Mary, Holding On.

She crumpled into a heap against the rock, and wept.  Tears covered her face entirely, for this was the deep weeping of grief upon grief, of insult and confusion thrown rudely on top of sadness.  Her stomach ached from weeping, and she curled her small legs into her body and wailed.

“Why…?  Why would they do this?” she cried.  She was barely aware of the world around her: right now, her world was her sadness and the cold rock at her side.  She raised her eyes for just a moment and looked to her left, into the overwhelming emptiness of the tomb.  Some part of her hoped it was a mistake, a dream, and that his body would be there after all.  But it wasn’t, and her head fell, and she cried again.

Her thoughts swirled with anger and sadness and questions and accusations.  Why would you take him?  Was it not enough to kill him?  What right do you have to do this?  You snakes!  You vile, awful snakes!  She turned her head, almost unconsciously, and looked inside again.  She was not surprised to see two men sitting there where his body should be.  They had probably been sent to give some kind of message to his followers.  One of them looked at her and spoke.

“My lady, why are you crying?”

A swirl of answers to such a cruel question came to her head, but she caught her breath and answered simply.  “They’ve taken my Lord, and I don’t know where they’ve laid him.  Please,” she said, “if you know where he is… please…”  But another wave of tears took her words away.  Through the cloud of tears, she saw a set of dusty feet in front of her: the groundskeeper.  She didn’t have the strength, neither in her mind nor her muscles, to look up.  He asked the same, cruel question.

“My lady, why are you crying?  Who are you looking for?”

Maybe he would know, she thought, maybe he was here when they took him.

“Please, sir.”  Her voice was ragged now, and her words came out in a choked rasp.  “Please, if you carried him away, tell me where you laid him, and I’ll take him.  Please!”  She held her head in her hands and covered her eyes, sorrow and complete weariness overtaking her.

The groundskeeper bent down on his haunches, put his hand on her shoulder, and said a single word.

“Mary.”

The word was warm and rich, and drenched in a familiar mercy.  She raised her eyes, and saw the last person she ever expected to see again; the only person she ever hoped to see again.  Her breath left her, and life shot out from her heart to her fingertips.  “Rabbouni!” she screamed, and tackled him in an embrace that sent them both awkwardly to the ground.

“Rabbouni! Rabbouni!” she said again and again, kissing his hands, his fingers, his face, his feet, as if her kisses could ensure his real, true presence.

He laughed, and tried to sit up straight under the barrage of kisses.  He gathered her hands into his, and looked into her unbelieving eyes.

“Don’t hold on to me.  I haven’t ascended to my Father yet.”

She was puzzled by his meaning, but too overjoyed at his being really, truly real to mind.  For many years later, she would often recall how exactly not  like a dream it all felt.  She was, of course, astonished by his presence, and it all should have felt quite unreal.  But she was so electrified by his presence, so uncommonly present herself, that she felt more alive and awake than she ever had.  When a dream is remembered, it is as through a mist.  This memory, however, stayed with her in vivid clarity.  She would remember noticing the shape of his bare foot on the grass, and the way his toe twitched at the tickle of a fly.  She would remember a faint breeze catching a wisp of his hair.  She would remember the faint taste of myrrh on his fingers when she kissed them.  She would remember his voice: low and soft and warm.  

“Go to my brothers,” he said.  “Tell them, ‘I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’  Tell them.  And tell Peter.”

A moment later, she was laughing and running, filled with the most wonderfully exhilarating kind of fear, the wind drying her tears in happy streams against her cheeks.

Sunday Morning; In a Cave

No light could be seen from inside the cave.  The cold air held the scent of rock and moss and the lingering odour of bitter herbs.  The silence was palpable, hovering in the tomb like the Spirit on the face of the deep.

A body lay on the stone shelf, its unnatural stillness betraying any illusion of sleep.  For all the beautifying shrouds so carefully wrapped around it, and the precious blossoms placed upon the swaddling cloths, this was a corpse.  His friends had done their best to dress the wounds, in some unreasoning and unspoken hope that even in death these wounds might heal, but the reality remained.  It was gruesome.  He looked as though he had been mauled to death, and the truth was not far from it.  It had taken hours to dress his wounds, long enough for tears to give way to silence and the quiet business at hand.  Finally, his mother had wiped the blood from his face.  She caressed his pallid brow, placed the last shroud upon his head, and kissed him through the veil.

