Christ is risen indeed! And Lent is finally over! I wonder if you resonate more with the latter statement that Lent is over than the former one this liturgical year. If you feel a huge relief that Lent is finally finished, here’s a kind reminder: It will come again next year. And you will have to go through this again… This cycle of Lent and Easter gives us wisdom. Lent and Easter, or put it more specifically Good Friday and Easter are inseparable. It’s like joy and sorrow. Khalil Gibran once said, “Joy and sorrow are inseparable, together they came and where one sits alone with you at the board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed." There is no joy without sorrow.
Likewise, there is no resurrection without crucifixion. One theologian said, “Easter is not a cancellation of the cross. It is not an alternative to the cross. We have to go through Good Friday to Easter.” (Herbert McCabe, God, Christ, and Us) In order for us to encounter the risen Jesus here and now, suffering is inevitable and unavoidable. We must go through our suffering as well as others to arrive at the resurrection. In today’s gospel, we see this pattern in Mary Magdalene. We encounter Mary arriving at her last destination on her journey from Good Friday. I want us to focus on Mary and really try to be in her shoes. Mary was up early in the morning. It was still dark. She might have been so eager and anxious to wait for Sabbath to be over. She was at the tomb where her Jesus, one whom she wholeheartedly loved was buried. She was not there to verify whether Jesus was risen or not. All that mattered to her was probably to feel his presence even if he was no longer alive. She wanted to get bits and pieces of Jesus’s presence. I’m not sure if you ever buried your loved ones. Imagine that moment. Your time stops. Everything feels numb and surreal. The only thing that is left in you is that unimaginable pain that pierces into your heart. The emptiness your loved one has left behind is too much to bear. We only feel that deepest emptiness when they’re finally gone. If this was her case, where else would Mary have been if not at the tomb of Jesus? Mary found out that the stone that closed the tomb had been removed. The wall that divided life and death was removed. She was terrified. Jesus’ body was gone! She ran and told Simon Peter and the beloved disciple. These two guys came and checked the tomb. Yes, Mary was right. And that was it. They went back home, not because they didn’t care, but probably because they were reminded of their guilt and shame of denying their teacher, brother, friend, and the savior at his tomb. Mary stood outside the tomb. She burst into tears. She wept. The last thing she could do to feel connected with Jesus was no longer available. Yet again, she was not crying because she didn’t meet Jesus who was supposed to be risen from the dead. She didn’t expect the resurrection. What she was actually doing then was facing her reality of suffering. She didn’t return to her home like Peter and the beloved disciple. She came back to the tomb. The empty tomb was her reality of suffering. The emptiness that Jesus left behind became more real than ever before with the empty tomb. With her eyes full of tears, she once again looked into the tomb. Instead of Jesus’s dead body, she saw two angels in white. Yes, angels, messengers of God! But for Mary, who cares about them? Jesus’s body was still gone! She asked them for help and said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” Notice that Mary didn’t care whether Jesus was risen or not. She was quite sure that Jesus was dead. She wanted to know where his dead body was laid. And I imagine what she was really asking these two angels was “Help me find Jesus’s body! Where is it?” There was no help coming from the angels, but Jesus himself. Jesus stood where his dead body was supposed to be. Mary whose eyes were still full of tears did not or could not recognize Jesus. Not that Jesus was unrecognizable, but probably Mary was not able to see him as who he was. The Jesus she was looking for must be among the dead, not among the living. The dead don’t talk or walk or stand. The dead remain dead. Yet, the risen Jesus cannot be found in death. The risen Jesus came into Mary’s eyes as he called her name, “Mary!” The risen Jesus entered into Mary’s tears of suffering, pain, and agony by calling her name. His calling Mary’s name tells us the very heart of our Christian understanding of God. God comes into our lives so personally and deeply, calling our names. God calls your name to come to you, not mine or saint’s. And just as in the case of Mary, Jesus brings you the new reality of the world through your tears. The death of Jesus on Good Friday is the very entry of God into human suffering and death. God saves us in our suffering and dying because God himself is in our suffering, not because God simply takes away from our suffering or helps us avoid it. But God is fully present to us as the one who is suffering. Only by facing the suffering of the world, others, and mine, passing through it, not avoiding it, we encounter Jesus who is both crucified and risen. Jesus walks through your eyes full of tears, calling your names! Again, Easter only comes through Good Friday. Suffering can be derived from many places: physical, psychological, emotional, or spiritual sufferings or suffering from one’s committed sins which alienates oneself from God. Regardless of what suffering one goes through, God breaks through. And yet, we might feel God’s coming into our suffering. We might still feel the same way Mary felt when she first found the empty tomb. We might feel the absence of Christ’s presence especially when we hear and see so many painful stories in the world. My best friend and colleague who has recently lost her husband told me yesterday in our shared office. “Young, I believe in the resurrection even though I do not feel it at all. I’m not sure if I’m ever going to feel it, but I commit myself to believe in the resurrection!” (Jean Walsh, April 3, 2015) This may be what our faith in the risen Jesus is all about. One theologian said, “Faith, the celebration of Easter, is a looking further into the cross, seeing in and through it to the mystery of love which is what it really is.” (Ibid.) We look further into the cross, see in and through it to the mystery of compassion of God. Look around. We don’t see the actual risen body of Jesus. It is absent. But in our communion with him and one another, we become that risen body of Jesus. And in this absence of the presence of the risen Jesus, Jesus is fully present to us in the Eucharist. As we partake of the Eucharist, we become what we receive, the Body of Christ. Through this resurrected body, we enter into others’ suffering. The resurrection is the act of God who opens up the new reality for all. Only from the resurrection, suffering has its own meaning and purpose. My sisters and brothers, This is the night that the wall turns into a window! The wall that has blocked the tomb now becomes the window to the new reality. This is the night that the tomb turns turns into a womb! The tomb that has kept the sting of death becomes the womb that gives birth to the new creation, to the new life, the baptized life. Christ is risen indeed! Amen. |
Paul"...life up your love to that cloud [of unknowing]...let God draw your love up to that cloud...through the help of his grace, to forget every other thing." Archives
January 2025
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