Maybe it's good that I held onto the cross a little longer. Death seems to be everywhere this week - spring going back into hiding, all the news, some things unexpected.

It's one of the largest questions of faith for me and I don't have the answer and anxiety strikes had if I think too much about it. The ending of the known - and maybe this is why we cling so desperately to life, life at all costs even - because it is something we cannot know as our present selves. And maybe that's some of my trouble with the resurrection because it feels like too easy an answer.

Something I read about faith recently spoke of it is as letting ourselves fall into the darkness of God - and maybe death is that ultimate falling.

There is in God (some say)
A deep, but dazzling darkness; As men here
Say it is late and dusky, becayse they
See not clear.
O for that night! where I in him
Might live invisible and dim.

-The Night (John iii.2), Henry Vaughn

still standing at the tomb...

It's a cold, grey Easter day and I'm too much effected by it's dreariness - and probably my own weariness as well - to appreciate the fullness of the meaning of the cross and the empty tomb.
I think I am still standing by the rock that has been rolled away, looking into the darkness for the One who is no longer there - but there are no angels to greet me and no divine appearances - save glimpses in the warmth of Easter greetings among friends.

I'm not sure I'm the doubting Thomas because I have made it this far by faith, but maybe my own spiritual resurrection is a little more slow in coming - not always fitting in so neatly with the liturgical calendar. I need to stay a moment longer at the tomb, in the shadow of the cross because for as much hope as there is in the promise of new life, I need to affirm God's presence in the darkness as well.

"Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani" - I feel almost more forsaken at the empty tomb than at the foot of the cross. The risen Christ feels more distant - almost in a way like the ending to the book of Job - when after the incredible conversation with God in the whirlwind in which Job is more or less found faithful (though interestingly his questions aren't answered) - the writers insist upon ending the story by restoring Job to his former riches and blessings as a reward for his faithfulness (ironically defaulting to the reward-punishment paradigm against which Job's faithfulness is proven) almost as though the suffering had not happened - as though the new blessing somehow makes up for the suffering that has been endured. So also the resurrection can come too quickly - and turn our eyes away from the cross and all it means - and as in the words of Jesus Christ Superstar, we get "too much heaven on our minds."

I don't want to downplay the resurrection - I understand its significance, but there is a certain victory in the cross as well that I don't want to lose. This broken and rejected God is a God that has truly and fully become human - a God before whom I am not ashamed to bring all my failings - a God who understands firsthand what suffering is and is fully present to it.

Maybe I am a little like Mary Magdalene in the sense that it is difficult for me to recognize the risen Lord even though today He stands right in front of me. I can't see for the brightness and I'm not a little frightened by the holiness of it all. It's not that I want to linger in the darkness and the mourning, but that it takes the cross and the tomb to draw me through to the other side.