We
have arrived at a place for a series of days that will mean what they mean. Like most days or series of days this is a
time of hope. Hope that what is to come
out of them will come out of them and we will know and receive what is good and
fair.
Hope
can be very ordinary, like hoping to get some task done or like when I go the
garden and I hope to see what eluded me the day before or was not there. A tomato has ripened. A new flower has
bloomed. The snake that was there
yesterday will not be there today. All
are so ordinary we may miss that they are hopeful places.
In
the Gospel for this day we come on hope.
It is ordinary. The women hope
for what as they go to the grave of Jesus?
They hope to spice a body, embalm it.
Hoping to show devotion and care for a formative friend, teacher
perhaps, who is no longer able to receive them.
Yet they can feel that connection one feels when you visit the sight of
shock and ending so you may remember beginnings instead. Perhaps this is sad hope, but still it is
hope. Somewhere in a recess there is a hope
to heal, to find a place that is whole.
What
they get is surprise, disturbance, a sighting from another reality. Two men,
dazzling we are told, no corpse, an odd question.
"Why do you look
for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he
told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed
over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again." Luke 24:5-7
We
treat this as hopeful vision, those of us who believe or want to believe. Did they? Surely it is confusion that first sets in, then
perhaps the hope to remember correctly.
Then perhaps an extraordinary hope settles.
Then they remembered
his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to
all the rest. Luke 24:8-9
By
this point this other hope has settled on them.
Hard to believe by its out of the ordinariness. And that is how it is received, hard to
believe.
I
find in the far reaches of my memory being told my Grandmother had cancer, it
was not able to be operated on. There
was no hope. Why I was told this at age
eleven I am not sure. Sometime later we
were told it had disappeared. How I wondered out loud? The doctor cannot account for it. Grandmother said it was a miracle. Was
it? Do they happen? I am told by some they do happen. Was this one?
Maybe if you have that kind of hope and no science that can explain it
away.
But these words
seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. Luke 24:10
The
followers will get past this moment.
They will learn women are to be trusted with deep truths. They will see that God chooses whom God
chooses to break good news in upon us.
Just because we lack the capacity to hope for the extraordinary in a
moment does not put it out of reach.
It
makes me want to be careful what I consider an idle tale. Sometimes the deepest mysteries of life are
placed there so we can trip over extraordinary hope. Like when someone or we die. Like when we
find late life love. Like when someone
says, “I believe you can do this.” And it stretches the best of us.
But
maybe first we need to see the ordinary hope in a garden, in the mixed
fragrance of spices, in the willingness from sadness to care.
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