He is Risen (I hope)

An invitation for a more spacious Easter.

Every single Easter service was started in the same way for as long as I can remember. The Pastor would proclaim JESUS IS RISEN and the people in the sanctuary would echo back HE IS RISEN INDEED. This call and response was good the whole day. Occasionally I would see people greet each other like that, only on Easter, kind of like a very special once a year passing of the peace (the part of the service where people say to each other: peace be with you, and those people respond: also with you) but we never passed the peace in my church, so it made the Easter volley even more special.

I thought this was a normal protestant thing, as common as the Lords Prayer or the Doxology. It was only when I had my own church, when I stood up in the pulpit and Boldly proclaimed CHRIST IS RISEN to have people stare at me blankly, did it occur to me that this was not as ubiquitous a liturgical move as I thought. Christ is Risen, He is Risen indeed.

I love the Easter passages, all of them and I especially love the one from John 20. Partially because of John’s ridiculous humble brag about how he is faster than Peter, but also because of the way it centers Mary Magdalene. I love the scene at the tomb where she hears Jesus call her name. I understand why she might be desperate to know what someone has done with the body of her friend. She just wants to do right by him, she just wants to honor Jesus. And she does get to do right by Jesus. By being the last at the cross and the first at the grave, by committing to walking through her sorrow and not running or hiding from it, Mary Magdalene gets to be the one to witness the miracle of the resurrection first. She gets to be the one to run and tell the others.

It was only this year that I thought about how we assume a lot about this story, about Mary Magdalene and the tone she might have taken when she told the disciples what she had seen. It was only this year that I began thinking of the days of trauma that led up to that moment, and the ways in which her pain was not tended to, her longings to hold her friends body were still denied. I know that Mary Magdalene left the tomb and ran for the others and proclaimed the good news, but this year it occurred to me that she was probably still really sad, maybe confused, perhaps in disbelief of what she just saw and felt and heard.

After two of the hardest days of her life, she gets only a few moments with her savior and then she must go tell the others. I wonder if she was sure. I wonder if her response to JESUS IS RISEN might be I guess so.

Jesus is Risen! Well, thats what he said.

Jesus is Risen! I hope so.

Jesus is Risen! I mean, thats what we think.

I think all of these are acceptable Easter responses. I think it is why Eastertide lasts 50 days. We need them. We need all fifty days for the reality to sink in. For the resurrection to bloom. If right now all you can do is look at the thing that is coming up from the ground and leave it just in case it is a daffodil, that too is a faithful Easter response.

I painted a heart for the Good Friday, with blacks and greys and a crown of thorns around it. I was able to complete it in the hour the service lasted. On Easter I took that same Good Friday painting and began embroidering flowers onto that painting. My friend who inspired me to embroider pointed out that embroidery comes with a cost. The act of piercing the painting is tedious and long. One tiny strand at a time, in and out and untangling the thread. Living in the reality of resurrection, it takes time, it takes effort, it is hard sometimes. Sometimes you have to untangle some stuff. Thats okay. We don’t have to be totally sure of ourselves, we just have to report what we think we saw.

Jesus is risen, He is risen I hope.

That is enough. The resurrection has only begun.