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YOU WILL NOT HAVE MY HATE

I wonder how many people remember the name ‘Antoine Leiris’.  On November 13^th, 2015, his wife, Helene, was killed by terrorists while attending a rock concert at the Bataclan Theatre in Paris, in the deadliest attack on France since World War II.  Three days later, Antoine Leiris wrote an open letter addressed directly to his wife’s killers, which he posted on Facebook.  In it, he wrote, ‘On Friday night you stole the life of an exceptional person, the love of my life, the mother of my son [Melvil], but you will not have my hate’ [See the book: ‘You Will Not Have My Hate’, Antoine Leiris].

He refused to be cowed or to let his seventeen-month-old son’s life be defined by Helene’s murder.  He refused to let the killers have their way: ‘For as long as he lives, this little boy will insult you with his happiness and freedom’.

It was an extraordinary thing to be able to write after such a tragic event, but he stands in a long line of  people who have been able to rise above huge personal tragedies and wrongs to be able to forgive those who have grievously harmed them or their loved ones, and been able to respond with ‘You will not have my hate’.

Yesterday, as we commemorated Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, we heard of the crowds, or the disciples, or the followers, depending on which Gospel you read, shouting, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David!  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!  Hosanna in the highest heaven!’ [Matt. 21:9].  And yet, by the Friday, at the Trial, some of those same people were shouting, ‘Crucify him’.

Jesus’ response throughout Holy Week, as throughout all of his ministry, is ‘You will not have my hate’.  Even when he is angry, as at the overturning of the tables of the money-changers and sellers in the Temple, there is no hate.

Even when he is betrayed, by Judas with a kiss, there is no hate.

Even when his disciples forsake him, or fall asleep in the Garden of Gethsemene, there is no hate.

Even when he is arrested and unjustly taken for trial, or when Peter denies him three times, or when Pilate condemns him, or the soldiers mock him, or the crowds revile him, or the man being crucified next to him taunts him, there is no hate.

There is only love.  To Judas, he says, ‘Friend, do what you are here to do’ [Matt. 26:50].  He responds graciously to the High Priest.  He looks, I am sure we can say, with love, at Peter after the cock crows for the third time [Lk. 22:61].  In the same way, he responds to Pilate, and on the Cross says, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing’ [Lk. 23:34].

We live in a world which seems to be consumed by hate.  Hatred of those of different faiths, or different brands of one faith; hatred of those with different beliefs, or politics, or race, or gender, or whatever.  Hatred which is so easily amplified by social media and the easy access to information and news from all over the world.  And, sadly, we are not immune from hatred within the Church.

Can we draw on the wells of our faith, on the love of God which we see in Jesus, on the examples of great love which we have seen and experienced in our own lives, and discover within ourselves the ability to respond with love to the situations in which we find ourselves?  Can we learn to live lives which proclaim, ‘You will not have my hate’?

Some will know Canon Bill Vanstone’s wonderful poem, often now used as a hymn, from the end of his book, ‘Love’s Endeavour, Love’s Expense’.

Morning glory, starlit sky,
Leaves in springtime, swallows’ flight,
Autumn gales, tremendous seas,
Sounds and scents of summer night;

Soaring music, tow’ring words,
Art’s perfection, scholar’s truth,
Joy supreme of human love,
Memory’s treasure, grace of youth;

Open, Lord, are these, Thy gifts,
Gifts of love to mind and sense;
Hidden is love’s agony,
Love’s endeavour, love’s expense.

Love that gives gives ever more,
Gives with zeal, with eager hands,
Spares not, keeps not, all outpours,
Ventures all, its all expends.

Drained is love in making full;
Bound in setting others free;
Poor in making many rich;
Weak in giving power to be.

Therefore He Who Thee reveals
Hangs, O Father, on that Tree
Helpless; and the nails and thorns
Tell of what Thy love must be.

Thou art God; no monarch Thou
Thron’d in easy state to reign;
Thou art God, Whose arms of love
Aching, spent, the world sustain.

[Or (when used as a hymn):

Morning glory, starlit sky,

soaring music, scholar’s truth,

flight of swallows, autumn leaves,

memory’s treasure, grace of youth:

Open are the gifts of God,

gifts of love to mind and sense;

hidden is love’s agony,

love’s endeavour, love’s expense.

