Eastertide and Fresh Wool

Eastertide with its warmth and tenderness is one of my favorite times of the year. In Eastertide the fragrant lilies around the altar will advance to the next week, and perhaps even a third, watered and pruned by Flower Guild volunteers. In Eastertide the pink frosted, rabbit shaped cookies will move from the fridge to the freezer. A stray palm branch may be found tucked away in an outside planter by the sexton. In the nursery, orange and yellow Easter eggs remain hidden among the toys from this year’s Rainy Day Indoor Egg Hunt; their contents, chocolate Twix and gummy bears, to be enjoyed by the observant! 

In Eastertide a Sunday School child asks our priest Father Shane, ‘How can Jesus go through walls?’ I know that this seven-year-old has inquired about these ‘unpractical’ scripture references before. His literal mind is always spinning, and I pray he can learn to live in the Episcopal balance! We will answer, ‘Good question!’ Because we know he is right. Christianity is a religion where anything can take place, especially in this new season of post-Resurrection glory! Empty tombs, angels, and going through walls. Eastertide is a time of celebrating that science is neither a god nor the God, but rather a celebration of the Creator God’s creative expertise. Living outside the lines, in particular, the rectangular lines of a grave! 

The biblical stories in Eastertide are far more than remnants of a crucifixion. It’s a time of sightings—a time for Jesus to touch his loved ones with intentionality. It is when Jesus meets his disciples where they are and tries to repair the damage and trauma that has been done on Good Friday, a not so good Friday in a literal sense. In a normal grief process it would take years of counseling for healing. Especially for Mary and John, who watch from the bottom of the cross, present to the very last of Jesus’ life. They see his bruised body, the nakedness and shame, all culminating in hours of anguish. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross set forth the complex aspects of grief—shock, denial, anger, bargaining, acceptance. The resurrection reconfigures the grief process. Jesus’ story shatters the playing field of emotions with the element of the unexpected. The surprise! He is not here, he is risen!

It will be with fresh wool that Jesus meets his followers. It is with fresh wool that Mary Magdalene embraces the risen Christ, this Lamb of God. She is given the best—a human embrace. She sees the risen Lord and holds onto him! After Jesus commands, ‘Go and tell the disciples!’, Mary will run to share the news. Hearing her testimony, Peter and John race to the tomb. The body is gone. Where has Jesus vanished? Scratching their heads, Peter and John return to the city to wait. In the Upper Room the candles are lit, the door is locked; I imagine the room feeling stuffy. Jesus moves through its walls. “I am not a ghost! Behold my hands and feet!”

There is another sighting when Jesus walks with the two disciples on the Road to Emmaus. ‘Are you the only one who does not know what happened?’, they ask before retelling the events of Jerusalem. The pair invite Jesus to stay with them, and it is the breaking of the bread that their eyes are opened to Jesus’ presence among them. And then, Jesus vanishes! The two disciples hasten back to join the others and share all that they have seen. 

In Eastertide there is the tenderness of the breakfast with Jesus on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus calls them children, an address of tenderness that surely brings back memories of the early days of ministry in Capernaum with their rabbi—the days of warmth by the seashore, catching fish, and sharing the time together as friends. 

I believe God gives us the season of Eastertide as a brief respite before the whoosh of power that descends from above on Pentecost. Get ready! Get set! Wear Red! Or the weight of The Great Commission. But for the six weeks of Easter, both joy and rest are to be experienced. During this time of peace, might we pause to notice our own sightings of Jesus in our lives.