(a reposting, heartfelt and still true)
It had been one of those nights when it felt as if, with enough of a shove, the entire world might split at the seams, coming apart, with no one nearby who was big enough to pick up the pieces.
The day before had been Good Friday, the day the events of an unholy week, full of fury, anger, pathos, competing agendas — and dare we say, love? — had culminated in the murder of God. It was the day ambiguity about Jesus had melted away to reveal with startling clarity who this God is, this God who we say we worship-obey-serve-honor-and-love. It was the day we came to understand what was meant when the scripture proclaimed, “He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word.”
This is the God who will die to save creation. This is the God who declares victory, not only over death, but through it. This is the God who clearly rejects human conceptions and preoccupations with power maintained by threat, violence, and manipulation, and who declares compassion and forgiveness through the force of grace.
This is the God who, though transcendent and beyond human understanding, chose to take on a human face and walk among us that we might see the meaning of God’s glory, and that we might comprehend the depth of God’s love and intentions for our lives. This is the God who does not hold against us our complicity in seeking to destroy God’s purposes or the One whom God loves but opens the way for redemption and “sustains all things by his powerful word,” words like “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
Hunkered down on Silent Saturday, stunned and disbelieving, we endured his absence and grappled with fear over a present and future without him. God was silent and beyond our reach until yesterday came – and the Resurrection. Yesterday came and became the astonishing day we will spend the rest of our lives pondering and living into, the unpredictable day we find being born within ourselves. It is the day of Love revealed anew into God’s world, the day that led to this day, this day after the Resurrection.
It is on this meaningful Monday, as it will be on every other day of our lives as his disciples, when the truth about this God who comes-loves-heals-saves-redeems-dies-and-yet-lives sends us into the world, down paths and streets, byways and highways, sustained by his word, and proclaiming God’s love and grace to all who will hear, living the Resurrection with all that we are that God might become known and resident in our being and in our time – to God’s everlasting glory. Amen.
Grace and peace, Bob Guffey
