Meditations/Sermons that didn't get away

Now It Happens

Now It Happens
Easter, 2007

“And of course, Jesus rose from the dead.
Three times, once each service.”

For years I sat in the crowded pew, waiting
waiting for my heart to sing, my soul to be uplifted.
in all those years, how often did that happen?
Sometimes, it did.

For thirty years I’ve stood in the chancel,
an alto in the choir or deacon of the mass.
“Surely he hath borne our griefs.”
To that I gave myself completely, for those minutes,
as we sang Handel’s soul-shaking,
tone painting choruses
to words as old as life.

From the center aisle I read Luke’s gospel,
where the women go first to the tomb
and find it empty—I was there.
I was dismayed, along with Mary, to find only
the cloths that had been wound around his body.
He, the man I loved and trusted and couldn’t
understand, He was gone! Gone again!
Where has that man gone?
The angel asked me why I looked
among the dead for one who lives; and I ran,
I ran from the place to tell the disciples
HE IS ALIVE!
But they didn’t believe me.
Peter, dear Peter, had to see for himself,
and he took off to the tomb and came back
yelling the same thing.
JESUS ISN”T THERE! He’s alive!

How many times have we read, or heard this story,
or the other three gospels? Each one turns out the same.
He is alive!

How I long, every year, to accompany Jesus
down the road of sorrows to Golgotha,
to kneel there with his mother, crying;
to feel the pain of lossso that the joy
of the Sabbath will amaze and astound me
and I will be whole once again!

I cannot always count on being caught up
in emotion, as I hear or sing or tell the story.
But I can always count on
what happened long ago
when the stone was rolled away
and the tomb was found empty,
and Christ was, is alive.

It happened once.
It happens now.