The church I went to this morning had two trumpeters, a choir, and a cross of gold. Stripped of language, there was gesture and posture and light. I wondered what all the arrangements, daffodils and candles said about who God is. I wondered how to be part of the Easter celebration when not belonging and understanding tempted me to only observing.
I guessed that one of the readings was John 20, mostly based on mention of “Maria Magdalena”. I spent the sermon thinking about what the women were feeling and thinking on Easter morning. I imagine them coming to anoint the body, wanting to instantiate their grief and their love. To be acquainted with the physicality of their loss.
Their loss is doubled when the body is gone. They are now missing both the person and the body that would have testified to the person.
I often find myself wishing to capture the relationships that are precious to me. I want to corroborate the meaning of a connection, to externalise it. I find comfort in cards and mugs and pressed flowers. They are ways of testifying to the passing of time and presence of friends.
In English Easter services we say: “He is Risen!” “He is Risen, indeed!”
In Swedish: “Kristus är uppstånden!” “Ja, han är sannerligen uppstånden!”
(I couldn’t follow much else, but this much I could work out!)
Jesus cannot be captured or kept. To remember Jesus we have bread and wine, which perish but are renewed. Our sacraments are material things which participate in a reality they cannot contain.
This is the song that was sung after communion this morning:
Here is an English translation:
[Verse 1]
"Your hands are full of flowers
Who did you think you were going to give them to?"
"My flowers were meant for Christ's tomb
But he was not there and his tomb is empty"
Hallelujah, hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah
[Verse 2]
"Your lips are full of songs.
Tell me, where does the song of joy come from?"
"From the empty tomb where Jesus lay.
He who now lives gives us the sound of joy."
Hallelujah, hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah.
[Verse 3]
"Your eyes are full of joy.
Tell me, what have they seen to give them such light?"
"They have seen how our lives have meaning.
Jesus fills the darkness with life and light."
Hallelujah, hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah.
[Verse 4]
Jesus, you are risen among us
You who live, suffer on earth now
Our eyes are there to see you
Form our hands for service and prayer
Hallelujah, hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah.
Beyond the hallelujahs, I had no idea what I had been singing this morning. I think it’s a beautiful re-telling of the women going to the tomb and being sent on. Arriving with hands full; wanting to corroborate, to give something a form that will hold. Leaving with wonder; wanting to tell, to pass on what they had seen.
Jesus will not be held. The tomb is empty. What he asks to be remembered in is bread and wine. Things that perish and are renewed, that can be received but not kept. The appropriate response to transcendence is not monument-building but testimony-receiving.
More important than whether a church is golden or plain, whether the trumpets sound triumphant or there is only a piano, whether the words are Swedish or English or words we don’t yet have, is whether it forms us into people who arrive with hands full and leave wanting to tell. Beauty must hearken to something beyond us. It should send us out to do something beautiful for God in the world.
Happy Easter!
thejoyofrachel 