Love that gives, gives ever more,

gives with zeal, with eager hands,

spares not, keeps not, all outpours,

ventures all its all expends.

Drained is love in making full,

bound in setting others free,

poor in making many rich,

weak in giving power to be.

Therefore he who shows us God

helpless hangs upon the tree;

and the nails and crown of thorns

tell of what God’s love must be.

Here is God: no monarch he,

throned in easy state to reign;

here is God, whose arms of love

aching, spent, the world sustain.]

SHAME & THE GOSPELS

In my role as Assistant Archdeacon, I was recently leading the Institution and Induction as Vicar of someone who had been Priest-in-Charge of a Parish for some years.  So the Institution, which took about ten minutes, was ‘tacked on’ to the beginning of an evening Baptism Service.  The Church was full of young adults, student age and above, as well as some older people – I wasn’t quite the oldest person there, but not far off.

Four late teens to mid-twenties were being baptised by total immersion, in a large temporary Baptism Pool placed at the front of the Church, and it was an joyful and prayerful and entirely satisfactory occasion.

Each of the four candidates gave their testimony, some written out, others extempore, and they moved me to tears as well as laughter.

Some talked about their upbringing in Christian families, and how they had drifted away as teenagers – for a couple, there were no other young people in their family Churches, or they’d got distracted by ‘The cares of the world… and the desire for other things’ [Mk 4:19]

Each had a wonderful story of how they’d stumbled into Church.  Some had been meaning to look for a Church, and then had somehow found a way into this one.  One, who had felt a desire to find a Church, came downstairs in his pyjamas on Sunday morning after his first night at University, to discover a flat-mate all dressed and ready for Church, and thought this must be a sign that he should go, too.

They expressed feelings of emptiness, of something missing in their lives, a God-shaped hole, if you like.

But they also expressed feelings of loneliness, of not being good enough to be worthy of God’s love, and, especially of shame.

Shame is an interesting phenomenon of human existence.  I suspect that most people carry a burden of shame with them in their daily lives – that could be for quite small things which happened years ago, or for major crimes and mistakes, or for the way we have treated people, or whatever.  Shame is very real.

And we live in a world which thrives on shame – as it probably always has – but through social media, the press, and so on, shame is at the forefront of what people see and read.

It made me wonder what Jesus has to say about it?  And the answer is – extremely little; in fact, astonishingly little.

It’s quite complicated to count, because some of the words which are translated as ‘shame’ are actually more like ‘dishonour’, or ‘insult’.

There are a couple of comments made by the Gospel narrators, such as that in Luke 13:17, after Jesus had healed a crippled woman on the Sabbath Day, and a conversation arose in which Jesus reprimanded the Leader of the Synagogue for caring for his animals on the Sabbath, but criticising his healing of this crippled woman.  We’re told that ‘All his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing’.

In Luke 9 [:26], Jesus comments, ‘Those who are ashamed of me and of my words, of them the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes in his glory’ – but that’s a different use of the concept of shame from that with which we would usually associate it.

There are a couple of occasions when shame is mentioned in Parables: in Luke 16 [:3], the Unjust Steward was ‘ashamed to beg’; and in Luke 14 [:9], when commenting on those who jostled for the best seats at banquets, Jesus recommends taking the lowest seat and being invited higher, rather than taking a high seat and ‘in shame… start to take the lowest place’.

What is even more surprising to me than the paucity of mentions of shame are the occasions when Jesus doesn’t talk about shame at all.  In the conversation around the woman caught in adultery in John 8, for example – no mention of shame by Jesus.  ‘Sin’, yes. ‘Shame’, no!

Or the woman with haemhorrages who touched the hem of his garment and was called out by Jesus, who says, ‘Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well’ [Matt. 9:20-22; c.f., Mk 5:25-34, Lk. 8:43-48].

Or the woman – all women, notice – the woman described as being ‘a sinner’ in Luke 7 [:36-50], who had brought the alabaster jar of ointment, and bathed Jesus’ feet with her tears, and dried them with her hair, the criticism of whom led to the Parable of the Two Debtors, and who is told, ‘Your sins are forgiven’.  Jesus talks of love and forgiveness, but not of shame.

There are more mentions of shame as we go through the rest of the New Testament, of course, but it is certainly the case that Jesus doesn’t talk to individuals about shame, and neither does he encourage people to feel shame.

