Easter 2012

The Spices of Life

Nothing can carry us to the crucifixion and resurrection faster than the fragrance of frankincense.  While some of the story gets lost through time, and translation, the truth of the spices and oils never waivers.  The spiced oils and their descendants are witnesses to what transpired in the days that followed the crucifixion.  They have not changed since the writing of this text.  They carry the sweet truth and show us how Jesus was buried 2000 years ago. He was buried according to the customs that used spices and oils extravagantly. Aloe (sandalwood) and olive oil are used as the base and then spiced with aromatic scents like bay leaves, spikenard (or its cousin lavender), rosemary, sage, and myrrh.  These are the agents that were used for healing a body from its creation until its return to the earth. 

In John’s Gospel, it is recorded that Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and sandalwood weighing a hundred pounds to anoint the body of Jesus. That is an enormous amount of oil. In what is surely one of the most intimate and loving acts in the gospel, Nicodemus anoints Jesus’ body with the spices and oils and wraps him in a cloth.  In Mark’s gospel the body of Jesus had not be anointed when it was laid in the tomb because the body was hastily wrapped after Pilate granted Joseph permission to take it.   Mary Magdalene; Mary, the Mother of James and Joses; and Salome were all at the foot of the cross. They watched as Joseph took Jesus down and saw where he laid him in a tomb hewn from rock.  The women had all cared for Jesus while he was in Galilee and they want to give him a proper burial.  So as soon as Passover ended they risked their safety and went back to the tomb laden with spices and oils to anoint his body.  They went grieving, as faithful women, fully expecting a body.  They were taken completely by surprise as a young angel preached resurrection.  They left, in terror and awe, still clutching the spices oils.

Resurrection always comes as a surprise in the midst of death.  We are like the women in Mark’s Gospel, faithful and fearful when we meet death.  We meet death heavy laden with grief that feels like a hundred pounds of oil on our chests.  This community met death on the first morning of our annual pilgrimage to Ecuador this year, when we received a call that Michael Pontes had died.  It was a tragic ending to a beautiful life.  Michael had talked about his glimmers of faith and love, but wrote before he died that he didn’t hold out much hope.  It made those of us who loved him walk around heavy with our own grieving oils. 

The next three days in Ecuador were a whirlwind of activity and we set all our Michael thoughts aside as we opened the hot make-shift clinic and hundreds and hundreds of people came for healing and community.  At the very end of the second day, just as everyone was closing up, a young woman came in and said she needed a doctor.  The translator saw in the mother’s eyes that ancient look of desperation and fear that hasn’t changed any more than the fragrance of oil.  So the translator quickly called the doctors and nurse practitioners and three-week-old baby, Luis Santiago, ashen and non-responsive, was carried in by the aunt.  Immediately a circle formed and hovered over the baby.  It felt like the air was sucked out of the clinic for several minutes as life and death hung in the balance.  The circle opened as they cleared the airway a fraction and the baby was breathing a tiny bit more. The group prepared quickly to take the momma and baby to the hospital 30 minutes away.  The young mom was scared, so I stood next to her and said a quick prayer, marked the baby with a sign of the cross, and without forethought, prayed, “Come on, Michael, and help this baby out.” 

I prayed to Michael, and everything flipped in an instant.  Before Michael died, if he had been with me in Ecuador, he would have asked a whole bunch of questions; Why would God let a baby suffer? Does God really love us? How does prayer help?  Do I really believe in resurrection?  And all of a sudden I was turning to him for comfort and blessing. I was the one scared and lost because this baby might die.  What was the most surprising to me in that instant of prayer was that beyond his doubts or my worries, I could feel him close, like a young man in a tomb whispering resurrection in the face of death.  It’s hard to believe in resurrection.  It’s hard when we cross through wilderness and are a bit bruised by thorns that caught us on the way.  It leaves us grieving and clutching oils.

Hours later we were all sitting in the dark outside, waiting for the nurse practitioners to come back with the news about baby Luis.  Finally we heard the truck as it pulled up to the gate.  The truck starting beeping its horns and flashing it lights; blinding us and telling us it was time to celebrate, the baby lived.  Everyone cheered.  We cheered for life, for the nurses, and that we had witnessed a baby’s resurrection.  I cheered because praying to Michael was a sign. A sign that even in the wake of deaths that cast a huge pall and pack a heart-breaking sting, resurrection surprises us.  On the night the baby’s life hung in the balance, it was the angel Michael I prayed to without hesitation. Resurrection transforms everything, fear, tombs, and even the spices and oils. Oils for the dead became the fragrance of life.  

Michael Pontes and the baby were connected for a moment in a universe of 7 billion people where death is overpowered by the fragrance of love that never waivers, no matter how shaky we may feel.   The hope of resurrection comes as a joyful surprise. With Easter comes the most hopeful signs of life in the world.  These spices donning the altar are fragrant gifts to anoint the dead, and these very spices are transformed into signs of life; signs that all things are transformed in love. So we are taking these oils and spices from this altar to the new still at Thistle Farms, dedicated to Joanne Cato.  Then for the next two days Jennifer, Jim, and volunteers will take these sacred spices and distill them for healing.  Today we celebrate the oils as a sign of life that carries us all the way to the eternal side of time.  We can doubt so much about our life and faith, but let these oils be a sign that we never have to waiver in our hope. In Mark’s Gospel, it is love itself that speaks the last word.  The women leave speechless and transformed.  Resurrection fills the very air with a fragrance that allows us to walk in hope all the days of our life and even on the last day, when we make the grave our bed, to sing. “Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”  

On the Road

It is a joy to travel with the women from Thistle Farms. One of the many reasons is that for some of the women over the years, I have gotten to witness the wonder of their first flight. The laughter as a plane starts down the runway. The wide eyed look as they witness clouds from the top side. The gratitude they feel no matter where they are sitting or how long we sit on the tarmac.

