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Dear saints,
As a teenager, I can recall a news interview on television with the Syrian foreign minister in the midst of a rapidly escalating bombing campaign that was causing devastation in his capital city. The news anchor asked, "Are you worried for your capital this evening, minister?", to which the minister replied, "Sir, we have been here in the city of Damascus for over 10,000 years. No, I am not worried for our capital."
Of course, each of us has our own peculiar perspective on time. I had a conversation on Sunday with a couple who have young kids, about how when children are very young time is counted in hours not days, and then as they ready themselves for take-off to fly the nest, time seems to move like lightning. Twenty-four hours passes just the same, but we can have such varied orientations to it.
Having lived on three different continents and spent a fair bit of time on a fourth, from my own anecdotal catalogue of experience, the United States is by far the busiest place I have known. Japan and South Korea might have an even worse relationship to over-working but we give them a pretty good run for their money - literally - because we can all too often find ourselves running for the sake of economic gain.
Some people run for money because they have no choice - to feed their children, to try to pay the rent, to get by. You may have seen in local news recently data released by City Hall that puts into stark relief how much we live two sets of lives either side of I-20. Life expectancy on the south side of that divide can be as much as 20 years shorter than if you live on the north, and while the percentage of children living in poverty north of I-20 is 2%, it is as high as 91% in some areas to the south. There is not a wealth gap in metro Atlanta, there is a chasm.
Others run for money because that is what they have been encouraged to do, over and over by tens of thousands of hours of conditioning, explicit and implied, forming them to lead lives that are inherently oriented more to their net worth than they are to the common good. We have built cities - this one and across the nation - whose major roads move us by or around neighborhoods we never have to see, let alone visit, creating what has been called an 'intentional obliviousness' to the social and economic lives of others.
Good Friday and the Triduum - the great Three Days that lead us from the cross to the resurrection - are an opportunity for us to interrupt time, to pause our pursuit, and ask how we might wish to be formed otherwise. The worship life of the Church attempts that interruption through a succession of words and songs and prayers that are deliberate in their distinctive otherness. Last night we 'stripped the altar', removing from the sanctuary the symbols of Christ's presence, even washing that laid-bear stone table clean. Today, the altar cross is shrouded in black cloth, and we depart our hour of worship in silence. On Easter morning, while it is still dark - mirroring the words of our gospel this Easter Day - we will light a fire in the courtyard and process into a darkened church. It is all rather odd and is trying all it can to point to the strange love of a God who is otherwise to the hubris that fools us into believing that we know the ways of the world. It is meant to be disruptive.
So, what about you? What do you want to interrupt in your life? And what pathways of inequity do you long to see disrupted in our world?
The presence of the risen Lord on Easter morn is not the appearance of a panacea we are to receive as grateful and passive beneficiaries. God does not make all things new by anesthetizing us to the struggles of the world. The Holy One who rises from the grave stands before us, as before the first apostles, as a body marked by violence. The scars are not removed from his risen form but remain, and as such we are confronted in the resurrection by the memory of how we are participants in the crucifixion of the poor and oppressed. In spite of all of those Baptist hymns to the contrary, Jesus' blood does not wash us clean of our sins, our memories of hurt and failure; instead, the marked body of God is the opening that God alone creates for us to redeem the harm we have caused and the good we have failed to do. The resurrection bears witness to the power of grace - the space we need to live into a new reality no longer fearful or avoidant of our past but empowered to set our feet upon the path to forgiveness. Easter is the day the victim returns to call an end to the economy of victim-making, the only risen life that holds the power for us all to be set free.
Grace and mercy to you all this Easter weekend, however you are marking time. Behold the Lamb of God, coming to change everything.
Peace,
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