So, where does that leave us, and those young adults who expressed their feelings of shame at their Baptism Service?

If we have a sense of shame, however illogical that shame is, it is very difficult to overcome it, to grow through it, to trust in God that we are acceptable in his sight, to trust in the freedom which is granted to us through Jesus’ death and Resurrection.

And it seems that, in our minds, one dollop of shame outweighs ten dollops of love or forgiveness.  We have to learn to hear the words of love, rather than dwell on the things which cause us to be ashamed.  We have to trust that we are known by God, and yet still loved by God.  In the words of Mother Julian of Norwich, ‘In our own sight we do not stand: in God’s sight we do not fall’.

And we could do worse that to dwell on George Herbert’s wonderful poem, Love.

Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack’d anything.

‘A guest,’ I answer’d, ‘worthy to be here:’
Love said, ‘You shall be he.’
‘I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on Thee.’
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
‘Who made the eyes but I?’

‘Truth, Lord; but I have marr’d them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.’
‘And know you not,’ says Love, ‘Who bore the blame?’
‘My dear, then I will serve.’
‘You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘and taste my meat.’
So I did sit and eat.

CHRISTEN UND HEIDEN – CHRISTIANS & OTHERS

 Since 1986, when I was studying in Germany around the time of the fortieth anniversary of the martyrdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I’ve always tried to remember him, especially at this time of the year, as he was murdered by the Nazis seventy-eight years ago this Sunday, on April 9^th, 1945, a few days before the end of the Second World War.

Bonhoeffer was a German theologian, writer, theological educator and a Pastor of the German Lutheran Church, and particularly of that part of the Church which became known as the Bekennende Kirche, the Confessing Church, those who stood up to Hitler.  He was even peripherally involved in the failed 1944 Stauffenberg Plot to assassinate Hitler.

I remember the depth of his teaching, the horror of his death, and the glory of his legacy of theology and reflection which is pondered on and taught to this day.

Towards the end of his life, whilst in prison, and almost for the first time, he started writing poetry, and we have ten poems which were among the ‘Letters & Papers from Prison’ which survive from that time.

You have a copy of one, ‘Christen und Heiden’ (See below), Christians and non-Christians, or Heathens, or Pagans (the German word is difficult to translate) – I’ve gone for ‘Christians and Others’, which seems to me closest to what Bonhoeffer meant.  I’ve given you the German text as well, so that, whether you read German or not, you can see the pattern of the poem.

In the letter, dated July 8^th, 1944, which accompanied this poem sent from prison to his closest friend, Eberhard Bethge, Bonhoeffer writes, ‘My concern, therefore, is that God shouldn’t be smuggled into some last secret place, but that we should frankly recognise that the world, and people, have come of age… [that we should] confront [people] with God at his strongest point’ [LPP, p.125].

At about the same time, he writes, ‘The Bible shows God in his weakness and suffering; only a suffering God can help’ [Von Guten Mächten, Gebete und Gedichte, Ed. JC Hampe, Güterslohe Verlagshaus, 1976,, p. 88].

He gnaws away at the question of ‘What room there is left for God now?’ [LPP, p.129], and ends by saying, ‘The only way is that of Matthew 18:3 [Truly, I tell you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven], i.e., through repentance, through ultimate honesty.  And we cannot be honest unless we recognise that we have to live in the world etsi deus non daretur’ [As if God did not exist] [Ibid.].  And in that same letter, he writes, ‘It is not the religious act that makes the Christian, but the participation in the suffering of God in the world’ (PP, p. 46).

In the poem, Bonhoeffer recognizes that there is a basic human instinct, seen over wide time and geographical ranges, for people to cry out to God.  The difference between Christians and others is that ‘Christians stand by God in His agony’.

