Last week, NPR's Michelle Norris interviewed one of my favorite authors, Anne Lamott. When asked about her interpretation of Easter, Lamott says,
"Well, it's the most profound holiday in the Christian tradition. And I think two things really come to mind. One is something that the great writer Barbara Johnson said, which is that we are Easter people living in a Good Friday world. And I think that every year the world seems more of a Good Friday world. And it's excruciating, whether it's Japan, or Libya, or whether its your own best friends and their children who are sick, which is something that makes no sense when you think about a loving God. But it's a time when we get to remember that all the stuff that we think makes us of such value, all the time we spend burnishing our surfaces, is really not what God sees. God, he or she, loves us absolutely unconditionally, as is. It's a come as you are party."
I remembered a moment early in Lent, when we had just witnessed live on TV the unbelieveably destructive tsunami devouring Japan's coastal communities -- which in turn was submerged by coverage of our intervention in Libya. I felt so saturated with the world's suffering, and so tiny and powerless in the face of it. I had gone to the office as usual, but found myself truly dragging at the end of the day, and, stalling before the long walk home, I wandered into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where I found myself staring, with tears, at the Greek Orthodox mosaic depicting Jesus' burial. The faces of the women and men appear absolutely broken as they bind up Jesus' wounds and carry him to the tomb. The glowing golden mosaic captures the moment when their world has ended, and they are utterly exhausted. You can see it in their hands, even their hair. That day, and that moment, and many moments since for anyone who's paying attention to what's going on in this world, sure felt like a hopeless, Good Friday end of the world.
But the beautiful thing about that mosaic is that we know something the people in the story didn't know yet -- that when the women come back, the tomb is empty and terrifying as the news may be, it is good. Life is not the same, and no one promised it would be. But, as Anglican Bishop Suhail Dawani preached this morning (at the second service we attended this morning!), the work of Christians in the Holy Land is to proclaim new life even in seemingly hopeless situations. We don't know what the new life will be, but we have seen too many miracles to give our lives over to fear and turn away from people struggling for justice and healing.
I am so bad at remembering that. Maybe that's why I love Anne Lamott for her honest and faithful wrestling with Christian faith. This day has been beautiful in Jerusalem, and we pray it's been beautiful where you are too. Let's not forget to hang on to the beauty and resist the fear when tomorrow we step back into the Good Friday world.
"Well, it's the most profound holiday in the Christian tradition. And I think two things really come to mind. One is something that the great writer Barbara Johnson said, which is that we are Easter people living in a Good Friday world. And I think that every year the world seems more of a Good Friday world. And it's excruciating, whether it's Japan, or Libya, or whether its your own best friends and their children who are sick, which is something that makes no sense when you think about a loving God. But it's a time when we get to remember that all the stuff that we think makes us of such value, all the time we spend burnishing our surfaces, is really not what God sees. God, he or she, loves us absolutely unconditionally, as is. It's a come as you are party."
I remembered a moment early in Lent, when we had just witnessed live on TV the unbelieveably destructive tsunami devouring Japan's coastal communities -- which in turn was submerged by coverage of our intervention in Libya. I felt so saturated with the world's suffering, and so tiny and powerless in the face of it. I had gone to the office as usual, but found myself truly dragging at the end of the day, and, stalling before the long walk home, I wandered into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where I found myself staring, with tears, at the Greek Orthodox mosaic depicting Jesus' burial. The faces of the women and men appear absolutely broken as they bind up Jesus' wounds and carry him to the tomb. The glowing golden mosaic captures the moment when their world has ended, and they are utterly exhausted. You can see it in their hands, even their hair. That day, and that moment, and many moments since for anyone who's paying attention to what's going on in this world, sure felt like a hopeless, Good Friday end of the world.
But the beautiful thing about that mosaic is that we know something the people in the story didn't know yet -- that when the women come back, the tomb is empty and terrifying as the news may be, it is good. Life is not the same, and no one promised it would be. But, as Anglican Bishop Suhail Dawani preached this morning (at the second service we attended this morning!), the work of Christians in the Holy Land is to proclaim new life even in seemingly hopeless situations. We don't know what the new life will be, but we have seen too many miracles to give our lives over to fear and turn away from people struggling for justice and healing.
I am so bad at remembering that. Maybe that's why I love Anne Lamott for her honest and faithful wrestling with Christian faith. This day has been beautiful in Jerusalem, and we pray it's been beautiful where you are too. Let's not forget to hang on to the beauty and resist the fear when tomorrow we step back into the Good Friday world.
Click on the slideshows to see photos of Holy Week in Jerusalem.
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