Resurrection happens in the darkness. The inky night is the crèche for the new life that God has brought into the world.
Resurrection happens sometime in the still hours between night falling and the sun rising. There seem to have been no trumpets nor organs nor angelic choirs making a joyful noise.
Resurrection happens when no one is looking. We only realize it after it has happened. We encounter the results of resurrection, like a stunning messenger sitting on a stone rolled away or an empty tomb.
In our peculiar world of life and worship this year, it is helpful to remember that resurrection comes anyway. Even with no one to see it. Even with no sound to announce it. Even with no brilliant light to reveal it. Even in our homes, whether we had flowers or not, music or not, candles or not. Even when separated from one another.
Resurrection comes anyway.
It comes in the isolation of those who cannot be with others in this pandemic, for everyone’s safety. It comes in the moments of fear and anxiety as we watch and worry over the world around us – and hear news of 
those we know and love who have been directly affected. It comes for those who are working night and day in hospitals all over, to bring care, relief, and healing to those who suffer. Resurrection comes to those who are seriously ill, to those who hang between life and death, and even to those who die.
those we know and love who have been directly affected. It comes for those who are working night and day in hospitals all over, to bring care, relief, and healing to those who suffer. Resurrection comes to those who are seriously ill, to those who hang between life and death, and even to those who die.Resurrection comes anyway.
Resurrection is not an antidote, a way to fix what is wrong in our lives, whether physically, socially, morally. It isn’t a stop-gap or a get out of jail free card. Resurrection does not avoid death or brokenness. It enters it completely. And transforms it into something new.
This is what’s different in the stories of the dead being raised in Scripture and the story of Jesus’ resurrection. They are brought back to a life that they have lived and known. Jesus is raised to newness of life – to a transformed life. Paul talks about the resurrection of Jesus as a spiritual body – whatever on earth that might mean – but we at least can say that it is different than anything we have known. The gospels describe encounters which are both like the Jesus they have known and unlike the Jesus they have known – including that he is often not recognized at first.
God is up to something remarkable in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Something unexpected and unprecedented. Jesus shows us the life and love of God throughout his life, in his healing and teaching, in his signs and wonders, and in his times of prayer and quiet. Jesus speaks life into a dying world.
Even in his death, Jesus brings the life of God with him. Jesus joins each of us in that universally common human condition of death. And that’s it, we would expect, end of story – that’s the inevitable part.
But then God acts. Anyway.
Inexplicably, unexpectedly, out of overwhelming love, God does a new thing – and life bursts forth from death, that cannot contain it. And we are carried with Jesus in this movement, too, from life into death and now into new life. We are made one with Jesus’ life, his death, and his resurrection. And so he is the first fruits of those who are born to new life, but we all become heirs with him in newness of life.
And so we can shout ALLELUIA! even in the midst of pandemic. Even in the midst of fear. Even in the midst of death. It has always been so. Resurrection has always and can only take place in the midst of such moments. Even when we cannot imagine it and when we do not expect it, even when we cannot see it, hear it, or imagine it, resurrection comes anyway.
What happened in the cool, dark, quiet of that night? No one can say. But the next morning at dawn, the women at the tomb first, and then later the other disciples, experienced something so remarkable in their encounter with the risen Christ that it changed everything. It transformed their lives.
When sleep comes the world appears one way; as we awake in the resurrection, everything changes. Life that will last, given for all people. God has done this mighty act. Let us rejoice! ALLELUIA!
Perhaps set right up against his birth, this is Jesus at his most vulnerable, most ordinary. While the circumstances of death are particular, the fact of death is not. It is significantly part of our human identity – to know that it ends.
One way we think about this night is to focus on the meal that Jesus shared with his followers, taking bread and breaking it, taking wine and filling the cup, and declaring “This is my body. This is my blood.” Jesus gave a gift to his disciples and friends of a meal to prepare them for what was to come. Food for the journey. In days to come, the disciples would meet together again and again in this meal, being assured of Jesus’ love for them, learning that Jesus could be with them in a new way. To this day, that encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist nourishes and fills us for the work that we are called to do as the Body of Christ in the world.
Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.” Not only that we should serve one another, to wash one another’s feet, but he goes on to say “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
do a bit with this. I mean, imagine that dinner party in Bethany at Mary, Martha, and Lazarus’ house. It’s familiar and attractive in one way – heartwarming to see a supper of close friends that is, at first glance, a quiet moment in this Holy Week procession. But look closer.
The branches we wave every year (many of us substituted local branches for palms this year, of course, which is far more common historically for Christians outside of tropical regions anyway) are usually kept through most of the year and then burned to make the ashes for Ash Wednesday. A reminder that whatever we imagine victory to be, we are bounded by this life – ashes for us are a sign of mortality and penitence on Ash Wednesday – and victory or success by our standards may be elusive. That’s part of what that means; there may be yet a deeper meaning.
In some traditions, in some times and places, the Saturday prior to Palm Sunday focuses on the raising of Lazarus (we had those readings recently in the Sunday lectionary). Lazarus, four days dead, is called back to the land of the living. “Lazarus, come forth.”
rank liturgist
Not for solace only 