As well as the title, another problem in translation is the very tight form of the poem, metrically and rhythmically – Bonhoeffer himself had problems with this, and the original ‘is scored with innumerable changes’ (PP, p. 46).  As you can see, the first line of each verse plays on the words, ‘All’, ‘God’, and ‘Distress’, in differing combinations; the first three lines of each of the verses end with the rhyming words, ‘Not’, ‘Brot’ and ‘Tod’ – need, bread, death.  And the last lines of each of the verses end with the once again rhyming ‘Heiden’, ‘Leiden’ and ‘Beiden’ – ‘pagans’ or ‘heathen’, ‘suffering’, and ‘both’.  All of the lines are of nearly the same length, 10-12 syllables, except the punchline, the last one of each verse, which is only seven.  There are various translations, but I’ve gone for one which doesn’t replicate the rhymes, but is a good translation:

Christians and Others

1.  All go to God in their distress,
Seek help and pray for bread and happiness,
Deliverance from pain, guilt and death.
All do, Christians and others.

2. All go to God in his distress,
   Find him poor, reviled without shelter or bread,
   Watch him tortured by sin, weakness, and death.
   Christians stand by God in His agony.

3. God goes to all in their distress,
   Satisfies body and soul with His bread,
   Dies, crucified for all, Christians and others,
   And both alike forgiving.

http://www.brettdavis.org/archives/1060/gods-and-pagans-by-dietrich-bonhoeffer/ (Originally ‘Christians and Pagans’)

Christen und Heiden

1. Menschen gehen zu Gott in ihrer Not,

flehen um Hilfe, bitten um Glück und Brot,

um Errettung aus Krankheit, Schuld und Tod.

So tun sie alle, alle, Christen und Heiden.

2. Menschen gehen zu Gott in Seiner Not,

finden ihn arm, geschmäht, ohne Obdach und Brot,

sehn ihn verschlungen von Sünde, Schwachheit und Tod,

Christen stehen bei Gott in Seinen Leiden.

3. Gott geht zu allen Menschen in ihrer Not,

sättigt den Leib und die Seele mit Seinem Brot,

stirbt für Christen und Heiden den Kreuzestod,

und vergibt ihnen beiden.

In Holy Week, especially, we are called to stand at the foot of the Cross.  We’re called to look upon the suffering of God on the Cross.  We’re called to contemplate the meaning and purpose of a God who allows himself to be nailed to a tree for the sake of those whom he created and whom he loves.

And we’re called to take deep into ourselves the meaning of ‘Suffering Service’, of ‘Servant Kingship, and of ‘Power made perfect in weakness’ [II Cor. 12:9].  AMEN.

PLANNING OR SPONTANEITY – WHICH IS MORE CHRISTLIKE?

For those who know Myers-Briggs Personality Types, was Jesus’ preferred way of working as a ‘P’ or as a ‘J’ – a ‘Perceiver’ or a ‘Judger’?  For those who haven’t come across Myers-Briggs, did he like to plan ahead, or did he like to go with the spur of the moment?

I suppose we would think that Jesus was a good balance of both types.

For example, in Luke 9 [:1], Jesus sends out the Disciples ‘To proclaim the Kingdom of God and to heal, and in the next chapter [Lk. 10:1], we read, ‘The Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go’.  He knew which places he was planning to visit, and asked the Disciples to visit those places first, giving them instructions about what to wear, what to eat, and what to do.  Good mission planning!

On other occasions, for example in Luke 8 [:40-56], we’re told Jesus returns to Capernaum, and the crowds welcome him because they are waiting for him.  But Jairus, the Leader of the Synagogue, wants him to come and heal his daughter.  And on the way to that, the fringe of his clothes is touched by a woman who had been suffering from haemorrhages for twelve years, so he stops to have a conversation with her, before continuing to Jairus’ house to heal the little girl.

On Maundy Thursday, he is in planning mode.  All the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, tell us that Jesus told the Disciples to go into town, where they would meet a man (not a woman, note – there would have been too many of those) – where they would meet a man, whom they were to follow, and then say to the owner of the house, ‘The teacher asks you, “Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?”’ [Lk. 22:11; c.f., Matt. 26:17 & Mk 14:13-14].

This was to be a special meal.  It needed planning; it couldn’t just happen spontaneously.  Jesus knew the things that he would need that evening – bread, wine, a jug of water, a bowl, a towel.  These things couldn’t happen by accident.

And so, here in the Cathedral, and probably in our homes, we’re making preparations to celebrate our Passover, the Paschal Feast, Easter.  And that is right and proper.  To celebrate well, we need to be ready.

But, we also need to make room in our planning for the unexpected, for those moments of opportunity, when God puts someone in our way, or offers us the possibility of making a difference, of being part of someone’s life in an entirely serendipitous way – what people sometimes call ‘God-incidences’.