The trip this week to Pennsylvania with Shana and Dorris was filled with joy for me. As we were ascending, Shana pulled out her cell phone and started taking pictures of Old Hickory Lake. I didn't remind her that she wasn't supposed to have her phone on.  Instead, I loved seeing her look at the lake from an aerial view. Dorris then said she wondered if this was the closest to God she would ever get before heaven. I told her I thought she was as close to God as I had felt all week.  I'm always grateful for this work. I'm grateful to spread the mission of Thistle Farms, but tonight, I'm grateful that Tim and I get to travel home with shana and Doris on a magical flight.

The Hour

A reflection on John 12:27-29

Hours don't pass evenly like the rhythm of chimes on a grandfather clock. They speed by and then pull up to a halt. Some stretch out long enough to wrap around our hearts and live in memory while others are a still life shot that flashes into our brains every now and then. Most hours fade into the sweet forgotten by and by of our past. To me, an hour is like a long short story. It’s long enough to soak through lentils, but doesn’t last long enough to soften black beans. We can fly to Florida in an hour, drive to Manchester, get diagnosed, or be freed.

As Lent creeps toward Good Friday we move with Jesus to what is known as the Gethsemane of John.  It is where Jesus says that finally, his hour has come.  So many hours have passed since the beginning of this Gospel where he described what it means to be so loved.  There have been hours where he has healed, retreated, grieved his friend Lazarus, and been anointed for burial.  We all know what he means when he says the hour has come.  He means that of all the hours of his life, the hour of his death has come.   

This is the climax and the culmination of what it means to so love.  He tries to explain it by using the example of a grain of wheat that must fall to produce a greater yield.  This is the hour where what we have lived for becomes how we are remembered.  This reading is the prelude to his farewell discourse where he says there is no greater love than to lay down your life for a friend. We are called to live for love and pray we die glorifying love. 

Two thousand years and 17 million hours later this truth has not changed.  To live and die for love is the essence of discipleship. Death is the hour that seals our life and that we fear and face.  We are put on this earth preparing to die. Death is the returning to ashes like the seed to the earth. That hour is the climax, and what Jesus teaches us is that even in that hour Love can be glorified. 

Our Lenten journey is coming to an end, and like all journeys, it is right that it ends with a reflection on death. We began a month ago on the edge of the Lenten wilderness, praying for a revival of the heart.  The prayer is that we make the journey while wrestling demons and seeing angels so that we can explode with “Alleluia!” by Easter. But I almost forgot that to get there we have to walk through this hour, not just in scripture but in our lives.  When we accept this hour, we live and die to glorify love.  It is hard to reflect on this, especially as all the fruit trees are blooming and the larkspur are rejoicing.  But it is a gift when we can hear it as good news, as part of the gift of love.  It is a gift to see this spring in the context of the sweet seeds of fall that were buried in the cold earth to give this new life such beauty and abundance. 

Jesus reminds us in this Gospel that this is the holiest of hours.  It is the hour we walk closest to our creator and hold on to the truth.  All of us who have grieved loved ones know how hard it is to make it through this holy hour.  It is so powerful that for a long time it eclipses all the other hours.  It is the hour we sit through like labor and count breaths and watch and wait and pray and pray and pray.  It is the hour we anticipate and fear in the middle of the night when shadows seem real and prayers feel hollow. It is the hour that is as hard and disillusioning as witnessing Love hanging from the crucifixes of our lives.  In our lives of faith that hour still stands between us and Easter.

I have witnessed folks these past few weeks glorify their hour.  There is a man who came to the Chapel for ashes on Ash Wednesday, and the next day his aorta exploded. He endured a 15 ½ hour surgery and a horrible infection that put him back on death’s doorstep in the ICU days later.  Last week he said, "They thought I would die. I thought I would die, but this morning, lying here, watching the rain hit the window I have realized it doesn't get any better than this. I know that sounds crazy, and maybe I should want other things, but truly, I feel like listening to this rain, at this moment, it doesn't get better.” His eyes were filled with love that poured out in sweet streams on his cheeks. He had broken the hourglass and was living in an eternal moment where he saw it was filled with grains of sand that taken alone were enough to contemplate the wonder of the universe itself. 

I have heard from others facing troubling hours from diagnosis, prison, death or separation talk about gratitude. I heard about an old friend who died alone in New York, and it seems like the hardest hour I can imagine.  No one knows when her hour was or about all the circumstances, because it took so long to discover the body that they could only identify her by her tattoos.  She was a fighter and a poet.  I pray that in her hour that if her mind traveled in and out of all the hours she lived, it drifted to her years in Nashville with Magdalene and Thistle Farms and that she felt beloved even as she was alone in that hour. This Gospel assures me that in her hour she was lifted up and love didn't abandon her.  

We can take even this hour, knowing that love is stronger and speaks the last word.  It cannot be wiped out, just lifted up. The hour can be lived in this moment and stretched out to eternity, as we say, “It doesn't get better than this.” Being able to glorify love is not out of our reach.  It's as close as your next thought to live for love right now.  That is the revival of Lent—meeting our death in the wilderness and walking through it, and then living every hour with gratitude.