Throughout the season of Lent, we strip away some of the illusions that inevitably accumulate around the edges of our spiritual lives: the preoccupations, certainties, and distractions that leave us insular, lonely, and afraid. All the wisdom of the world that we pick up as we go about our daily lives chokes out a full experience of reality. We lose sight of the full humanity of ourselves and one another. We forget that God is present in all, to all, through all. With hardened hearts, we become content simply if we can exist with a modicum of comfort and ease: privately, selfishly.
We then spend Holy Week telling the story of Christ’s suffering and death again and again until our hearts have nothing else left but to be broken open — and if they were already open, if they are always broken, we see that God is with us in all of that, too. We listen to the resonances between the Passion and the world around us, and we find the senseless suffering of innocents to be evermore filled with holiness, and that any time we are in fear or pain, Christ is close at-hand.
All the illusions of our separation fall away, and we can almost touch how close Christ is to the cheap brutality that so fills out our world. We can almost believe that we are not alone, and we can nearly taste the urgency with which Christ commanded us to love one another in his place. There is something real in that.
Now, here, on the other side of the empty tomb, we find ourselves searching for a resonance which may be rather more elusive than those we discover each year in Holy Week. We are invited here to let our well-earned cynicism and the armour of futility fall away from our hearts, and to let ourselves surrender to the glory and joy of the Resurrection.
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We are, in fact, decent and good people who let ourselves be affected by the suffering of the world, and our faith truly calls us to stand in solidarity and kinship with everyone who knows sorrow, anxiety, or despair, but that is not where the story ends. That is where our faith begins, that is where the experience of reality allows us also to proclaim that there is new life even in the times of darkness, and even in the face of evil.
A lot of us have been taught and traumatized to never be so vulnerable as to be joyous. Perhaps we have become convinced that pleasure is, itself, an illusion of this world, or that happiness inevitably comes before a fall, but this is a wicked sort of falsehood, a sign and symptom of our own deep wounds at the level of individuals, families, and whole societies.
We are so alienated from our own deepest longings, from our bodies, and from one another, that we have no idea how to wallow fully and completely in delight. We have forgotten how to sing in a way that lets our voice be heard, we have learned to hide away any sincere smile for fear of what might be able to make it fade. Christ wore no such armour, and as we continue to let go of those things which diminish us, these defenses must fall, too.
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Look around at those who are here among you today through no effort of your own. See a little more beauty in the world than you might let yourself otherwise observe. Linger for a little while in those places where you feel hopeful.
Joy is not a trapping of the pollyanna, but is instead only possible when we are truly able to take pleasure in that which really is — everything else is the illusory delight of the drunken boast, which is futile and forgotten when the real world returns. We find our joy in things which endure, and it is something that not even death can destroy.
How good it is to have known one another at all, and, so, too, ever to have been known. How blessed we are to have had Creation open itself up before us in a way that we can share with in delight. We are Creation experiencing itself, and we are not alone in this, being neither separated from God nor from one another. Everything that is good is a part of us, and everything that is a part of us makes up our wholeness, and God has called our wholeness good, also.
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I am no great practitioner of joy, and it is as elusive for me as anyone else, but I know that I must let myself pursue it, and find ways to savour it when I find it. I urge you likewise to let yourself admit where there is new life in your midst, rather than hiding behind the familiar and haughty comforts of holding yourself at an arm’s length from the world. Let yourself dance or sing or love if ever you are graced with the inspiration so to do. These are holy things every bit as much as the wounds of Christ himself, and sure and certain signs of God’s much-needed presence in the world every bit as much as the empty tomb.
What a gift it is to join together with one another and to proclaim that Christ is risen, and that trampling down death by death, he has set us free to really, truly live. This gift of life is one we share with those who are in suffering and doubt as much as those who are in true joy and real love. It is a gift to band together with all our dear friends and lovers and to proclaim forever that we will no more cower in isolation, nor hide ourselves away in fear, but let our hearts be broken open, as God was broken open for us, and as Christ gave his body and his Spirit to sustain us all.
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May you find joy and cherish it, really, truly loving that which calls to you from deep within your broken heart, and evermore be brought into the Kingdom of God which even now has claimed you as its own. May you see the face of God in every human being, and even in the darkness of your innermost self. May you be raised to new life in a world which sorely needs you, and may your hands birth Resurrection wherever you may go.