And the result of all Jesus’ and his Disciples’ Maundy Thursday Planning?  A meal which would transform the world, which would demonstrate love and service, and which would prepare Jesus for what was before him in the coming hours.

Malcolm Guite, in his sonnet, ‘Maundy Thursday’, puts it like this.

Here is the source of every sacrament,

The all-transforming presence of the Lord,

Replenishing our every element

Remaking us in his creative Word.

For here the earth herself gives bread and wine,

The air delights to bear his Spirit’s speech,

The fire dances where the candles shine,

The waters cleanse us with His gentle touch.

And here He shows the full extent of love

To us whose love is always incomplete,

In vain we search the heavens high above,

The God of love is kneeling at our feet.

Though we betray Him, though it is the night.

He meets us here and loves us into light.

CHRIST BEFORE PILATE

One of the lesser-known treasures of the Cathedral, I suspect, is Cecil Collins’ 1950s [It’s not quite clear whether it is 1952 or 1954] painting, ‘Christ Before the Judge’, which hangs in the alcove at the back of Stephen Gardiner’s Chapel, and can only be seen by standing on tip-toes in the North Presbytery Aisle and peeping in.

You have a copy in front of you – it’s not easy to photograph, because of the light, and the one image I managed to find on the internet was even poorer that my photo.

Cecil Collins lived from 1908 to 1989, and was a visionary painter in the tradition of William Blake, who was working about 100 years earlier.

His style of visionary painting was not much appreciated during the 20^th Century, but has come to be more appreciated in recent years.

One of his major themes was ‘The Holy Fool’ – he wrote a book called, ‘The Vision of the Fool’, and Anthony Nanson has written of him:

It’s extraordinary that most of the Collins essays gathered in The Vision of the Fool and Other Writings were written in the 1940s…  Extraordinary because they are so powerfully prophetic of the situation of culture and spirituality many decades later.  Collins fingers materialist society in whatever form – capitalist, fascist, communist – as shutting down the reflective inner life that is the wellspring of artistic creativity and the appreciation of beauty.  So you have to be a kind of holy fool to go against the grain.

[https://nansondeeptime.wordpress.com/2019/01/10/cecil-collins-and-the-holy-fool/]

So, in this extraordinary painting – I do urge you to have a look at it when you have a moment – in this extraordinary painting, a very stylised Christ is standing before the Judge.  I think we might be being asked who is the greater fool?  The one a worldly fool, the other a holy fool.

The Judge is huge, with an astonishing head-dress, what looks like a royal crown, but with arrows pointing to the ground, pointing to Hell, perhaps.  He has a very fiery eye, and very fierce teeth.  He looks like he is ready to tear Jesus apart.  His hand is palm upwards, reaching towards Jesus, and I’m a bit stumped as to what the conical object which seems to be in his other hand – a scroll, perhaps.  It’s a very worldly figure, somehow sumptuous, enjoying good living, complacent, malevolent.

By contrast, Jesus is slight, frail, almost looking like a skeleton already, with a very spiky crown and vertical lines on his face, which could be interpreted as blood, or tears, or the staining of the dust of the earth in which he has lain.  He could be a reflection on Psalm 22:14: ‘I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint : my heart also in the midst of my body is even like melting wax’.  His hands are crossed, as if bound, and as a reminder of how he will die.  But what I find most remarkable are Jesus’ eyes – staring straight out at us, eyes filled with love and pity, eyes which seem to draw us into his Passion.  Eyes which I find rather unnerving to stare into too deeply, in case they see too much of what is going on inside me.

On this Good Friday, this painting reminds that all that Jesus suffered, he suffered ‘for us and for our salvation’.  It reminds me that it was for love that Christ was sent into the world; it was for love that he died; that it was in love that he rose again; and that it is for love that he is still with us.

In these two figures, we seem to be being invited to make a choice.  What sort of fool are we?  And whom do we want to follow?

