Love in the Goo

The Lord is Risen!

He is Risen indeed, Alleluia

The Marys were in shock. The scripture says “they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy.” What a mixture – fear and great joy. Something was terribly wrong yet maybe, just maybe, something was terribly right and good. They had been distraught since Friday and now they were finally able to go to the tomb where the remains of their beloved Jesus were… and they’re not there. But there’s an angel. An angel who says that he has been raised. And as they run to tell the other disciples, there he is. Jesus. Alive.

Centuries after that first Easter morning, the world still does not recognize the risen Jesus or understand the empty tomb. It does not recognize the truth that Jesus brought. The truth that violence is not the way forward. That only love conquers violence and ends the cycle of retaliation.
That is the message of Easter.

Jesus died, because of his message of non-violent resistance to oppression of every kind, because of his message of deep love. He was really executed, really dead. And yet, because of the love of God which animates all things he was raised to life again, a new life, a resurrected life.

Love is greater than violence of any kind. Perhaps we do not always remember the power of love because we think of it in terms of close human relationship. We think of the excitement of romantic love or the close bond of parent and child. Yet love is much more than that; it is not a mushy sentimental Hallmark kind of thing but a clear-seeing intentional will-to-good. The deep love that Jesus showed is the love that conquers all things.

But the Marys didn’t know that. They didn’t know it was Easter. They knew great fear, and joy. All the disciples knew was that their lives had been turned upside down. The unthinkable had happened.
Resurrection is not resuscitation. Resurrection does not mean that things go back to the way they were. In fact, it means quite the opposite. Resurrection means that things change. Jesus is changed. We are changed. In the resurrections of our personal lives, in the resurrections of our social and political lives, things change. And it’s often not comfortable.
 
Butterflies are a symbol of resurrection. The caterpillar eats and eats and grows and grows until one day it stops, goes still and apparently dies. Inside the cocoon it auto-digests itself, until it is nothing but green goo. Then, amazingly, its DNA rereads itself and transforms it into an adult butterfly. I can’t imagine what happens to the consciousness of the creature in this process. When it is just protected goo, does it know that it is goo? Does it go into a suspended state of consciousness? Or does it hover somewhere waiting until the goo resolves itself and then re-enters its body?

I have no idea. But what I do know is that we humans do something rather similar. When we are transformed, when disaster hits, when grief happens, we are reduced to a state of goo. Nothing is stable, it’s all like jello. Yet out of the goo comes resurrection.

We don’t know what happened to Jesus after he was placed in the tomb and before the Marys saw him that first Easter morning. Our ancestors believed that he went to hades, perhaps to bring back those who were there, or perhaps to look for his friend Judas. Perhaps Jesus found himself in a state of goo. After the horror and agony of his death, was he ready to just get up and go, already completely the resurrected Christ? Or did he, human as he was, require a time of change, a time of protection in the cave of the tomb, while he transformed and adjusted to his new resurrection body?

Our God is a God of resurrection. After disaster there is always resurrection, if we choose it. But it is rarely immediate, and we often do not recognize it when it comes. In the middle of our pain and confusion, we don’t know that it’s Easter. When we are reduced to goo, we don’t realize that we are being transformed. When we are in great fear we cannot easily find the joy.

It is difficult to look at our world, at the environmental disaster, the devastation of Iran, Lebanon and Gaza, the ongoing war in Ukraine, the millions starving in Sudan, the plight of immigrants amid politics of hate: it is almost impossible to look at all that and see in it resurrection.

But we are an Easter people and we are called to see, not with rose-tinted glasses but with the perspective of that deep love that Jesus showed us. We must do all we can to alleviate suffering, but we can also know that out of this too, God will bring resurrection. God is already at work in the goo, bringing resurrection.

It doesn’t look that way. It looks as if the tomb is empty and God has deserted God’s people. It looks like a mess from which there will be no deliverance. But we are given hope. We are the Marys coming to the tomb; we can see the stone rolled away and intuit the presence of the angels. We are the ones who know that love conquers; that even when human love fails and we revert to our violent ways, God’s love still triumphs.

For Jesus’ resurrection shows that even when humans do their very worst, even when they betray and lie and torture and kill, God still loves. God still keeps coming back offering a different way. In the middle of the goo we don’t recognize Easter, but it is there, it is here. God is transforming us and the whole of Creation.

And we are called to be a part of it. We are called to keep faith. To know that the resurrected and ascended Christ will one day put all things right. That is part of the movement of Creation – that all will be reconciled with God. Our task is to continue to hold that resurrection hope, to continue to look for the things that God is doing and to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in doing them.

We are a resurrection people, and we serve an Easter God.
Alleluia!

the Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall