People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.
CJalaluddinRumi
This poem by Rumi speaks of the promise of the early morning and our attending to it.I love the early morning; the fresh air, a hint of light in the eastern sky, the quiet and inactivity all around.I love the early morning...I just hate getting up!But on those occasions when I am called to the hospital or to a meeting in a distant place, I thoroughly enjoy the early morning…once I’m up.There is something special about those quiet minutes when the rest of the world is asleep.
Most mornings though I would rather sleep-in, gradually awaken without any alarm or hurry, and explore the secrets “the breeze at dawn” has to tell me in my dreams.Dreams have those strange qualities we always find so puzzling; animals change into people, places seem familiar but don’t look like anything we’ve ever seen, things happen that should be frightening and we feel no fear whatsoever, while other things happen that aren’t frightening at all and we’re terrified.Reality is upside down and often the whole dream world changes inside out, and after it is over we’re left with a feeling, an image, an experience that we’re not sure what it means or what to do with.
“The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you” Rumi said, “Don’t go back to sleep.”Mary awoke early, early that first morning and she wasn’t going to go back to sleep.Perhaps she had a dream... perhaps she woke abruptly from the blank depths... but somehow she was compelled to make that early trek to the cemetery, and what she found there was dream-like.Dream-like...in a way that opened her to a whole new world—more fantastic than Oz or Wonderland.A land that we’ve lived in ever since as Christians.
In the early grey haze and dark shadows Mary Magdalene makes her way to the tomb of Jesus, just making out the naked outlines of the tree branches above and the narrow winding pathway.She blinks when she sees the stone cover of the tomb is missing, not sure of what she is seeing.Can it be open?In a swirl, she finds herself back in town at the house where Peter and John were staying.She tells them of the opened tomb and they come.For some reason the small insignificant detail of John running faster, yet not going into the tomb before Peter is burned into her memory.The men go in and come out of the tomb and they head back to town... leaving us not sure of what they think of all this.What does this mean? Mary probably asked them, and the only sense she has is that John believed... but believed what?As John tells us “...he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.”Who knows what Peter thought, but in any case they left.They left her there alone.Left her to conclude that somebody stole Jesus’ body.The final insult.To be crucified was a disgraceful thing for a Jew ... to hang on a tree according to Leviticus was to be cursed... but to take away the only thing left that she could honor and love—his lifeless body! No wonder she weeps.Why does she stay there?What is she hoping for?To find a body somewhere & care for it?Just one of those dream-like confusing things.
Mary stays... and she weeps.Not a few moist tears that well up...not a quiet weeping with a few rhythmic motions of her shoulders— this is a wailing that involves the whole self, the whole body.This is a weep that leaves you with eyes swimming in blurry tears, a headache, and a runny nose.(Think about the last time you wept like that.What was it like to go into that darkness?Why do we so fear that kind of crying?What does crying like that do for us?)
Then the dream takes another strange turn.To confirm the sad truth that someone really did steal the body (that she didn’t just imagine it was gone), she stoops to look into the tomb again.Two angels in white ask her about her weeping.And then with no resolution to our wonderings about the angels, she turns and sees a gardener through her weeping eyes and pounding head.It’s only when the gardener calls her by name that he turns into Jesus and she recognizes him.Rabbouni!Teacher!
Then, we have the first post-resurrection teaching or command of Jesus the Christ: “Do not hold onto me.”Do not hold onto me.We can take that as simply a literal detail preserved in the tradition indicating the ethereal state of Jesus following his resurrectionC a spiritual being to be sure, not quite physical in the old way, yet something that could be grasped—held onto, but ought not to be.Then again, we can see this on a deeper level too.
“Do not hold onto me.”Why is that detail remembered and preserved in the story?How do we make sense of this whole dream-like experience of Mary and the others?My job is to make sense— make meaning out of these ancient stories and offer it to you.That’s why you come here isn’t it?I find that preaching on Easter is the most intimidating thing I do.I dread it in some ways because it is such a mystery, such a wonder that is beyond any of our categories or frames of reference.How do you capture the meaning of Easter?It’s like capturing the meaning of a dream.Like holding on to emptiness.
Poet Billy Collins writes about his experience of introducing poetry to his students.
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with a rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
Perhaps this poem and Jesus’ teaching is telling me to hold back some, refrain from beating a confession out of Easter...to refrain from nailing down a singular, specific meaning.
“Do not hold onto me” Jesus said.Maybe Jesus is telling Mary and you and me that he cannot be held or controlled.We cannot put Jesus into our mental boxes of clearly defined meanings and possibilities.We like to hold onto our understandings, our categories, our judgments and assumptions.If Mary had held onto Jesus, stopped him from ascending, the Easter story would be incomplete.By holding loosely onto Jesus, even letting him go, Jesus is free to offer his fullness to everyone, in all times and places.
In one of my former parishes there was an elderly couple.He was the outspoken one, the strong one, the one who took care of all important matters.She was frail both physically and emotionally.We all thought silently in the back of our heads that she would be the first to go.He was always caring for her every need.She quietly received and was in the background.Then suddenlly his health diminished and he passed away.In the congregation we all wondered how we were going to care for the widow.They had no children to watch over her and so we saw it as our job as a congregation.How could she survive this?If this loss didn’t kill her we’d be surprised, and if it didn’t, how in the world was this whisp of a person going to make it?What happened astounded us all.As he diminished, she gained strength.As he died, she came alive.She became this wonderful new person all by herself, in her own right, when not eclipsed by his powerful gravitation.
How does our holding onto actually prevent us from living into new life?Mary had to refrain, let go of her old special relationship, even her grief, in order for a new fullness to emerge.Mary had to let go of Jesus as her possession, as being dead, and as a man (he was now the Christ).
What is it that you hold on to?What is the risk of letting go?How are you waiting outside a tomb today?In what ways might you see beyond the darkness and loss to the dawn?
If you stay at the tomb long enough, and have the courage to let go, to weep, to refrain, you may find emerging a whole new kind of life.Beth Harrison tells of her giving birth to her daughter.Her whole pregnancy she feared the labor and delivery.She could feel this new life coming and there was no stopping it.She’d heard about the extreme pain and it frightened her.There was no stopping the baby’s coming, and no way around the pain that awaited before it emerged.Yet throughout the labor she kept having this illusion that if she could just “hold on,” the pain would stop, and this death-of-her and birth-of-her-child won’t happen. She was bracing herself so much, she hindered the process. Then a wise labor & delivery nurse told her “Beth, just let go...let go...” She did and a flood of relief and joy (and her child) came when she could.
She asks: “What has died for Mary Magdalene in this encounter?What has been born?When have you struggled to hold onto what needs to leave you to become what it is?What do you know of this dying/ rising/ birthing in the world you live in?What is struggling to be born in you?What needs to be let go of?How might the letting go, be the final and critical step before the birth can, indeed, happen?” It is in our pondering of those questions that the Resurrection comes alive in our experience.It becomes more than just some prescribed meaning or theology given from a pulpit…more than a preacher’s take on it.For Christ is here, in our spirits & souls doing that life-giving work…even if we don’t understand it.
“The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.Don’t go back to sleep.”Mary found her secret in that dream-like morning of all mornings.May we be as open as she, as willing to weep, and to refrain at times... to allow the new life Christ so wants to bring to emerge with the clarity of the waking dawn.So be it.Amen.