A Prayer:

Grieving God,
on the cross
your Son embraced death
even as he had embraced life:
faithfully and with good courage.
Grant that we who have been
born out of his wounded side
may hold fast to our faith in him exalted
and may find mercy and love in all times of need. AMEN.

https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/prayers.php?id=35 (adapted)

ON THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN YESTERDAY & TOMORROW

(A chapter heading in ‘Between Cross & Resurrection’, Alan E. Lewis, p.43)

This may not be the most immediately obvious place to start on this Easter Eve, also known has Holy Saturday, but I hope you’ll bear with me for a moment.

About a month ago or so ago, I suddenly started folding my pyjamas each morning, and tucking them neatly under the pillow.  Prior to that, I’d always folded them carefully after washing, but otherwise, just stuffed them under the pillow for the rest of the week.  And I have to say that I get tiny moment of pleasure each morning, as I fold them, and each evening as I get ready for bed.

But I’ve also been pondering what is the impulse for this strange, compulsive, seemingly pointless, behaviour.  And I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a tiny fight back against the chaos which always threatens to engulf my fairly full and multi-faceted life.  There’s always a lot going on in the Cathedral part of my role, and tons happening in the Diocese as well, and I seem to need little reference points, little moments of control, which help to keep everything else on track.

And I’ve been wondering whether that same sense of needing a bit of control was in the minds of the women around Jesus, who are the only ones in Jesus’ circle who are mentioned between his being lain in the grave, late on the Friday afternoon, and his unexpected Resurrection early on Easter Sunday morning.

As always, the Gospel accounts need a bit of sifting through, to find out what is going on.  John’s Gospel is the easiest – there is no mention of the Saturday.  In John 19:42, Jesus is laid in  the tomb, and in the next verse, John 20:1, Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb, and the stone has been rolled away.  This fits very well with John’s telling of the story in which the Cross and the Resurrection are very much seen as one event – the being lifted on the Cross is the glory.

In Mark [16:1], ‘When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him’.  They went out, after dark on the Saturday evening, so that they ere ready to go to the tomb early on the Sunday morning.

In Luke [23:56], the women prepare the spices and ointments on the Friday afternoon, and then we’re told that ‘On the sabbath they rested according to the commandment’.

Whenever they did the shopping, the women wanted to wrest some sort of control over the situation, which was, of course, to them, utterly bleak and hopeless.  Jesus is dead, crucified, lying in a stone tomb, which has been sealed – for good.

Alan Lewis, a lecturer at Edinburgh University during my time there, in his magisterial book, ‘Between Cross & Resurrection’ [p. 78f.], describing the drama of these three days, puts it like this:

Centre stage is Joseph’s rock-hewn tomb, last resting place for its first-ever occupant (Lk. 34:53).  And since everyone is at rest on this Shabbat…nothing is happening upon the stage – only a waiting and the imperceptible processes of bodily decay within the sepulchre…  Jesus was dead and buried: finished.  Every lingering possibility that he was who he had claimed and been acclaimed to be had finally been extinguished, brutally and decisively…  God had left the loving Son, and thus the loveless world, to the darkness of destruction.  For both, the rest was silence and despair.

And yet… and yet, the women rested, and then prepared.  They hadn’t given up, and neither had God.  They took that little bit of control, the preparation of the spices and ointments, and they were ready, at first light, once the Sabbath was over, to go to the tomb.

They didn’t know it, but they were, in the words of the title one of the chapters in Alan Lewis’s book ‘On the boundary between yesterday and tomorrow’ – as we are this morning.

You may have noticed that I didn’t mention Matthew’s Gospel earlier.  He doesn’t mention the women at this point. [Matt. 27:62-66]  But he does talk about another group of people who also want control, who, in some ways, have more faith than Jesus’ Disciples – the chief Priests and the Pharisees, who go to Pilate, remind him that Jesus had said, ‘After three days I will rise again’, and who receive Pilate’s permission to set a guard on the tomb.

Two types of control being exercised here – love, on the part of the women preparing the spices to anoint his body; hate, on the part of the leaders of the people, who were worried about losing their power.  They would have to wait until Sunday morning to discover which of them had made the right choice – would love or hate have the final word?  We have the privilege and joy of knowing the end of the story already.

Christ our God,
your love is poured out in death for our sakes.
Hold us in your embrace
as we wait for Easter’s dawn.
Comfort us with the promise that no power on earth, not even death itself,
can separate us from your love;
and strengthen us to wait
until you are revealed to us
in all your risen glory.  Amen.

[https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/prayers.php?id=36]