There was evening and there was morning, and evening and morning.  The third day.

The cold air of night lingered inside the tomb, and the ground was cool to the touch.  All was still, but for the movement of a beetle, and so silent that its footsteps could be heard as it skittered across the wall.

Then in that silence, a breath.  

Light filled the cave, like slow lightning, and for a long moment cast a deep, black shadow beneath the feet of the beetle.  

The lungs which had sat silent since Friday began to rise and fall like bellows.  The man sat up on one elbow as the white cloths fell gently from his body.  He took a deep draught of crisp, cold air.  He smiled.  The scent of the cave delighted him, especially the scent of myrrh emanating from his burial shroud.  He stood, and he seemed to be clothed in robes made of light itself.  He turned and looked at the burial cloths.  He smiled again, noticing the faint imprint his form and that flash of light had left on them.  The shrouds were wrinkled from the absence of his body, and he remembered something his mother had told him about making his bed.  He folded them neatly and placed them on the stone shelf.  The blossoms which had adorned the edges he arranged in an impromptu bouquet.  The beetle came to inspect them.  He held out his finger and the bug crawled on, and he surveyed the beetle while the beetle surveyed his scars.  The marks, which had seemed so horrible only an hour before, practically glowed with beauty.  

He set the beetle back down, then he turned to the sealed mouth of the cave, and walked through it.  

His face welcomed the sun, and his eyes took in every bright colour of the garden.  Each leaf seemed to be the very invention of green.  Each flowering blossom’s morning dew shone with the glow of a newborn.  Even the ground beneath his feet seemed to blush with the ruddy warmth of a new mother.  The world was alive, re-created, resurrected.  

And as he walked from the tomb, in the cool of the day, the stone rolled back from the crevice of its own accord, and the sun stole into the cave like the dawn of the first morning.  And he looked, and saw that it was very good.

The Gardener

The two men had run off, as they were so prone to do, never giving the stranger in the garden a second glance.  He was alone now.  He stretched wide and took in the morning sun, which fell warmly on the leaves nearby.  A morning song drifted in and around him, and the singer lighted gently on a branch just a few feet away.  He stood there, watching the singer, marveling at such a small and elegant creature.  The singer cocked her head and puzzled at him for a moment.  It sang once more, as if to ask who he might be.  He smiled in response, and the singer moved on in a flutter.

He heard footsteps approaching, and sat on his haunches, busying himself with the patch of little yellow flowers beside him.

The woman had returned, visibly distraught, sniffling, speaking in whispers and sobs.  He kept to his flowers as she approached the rock.  He glanced quickly her way, but her eyes did not meet his.

She paused at the sight of the open rock face, and peered into the barren tomb.  He could hear her sharp breaths, and glanced her way again as she stepped, trembling, into the tomb.

He returned to his flowers.  He knew what she must be thinking.  ‘They’ve taken him!  Oh God!  They’ve taken him!  Hadn’t he suffered enough?  Why strip him even of the dignity of a grave?’  She began to sob.  The little yellow faces of the flowers stared back at him, as if pleading: “Say something!”

He heard a voice coming from the empty tomb.

“Ma’am?  Why are you crying?” the muffled voice said.

“They’ve taken him!  They’ve taken him and I don’t know where!  Why would they take him?”

Convulsions of sorrow were coming upon her now, and she turned from the open grave, steadying herself with one hand against the stone that should have sealed the tomb.  Her hand came to her lips as she looked to the empty blue sky.  With a great sob, she buried her face in her hands, and wept.

He stood to face her, and stepped slowly toward her.

“Ma’am?  Why are you crying?”

“Please!” she said between gasps, “Please, if you’ve taken him... If you know where they took him, tell me!  I’ll take him!  Please!”

She fell into the stranger’s arms and wept.  “Please.”

He took her into his embrace, and they stood silently, both of them glowing in the morning sun, her head nestled into his neck.  He smiled as her ear tickled his.  Finally, he put his lips close to her ear and whispered a single word.

Mary.

Her eyes shot open in recognition, and she pushed herself away to see his face.

