Easter Reflections
Much love friends! For those of you who have journeyed with me through the seasons of Lent and/or Advent, I am grateful you took the time and heart to walk with me in reflection and meditation on what the Christ was cultivating in me, and hopefully through me. Writing is like exercise for my soul, and although I am messy and grammatically challenged, I hope you have found occasional nuggets of grace and wonder to help spur you along in your faith journey.
I’d love to hear any feedback, thoughts or ideas you might have, because I hope to further explore future projects within writing.
With that, I’d love to offer a reflection on Easter, the celebratory day of Resurrection for those within the Jesus tradition. But the reality is, the pattern and rhythm of death to life is of a cosmic scope, and it’s my hope that all would come to discover the Christ, in Jesus, displaying, enacting and embodying the very engine of this pattern and rhythm.
In reading John’s biography (John’s gospel account) of Jesus’s life, we hone in on the evening of the Resurrection of Jesus, where we find the embodied Christ reconnecting with eleven of his twelve students, minus Judas Iscariot, who has heartbreakingly exited the story.
On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.
Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them…
So much here, whew. First, the disciples are behind closed doors because a life of following Jesus brings one into conflict with the religious elite, not to mention the empire of the day. There are systems and structures that don’t take well to the way of shalom. In following the way of love and grace and justice, we ought to be fully aware that these very systems and structures will attempt to flex on us, because love upends the narrow, controlling, and manipulative ways of empire and religiosity. It’s a sad truth found among us today, as it was for those initial Jesus followers.
Secondly, let’s not miss that the resurrected Jesus comes offering Peace, which is the shalom of the Divine. The wholeness, fullness, and contentedness of Christ, in us and through us. Stunning. And Jesus reveals this by displaying the physical scars from living the way of shalom in a world of scapegoating, fear mongering, and empire enacting. When you live by the rule of love, the powers that be will likely flex and fit throw on you, yet we are to remain grounded in the grace and peace of Christ.
Next, we see the disciples “overjoyed.” This is a beautiful reference to a few chapter previous, chapter 16 of John’s gospel, in which Jesus had said to them:
“Very truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take a way your joy.”
Now, here they stand. Together. Again. In pure, uninterrupted joy. Stunning.
And Jesus charges them with being sent, just as the Father had sent him. And Jesus breathes on them, which takes us back to the first creation story, in which the Divine breathed into humanity the breath of Life. Here, in the New Creation, Jesus breaths the animating Spirit of shalom on his friends, on his students of The Way.
Can you feel the thickness and absolute gift that is washing over them in this breath? Grace into Peace. This is what sends them, and this is what they are to embody as they go into the world. As are we. Here. Today.
As we walk into this day, a new day, we are to walk in the Spirit of shalom. To embody and exhale the power of love and grace with each step we take and each word we speak. And friends, this is of pure joy. We go in exuberance and buoyancy, this is the giddy up in our going. It’s not out of guilt that we go, but in joy and peace, as that is what sent us. Brilliant.
May this new week, this day on the other side of the day, be filled with joy and shalom for each one of you. Until the next writing, Grace into Peace friends.
