EASTER’S PROMISE OF RENEWAL

LAUREL MATHEWSON: AFTER A YEAR OF SUFFERING AND HEARTBREAK, HOLIDAY GIVES US AN OPPORTUNITY TO FIND BEAUTY IN WHAT’S BROKEN

St. Luke’s pastor Laurel Mathewson finds beauty out of brokenness.

You’ll forgive me if I’m not in the mood for a peeps-andpink-bunnies Easter, or even a brunch-with-bubbly-and-longlost-buddies Easter.

In January, I met friends at the beach who were caring for an 11-year-old who had just lost her father to COVID-19 (her mother was busy making burial arrangements).

In February, I brought banana bread to a household rocked by the death of a young man whose mental health had unraveled and supports had crumbled under the pressures of the pandemic.

In March, I said prayers over and anointed the body of Michael, a beloved, brilliant 18-year-old boy turning toward manhood, a son of our church who was killed by person(s) still unknown. I heard the sobs break out anew at his funeral when his 9-year-old sister held the microphone to say she missed him.

So, an Easter made of papery thin bright colors and brittle plastic eggs cannot speak joy this year, if it ever did. Because I know that I’m not alone. My short litany of suffering and loss is just one calendar of shadows, grief and death. You have your own, I’m sure. What kind of Easter images can speak to our battered hearts, then? What kind of Easter traditions might bring us to the place of new life we hunger for, personally and communally?

Some of the ancient ones, actually. First, an image: In the oldest and original account of Easter Sunday, in the gospel of Mark, the bewildered women at the empty tomb do not see the risen Christ, but they are told by a young man dressed in white that “he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” (Mark 16:7) For Jesus’ friends and disciples, Galilee is home. Galilee is the ordinary life waiting for you on the other side of devastation, the fishing nets Peter and John must return to in confusion and grief.

The risen Christ, the embodiment of forgiveness, healing and hope beyond the traumatic power of death — well, he does not always show up while we are still on a journey to Jerusalem that has gone terribly, terribly wrong. The poet John Masefield describes Christ as “alive and at large in the world,” and I trust this with all my heart. But it doesn’t mean I know when or how I (or anyone else) will encounter him and the light and life he bears.

The promise of faith is simply that those who sincerely seek will and do meet this living and gracious Lord, in countless ways and on variable timelines. Sometimes we must get back to our nets, back to our “ordinary” work, before we see him. As we work, and wait, hope “sings the tune without the words” in our own soul, and the choirs of witnesses who have walked through death before add their resounding voices to the chorus of the life-giving Holy One: Who are you looking for? Do not be afraid. You will see me. I am always with you.

Let’s try another Easter image, from a different account. Very explicitly in the gospel of John, and more subtly in the gospel of Luke, in some scenes the truth of Jesus’ triumph over death is only known through gazing at his wounds, the marks of torture and execution still upon his hands, feet, side. In other words, the Easter witness doesn’t lose power when we gaze upon reminders of pain and death — we do not turn away from the broken body. Indeed, Christianity has always insisted that we must remember the death that taught us to see death differently, the painful sacrifice that transformed our understanding of God’s loving forgiveness, so that we then might live in greater joy and freedom. It is not a psychological fad to insist that the promise of new life does not and will not erase the traumas of the past, even as the ruptures are healed and their destructive power overcome. It is part of the DNA of Judeo-christian faith.

From Judaism, the wellknown concept of tikkun olam

(repair of the world) was first described to me through the metaphor of broken pottery: We are invited to participate in the mending. Drawing upon the Jewish roots of our faith and our Jewish messiah, Christians believe that in the wake of the resurrection, the Spirit is indeed renewing the face of the earth (Psalm 104), and we are invited to share in the ongoing work of renewal, reconciliation and new creation.

I am guilty of sometimes imagining Easter life, new life, in a very consumeristic way: broken bowl? Throw it out! A pretty pastel bowl, brand new, needs to replace it. Easter’s on its way! Yet to repair, to reconcile, one must gaze upon the fractures, the wounds, the places that are broken. The Christian artist Makoto Fujimura practices

kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with a precious metal mix that highlights, rather than masks, the fracture lines in seams of gold. Likewise, the pandemic-fractured and broken bowls of our lives and communities cannot, and will not, be discarded and replaced.

The real story of Easter, the story of Jesus, restores wholeness and function by highlighting and transforming the cracks, our sin and brokenness and death, not turning from them or erasing them. We remember, again and again, as part of entering into a true fullness of life.

I witnessed one gleaming vein of repair on the day of Michael’s burial. Standing in the spring sunshine at the cemetery hilltop, nearly 150 people wearing double masks formed a giant circle around his grave. The flowers had been laid on his casket, and the undertaker had tried to dismiss us, but the people would not move. We would not look away from this beloved body until the sod was laid.

In the circle were friends from La Jolla Country Day School, Sudanese-american aunties who had raised him like their own sweet son, grandmothers railing at the heavens in lament, tall young men on the cusp of adulthood, a tambourine and small ensemble of Congolese and Sudanese voices offering alleluias.

We stood in near-silence through the work of the backhoe, resolutely demonstrating our love and care for the Jok family when we had nothing else to offer. We stared at the chasm of a tragic death and we did not turn away. This is our golden glue, if we have any: to share the burdens of our griefs, to demonstrate our love even when we don’t have any adequate words. To hold the fragments tenderly in our hands until the time for repair is right. We laid his body to rest with the honor his life deserved, and somehow — staring together at death — there was a touch of beauty and goodness in the wind.

It felt like the first light of Easter.

The promise of faith is simply that those who sincerely seek will and do meet this living and gracious Lord, in countless ways and on variable timelines.

GETTY IMAGES