“Teacher!” she screamed, and took him into her arms so tightly he began to laugh.

“Oh God!  It’s you!  It’s you!” she said, her heart barely believing the reality of the moment.

“It’s me,” he said.

“Oh, let me hold on to you forever!”

“Not yet, Mary.  But soon.”

Easter Tuesday

Alleluia!  Christ is Risen!  Two whole days ago.

Easter is great, but there’s the Tuesday after Easter, when the resurrection is two days old.  Life continues in a world with dirt, and money, and lunch to eat.  So what then?  There’s this every day world that Jesus is still walking around in.  After all, he didn’t ascend in that billowing, holy cloud for another 40 days after he broke out of the tomb.

In the meantime, he walked around here, and ate fish.

He could have ascended that Easter Sunday.  The resurrection would have been no less affective.  But he stayed.  He ate a lot.  He’s often seen cooking fish, or eating fish, or asking, “Do you have anything to eat?”  Perhaps this raising yourself from the dead business can cause a mighty hunger.  I’m not sure.  I’ve never been resurrected.

But Jesus was, and he lingered a while for a reason.  Perhaps he wanted to give Thomas the benefit of the doubt, and let Tom see him that following Sunday.  Perhaps he just enjoyed being here. Perhaps at least part of the reason was to communicate something.  In his death, he told us he was with us in our deepest misery.  In his rising to life, he told us he was with us in our most profound joy.  Maybe in the sticking around for a while before the ascension, he was telling us that he’s around for all the stuff in between.

He was here for Easter Sunday... and Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and on and on.  He was here.  With us, like a welcome guest who keeps saying, “Well, I really should get going,” until you’ve laughed yourselves all the way to one in the morning.

But he’s with us, from Easter Monday to Boring Thursday.  And especially, it would seem, for the food.  I knew there was a reason I liked him.

Sunday Morning.

No light could be seen from inside the cave.  The cold air held the scent of rock and moss and the lingering odour of bitter herbs.  The silence was palpable, hovering in the tomb like a spirit.

A body lay on the stone shelf, its unnatural stillness betraying the illusion of deep sleep that can fall upon the dead.  For all the beautifying shrouds so carefully wrapped around the body, and the precious blossoms placed upon the swaddling cloths, this was a corpse.  His friends had done their best to dress the wounds, in some unreasoning and unspoken hope that even in death they might heal, but the reality remained.  It was gruesome.  He looked as though he had been mauled to death, and the truth was not far from it.  It took hours to dress his wounds, long enough for tears to give way to the quiet business at hand.  Finally, his mother had wiped the blood from his face.  She caressed his pallid brow, placed the last shroud upon his face, and kissed him through the veil.

There was evening and there was morning, and evening and morning.  The third day.

The cold air of night lingered inside the tomb, and the ground was cool to the touch.  All was still, but for the movement of a beetle, and so silent that its footsteps could be heard as it skittered across the wall.

Then, in that silence, a breath.  

Lightening, or something like it, lit the cave for barely a moment, and cast a deep, black shadow beneath the feet of the beetle.  

Another breath.

Air filled the lungs that had sat breathless since Friday as the death shrouds fell from the man’s body.  The man sat up on one elbow and took in another draught of crisp, morning air.  He smiled.  The scent of the cave delighted him, especially the scent of myrrh emanating from his burial shroud.  It reminded him of home.  He stood, and he seemed to be clothed in robes made of light itself.  He turned and looked at the burial shrouds.  He smiled again, noticing the faint imprint his form had left on them.  The shrouds were wrinkled from the absence of his body, and he remembered something his mother had told him about making his bed.  He folded them neatly and placed them on the stone shelf.  The blossoms he arranged in an impromptu bouquet.  The beetle came to inspect them.  He smiled, turned to the sealed mouth of the cave, and walked through it.  

His face welcomed the sun, and his eyes took in every colour of the garden with more vibrancy than he had known in years.  Each sound became more clean and clear, each birdsong more a melody.  The world was alive, and felt as resurrected as Christ himself.  And as he walked from the tomb, in the cool of the day, the stone rolled back from the tomb, seemingly of its own accord, and the morning sun stole into the cave like the dawn of the first day.

He looked, and saw that it was very good.