Ordinary People
There are plenty of mundane tasks to do to get ready for any Sunday, but this coming Sunday is Easter which means there are even more. As I write to you, the copier is humming as it prints out well over 500 pieces of paper that many of you will hold in your hands at the worship services on Good Friday or Easter.
The sanctuary has been stripped of some of the normal color and black has been added for Good Friday. But the Easter flowers wait in the wings for their moment in front. Colored, plastic eggs and goody bags for the kiddos have been assembled. Musicians have been preparing for weeks for this weekend, and Karl has been thinking about the sermon for a little longer than is typical.
Each of the tasks to accomplish this Holy Week are important, though of course, none of them are absolutely critical. If we didn’t have handouts on Easter, we’d still have worship. If there was no music, we would miss it, but the first Easter didn’t have music (at least not according to the scriptures).
What was there on the first Good Friday? Ordinary people, doing ordinary things. People moving through predicted but still shocking grief, doing what is needed in the moment, despite their broken hearts. They took and laid Jesus’ body down on Friday and then they headed back on Sunday with the requisite spices to prepare his body for burial. There were just regular people, doing regular things for that time.
We are ordinary people doing ordinary things for our time. We move through our days, accomplishing our tasks, filling our days with the requisite things. And I don’t know about you, but much of my day is somewhat routine and pedestrian and I’m okay with that.
But then comes the first Easter, filled with surprise. The women arrive with their spices and are met by someone they do not know instead of a body to prepare. Their grief and anger at this stranger are understandable. And then they realize they do know him and I imagine their world tilts even further off its axis than it had at Jesus’ death.
Their lives must somehow feel like things are shimmering – that beautiful feeling we have of wonder and awe at what has happened. This is where Easter finds them – perplexed but delighted! Their once mundane lives must have felt extraordinary!
Of course, that’s not quite the end of the story. Jesus ascends to heaven, leaving them once more and I imagine they all feel the disappointment and a measure of grief all over again. But this time, there is something else that lingers for them: hope mingled with love. It is hope that causes the gospel writers to write their stories, Paul to write his letters, and us to keep talking about this Jesus fellow some 2000 years on. It is the thread of love that we can trace back through our long line of believers who could not give up on loving God and being loved by God.
This weekend will come and go and by all accounts, it will be glorious! We will remember Jesus’ last words and then his resurrection and we will be filled with sorrow followed by exultation. The music will swell and we will be taken away with it on the journey of it all.
But next week, when the flowers have faded and our lives move back to the mundane with dishes to wash and other minor things to do, it will be hope and love that linger. It will be the love of God and the hope that comes through Jesus that stay with us and add a bright thread to the fabric of our otherwise ordinary lives. What a gift.
