I’ve been listening in this week. You need to understand that by listening in I don’t mean I’ve been eavesdropping, or at least not on purpose. In the ancient spirited words of Saint Irenaeus, I simply mean that I’ve been trying to stay awake to the glory of God. This seems like a good and sensible thing to do right now, to expect that God is going to pass me by in some majestically eye-popping glorious way. After all, it was only 7 days ago that I celebrated Easter, 7 days ago that I went to the tomb in the wee hours with the women, 7 days ago that I expected to see nothing there but a huge stone sitting on top of Jesus, crushing our hopes and hearts into darkness, 7 days ago that I asked, “Who is going to roll it away for us?” 7 days since I discovered God already had, because this is how God works: God gives life to the dead. 7 days since the angel delivered the news: “I know what you are looking for—Jesus. He is not here. He has risen and is going ahead of you to Galilee. Go there yourselves. There you will see him, just as he told you.”
So for 7 days now I’ve been listening in, looking out, trying to pay attention to the glory of God, to catch a glimpse of that resurrection power going before me.
We know this, or at least we ought to, that prayer is not just a matter of words, like we cobble together some words that sound thankful or painful or joyful, babble them off to God and call it prayer. Prayer is also a matter of posture and position. It was said that C.H. Spurgeon, a well-known British preacher of the mid 1800s had a faded spot of rug in his study that was practically worn through to the wood underneath. The spot is where he prayed. He prayed so often on his knees that you could see his prayers being worked out on the rug. For my part, there is a particular Jewish prayer practice that I’ve been trying to use this week, to help me dwell in Easter a bit longer. I stand on my feet, I reach my arms out, I open my eyes wide, lift my head up, and pray, “O Lord, King of the Universe, forever blessed, my eyes are open to you that I may see your purpose and love in all things. See the suffering of your children today through me that grace may leap freely from my palms and my head never droop in shame, for you are Lord, King of the Universe, forever blessed, amen.”
There is no question that to pray with your eyes open is to pray as someone who expects God to pass by in some majestically eye-popping glorious way, someone who believes their prayer can powerfully roll away a stone or two.
So I’ve been listening in this week, trying to keep my eyes open, and this is what I’ve heard: I’ve heard that this past Monday in a soccer stadium in Kigali, Rwanda thousands of people gathered to mark the anniversary of one of the most heinous acts ever committed against humanity. It was 20 years ago this month that roughly 1 million Tutsi people were killed, mostly at the hand of their Hutu neighbors and mostly by being butchered with machetes and hammers, and it all happened inside three month’s time. It was a state campaign, not unlike the one that took Jesus down or the one that sparked the Holocaust under Hitler. A deadly mixture of government power and an ideology that said some people are more deserving than others. In this case, a group of extreme Hutu Rwandans deciding they are more deserving of life than their fellow Tutsi Rwandans. We need know that this decision wasn’t made overnight. It rarely ever is. You see, in the early 1990s the Hutus represented 85% of Rwanda’s population, while the Tutsis covered only 14%. With one exception these numbers were not much different than they’d always been. The one exception was that there was a time when the Tutsis, though the minority, they ruled the majority. Politics being what it is however, power changes hands, and when it does, the new majority can be ruthless. Fear of having to play the minority again someday, the sudden power of privilege, can cause yesterday’s victims to become today’s perpetrators. And so it went in Rwanda in 1994—a deadly massacre, genocide.
In Kigali this past Monday the story of the Rwandan Genocide was retold, as it has been every year for two decades, with masses of mourners carrying banners that read, “Remember.” Remember the countless slughtered Tutsis, remember the thousands of Hutu rebels who stood up to their government, who called their actions criminal, and lost their lives for the innocent. Remember the other countries of the world that for so long just stood by denying responsibility. As one person observed of the event, “It seems almost cruel. Is it really healing to keep reopening a wound?”[1]
It reminds me of a sermon that Peter preached not too many days after Easter—50 to be exact. During this time Jesus has appeared to his disciples on many occasions. Whatever shame they may have had related to his death, whatever feelings of remorse Peter may still have been carrying around for having denied Jesus, all that should have been put to rest by now. No need to dwell on Good Friday anymore. It’s all Easter all the time now. Or is it? For with this sermon Peter seems to feel the need to talk about Good Friday a bit more. He gets up in his pulpit and blasts out, “Fellow Israelites, listen carefully to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man thoroughly accredited by God to you—the miracles and wonders and signs that God did through him, we all know about them—this Jesus, following the deliberate and well-thought-out plan of God, was betrayed by people who took the law into their own hands and then put Jesus into your hands. And you pinned him to a cross and killed him.”
I think it’s appropriate to point out that in addressing his “fellow Israelites,” Peter is addressing those with whom he shares not just national identity with but also those with whom he has shared home and temple and family with. He is speaking to those he has broken bread with and sat in the pew with, those who have struggled with him through ups and downs and ins and outs. And Peter wants his fellow Israelites to know that from the very beginning it was God’s desire for them to have Jesus, so that in having Jesus they might, in their homes and temples and down and outs, have the presence of miracles and wonders and signs of life. “But some of us let things get away from us,” Peter admits. “The power of the miracles went to our heads and we handed Jesus over to be used by people whose motives were self-serving and without grace, and when Jesus would have nothing to do with such people, they put him to death. We put him to death.”
In other words, remember this, Peter tells us. Remember what you have been capable of. Remember the terror you have done, remember the places to which you have gone, and more than this, remember that God has brought you back from such places, remember that in raising Jesus from the dead, God has raised you, too.
I find it’s possible to get up on Easter morning, to hear the proclamation that Jesus has been raised from the dead and completely miss Easter, because Easter isn’t for those who just show up. The women went to the tomb with their spices in hand. They were probably dressed in the appropriate outfits for the occasion. Like you and I wearing our Easter best, they were wearing black, the official sign of mourning. They showed up at the tomb knowing exactly what they were supposed to do. But behold, the tomb was empty. “You are looking for Jesus. He is not here! He has risen,” a messenger tells them. “Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of them to Galilee. He will meet you there, just as he told you.” And the women, we are told, ran away and said not a word to anyone.
A few mornings ago I was in my kitchen making breakfast when from around the corner came my daughter, Lillian. I was still wearing my pajamas and sucking down coffee in an effort to wake up. She was her usual cheery, already full-dressed self.
“Good morning sweetheart.”
“Good morning, Daddy. Do you like my shirt? It’s my nice, beautiful, handsome shirt.”
“Yes, and you look so beautiful in it,” I said smiling at her.
“It’s new,” she announced.
I looked the shirt over. “That’s not a new shirt,” I told her. “You got that from Reese.”
Now Reese and Lillian go to pre-school together. Reese is a year older than Lillian and every now and then she shares her hand-me-downs with Lillian, which Lillian loves. In fact, if given the option between wearing Reese’s hand-me-downs and something brand new from the store that her parents spent good money on, Lillian will choose the hand-me-downs.
“Your shirt is an old shirt that belonged to Reese,” I told her again.
“Yes, but she gave it to me, so now it’s a new shirt again.”
I thought, if ever there was a definition of Easter and how God works, that was it. It was a nice, beautiful, handsome new shirt, not unlike a majestically, eye-popping glorious stone rolled away.
[1] From The New Yorker magazine, April 21, 2014, p. 31.
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