updated from the archives of The Saturday Morning Post
April 20, 2022
Welcome, God and All...
Easter should be a time where joy abounds unabated. Nature is resplendent in color as winter’s icy grip is finally released. The inner peace we so long for is within our reach…right?
If only we could let go of what still anchors us! The beauty and message of this most sacred day should lift us skyward like helium-filled balloons, and we should rejoice in the brilliance of light that surrounds us!
But…we just can’t forget.
Remember back in December, when we were all reading or watching one version or another of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol? Jacob Marley’s ghost, laden down with chains? I remember reflecting that I myself had developed a set of ‘ponderous chains’ in a moment of self-deprecating humor. Lent provided the opportunity to look at the symbolic chains you and I bear. I discovered things I didn’t like to see; I’m taking a reasonable guess you probably did, too. We’ve had a chance to work on those these last six weeks. We should rejoice in any progress we might be making. And we should continue working to make ourselves better persons, and the world around us a better place.
However, King David, the writer of Psalm 51 (and others), acknowledged that we have a way of reminding ourselves of the nastier stuff we’ve done or failed to do, and that knowledge is a temptation that flaunts itself in the face of the unbounded joy we should be celebrating:
---Twenty-eight years ago, Easter came and went, and my colleagues in formation for the diaconate were thrown back unceremoniously into a type of Lent as a new bishop was named for my diocese, with the possibility that our ordination would be put off - or canceled altogether. Happily, that didn’t happen.
---The following year (1995), Easter came and went, and in that week, the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed by a domestic terrorist. I had been offered the opportunity to preach the following weekend on the story of ‘Doubting’ Thomas the apostle. Instead, I felt I had to shift my focus on the reminder that events like this one call us to ask once again, why does an all-loving God allow these to happen?
---Four years later (1999), Easter had already passed at the end of March. I was living unhappily with the decision to forfeit active ministry after exhausting the futile attempt to find a solution to make everyone else happy, even if it meant I might not be. But I was slapped out of that on this very date twenty years ago, when the Columbine High School incident took place. And every year since then, we have been reminded - with alarming frequency - that there is no truly safe haven in this world.
---It was eight years ago today - in 2014 it was Easter Sunday - that was the last time I could speak with my beloved Diane. It’s like I had appeared at the threshold of the gates of Hell itself. I had already been out of work three weeks; Diane would leave this world eleven days later, and my mother followed her twenty-eight hours after that.
---And we got six-plus inches of snow on an April Sunday in 2019, enough to cancel a thousand flights at Chicago’s O’Hare airport - and I had a near miss or two driving in it because at first we were of the mindset that ‘the Lord giveth and (so) the Lord taketh away’. And He did, twenty-four hours later.
---And I wept the following Monday afternoon, as I watched in shock and horror, the fire that was consuming the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, France. And I prayed that God would let me perish the thought that this might not have happened accidentally. I am angered that this tragedy, too, has become part of the arsenal of thoughtlessness that divides us.
---And if that were not enough, there's the COVID pandemic that shut out public celebration of the Lord's Resurrection in 2020 and still had some limitations on it in 2021; and its specter still hangs over us in 2022 as any gathering in large numbers threatens a surge of the latest variant - as well as arguments to the point of violence regarding vaccines and the use of face masks. My son and I have also had health scares thus far in 2022. While not COVID related, they must be dealt with. I just can't keep living 'on the edge', as it were.
---On top of this, there's the current state of affairs in the geopolitical arena, marked by the invasion of the Ukraine by Russia, and the global economic chaos that this and the pandemic has brought on (and exacerbated by the present administration - but that's another story for another time).
The devil is still surely at work in the world. Working harder than ever, to keep us anchored and mired in our waywardness, our false sense of privilege; that we would redefine just what human rights are and aren’t, in seemingly direct defiance of God’s plan.
But I still found the opportunity to dwell on THE Week that truly Changed the World. On it I have pinned my hopes, my ultimate dreams. From the events of that one week that secular timelords would rather I forget, in lieu of all the links of chain I bear from the history I list above - as well as that I haven’t listed - that’s where God continually invests in His creation - you, and me. Had it not happened, had Jesus not come to Earth to give of himself, I don’t know where I would be. Perhaps I would not be at all. Maybe God would have had enough, and this world destroyed by being sucked into the Sun, or blasted into pieces by a comet. Perhaps we would be annihilated by aliens who are better disciples than we are; being led to their ‘promised land.’ Or maybe he would have let us destroy ourselves…
But we were never meant to walk this road alone…
No, THIS is the Day that the Lord has made. And not only today, but every day of the past and every day that is yet to come. Think about that on Monday, when the routine will start over. Are we dreading another day of this, or that, or are we rejoicing that we’ve yet one more chance to give honor and glory to God in even the smallest of ways? Because those small acts have the potential to move mountains, and call upon the Holy Spirit to renew the face of the earth. And it needs renewing, I think we can agree on that. The Savior of the World did not do everything he did - including the brutal and senseless suffering he endured - in vain. No way! Jesus broke the prison bars of spiritual death, and has opened Paradise to all who believe.
God my Father, please accept as the offering most pleasing to you, the sacrifice of Jesus, your Son. May the legacy he left here continue to shine brightly and dispel the darkness in our minds and hearts! And may we find our way through Him, the Morning Star that never sets, to rejoice and proclaim, now and forevermore that Christ is Risen; and sheds his peaceful light on all humanity.
Until we meet again, live in the knowledge that the Risen Lord is with you, loves you, and would do this for you even if you were the only person left on Earth.
Peace and Blessings,
+the Phoenix
