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| "Pacific Currents" by Rev. Dr. Mary Susan Gast,
Conference Minister, April, 2000 Easter Dawning
My grandparents were all immigrants from Eastern Europe. My father's parents were German; my mother's Slovak. My mother's mother grew up in an extremely isolated village in the foothills of the Carpathian mountains; a place so remote it was virtually untouched by the 19th Century, let alone the 20th. By the time I came along, though, all my grandparents were US citizens. And, in the 1950's, my Slovak grandparents were among the first within our wide family circle to own a TV-thanks to my uncle who owned an appliance store. One Saturday evening a bunch of relatives were visiting my grandparents. I was the only child present, and had gone into the living room to watch "Shock Theatre," which that week featured the Bela Lugosi classic, "Dracula." Maybe you remember, the film ends with uncertainty. Is the vampire really dead-or not? As the room became darker and the final credits scrolled by, I noticed that the adults had come in from the kitchen and were sitting on the sofa and chairs behind me. Looking for some word of comfort or assurance, like, "It's just a story" or "Don't take it seriously" I turned toward them. Uncharacteristically my grandmother spoke up in her rudimentary English. "Eez all true," she declaimed. Yes, this was the mythology she had grown up with. Now, Grandma leaned a little more heavily on folklore than on fact, but every Holy Week when I wind up preaching on some passage of scripture that talks about the suffering and death of Jesus I feel a little like Grandma. I have to say it. "It's all true!" Most of us would prefer a less complicated Saviour. One who would take us on a more pleasant route to salvation. We find ourselves uncomfortable and almost embarrassed by the events surrounding his death-betrayal, physical torture, psychological trauma, spiritual agony, and finally not even the gracious peaceful death of one who has come to the completion of a full life, but rather humiliation and an unjust execution. No wonder that Sun Myung Moon teaches that Jesus' death was really a goof, an error, a deplorable foul-up of the divine plan. Good Friday looks a whole lot like failure. We all are inclined to gloss over it, maybe not skip it entirely, but glide across to the happy ending. We find ourselves explaining-with an almost childlike brightness and eagerness, that, yes, Jesus died on Friday-but he rose on Sunday-it all came out all right. Why couldn't Jesus have quit while he was ahead? We have this great scene, on Palm Sunday, after all, of him riding into Jerusalem in almost Cecil B. DeMille-like grandeur, the crowds, the waving palm branches, cloaks spread before him on the path. [OK, you'd have to get rid of the donkey if you were really going for magnificence]. But there he was, acclaimed, popular, highly rated as a celebrity. It seems like he could have just led all of the good folks into the valley of love and delight and there it would be. Simple. Yet somehow God wanted so desperately to redeem every aspect of our lives. To save every murky corner of our being. To polish every jagged edge until it shone with brilliance. To breathe meaning into each gasp that comes from our declining bodies. God wanted that so much that The Almighty, through Jesus, took on betrayal, humiliation, pain, fear, rejection, abandonment, and finally death. Even these terrible moments can be redeemed. The hurt, the despair, the anguish, the terror that come to our lives can surely kill us, leading us into violence and blind hatred, bitterness and self-destruction. That would be expectable. Or it can be with us as it was with Jesus. Our suffering can help us to connect with others in their torment, saying "I will be with you in your struggle." That is what God is telling us through the life of Jesus and through the death of Jesus. In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us. ~ Mary Susan |
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