Signs of Life

Resurrection Happens

The Spirit of promise moved silently through the house, rippling across the surface of our souls as it did over the waters before the First Day.

It billowed with the cigarette smoke that wafted in from the front porch every time someone walked into the house.

Over the din of a March Madness game, through the busy preparations in the kitchen, and under the light and unselfconscious silence of smoke breaks, we came together in the waiting space of Holy Saturday. Like any of us, I found myself resting and waiting for resurrection in a tomb filled with my own fears and disillusionment.

This is the night,
when you brought our fathers,
the children of Israel,
out of bondage in Egypt,
and led them through the Red Sea
on dry land

Each of us was carried to 12th Street, once again, by the Promise. This was a joyful gathering, one of expectation. We cooked and we talked. We ate and we listened. In that joy, I found that I forgot nothing. The disappointments and recriminations – the ordinary brokenness – of a common life remained, but I knew they belonged right where they were. They ought not be cast aside, not on this night.

I was just happy – deeply and exuberantly so – to be with my friends, just to be together as we were meant to be and to do what we were always meant to do. Yet I mourned those broken things, without expecting it, and without even paying attention at that moment.

This is the night,
when all who believe in Christ are delivered
from the gloom of sin, and are restored to
grace and holiness of life

Unexpected, unspoken conversations brought words of prophecy and healing to pain and despair. (Grieving together does not require speaking.) The listening itself became a prophetic act as Friday’s cross carried all of our brokenness into Saturday’s tomb. Those hurts could be honored and treated them with tenderness. I began to realize that his Resurrection was coming upon them.

In the completely unplanned and spontaneous ways that characterize God’s New Community, we were broken like the bread and poured out like the wine.

Nobody planned that. It just happened. It just happens. It was so ridiculously ordinary.

The Creator Spirit came and re-created us into a Community. In those moments, we lived in forever.

How blessed is this night, when earth and heaven are joined and man is reconciled to God

I wish I had the words for it. When do you say when you’re standing in the kitchen and pouring peas into the steamer basket and you’re really joining everyone in adoration, pouring your heart out onto the floor and you suddenly know that Yahweh himself is in the house and he’s healing you and everyone else there whether we know it or feel it or not and nothing is stopping him or even slowing him down? When you’ve not even lit the coals for incense, or finished mashing the potatoes?

What do you say after you go away and you know it happened and you know it’s not stopping for anything?

Arise, O Christ

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