‘A Grace Disguised”
by Bruce J. Johnson

April 27, 2003

I will never forget the moment when I first heard the words of W.H. Auden’s poem: “Funeral Blues.” It was at Second Church a number of years ago and a profoundly sad occasion, a wife lamenting the tragic death of her husband. I’ve not heard them since.

“Funeral Blues”

“Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message, “He is Dead.”

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood

For nothing now can ever come to any good.”

It is today as it was last week, I’m not sure that we can understand Easter and be an Easter people without feeling first, what the women and the disciples felt first at the tomb and with the reading of today’s lesson, what the disciples felt while hiding out in that upper room.

The first part of today’s lesson from the Gospel according to John is the account of Easter morning. I often wondered whether Auden’s words might also capture the essence of what Mary was feeling when she first visited the tomb that first Easter and discovered it empty and believed that someone had taken Jesus’ body?

You will recall that it was she who first discovered it empty. Her first response was to high tail it back to Peter and the disciples. They in turn run to the tomb, look in and enter but don’t hang around. They return home—leaving Mary weeping.

She is asked the same question twice.

First, Mary encounters two angels when she tearfully looks into the empty tomb. They ask her: “Woman, why are you weeping?

And her response was:

THEY HAVE TAKEN AWAY MY LORD AND I DO NOT KNOW WHERE THEY HAVE LAID HIM.

Second, Jesus asks her the same question when she turns away from the tomb and encounters Him but mistakes Him for the gardener.

Woman, why are you weeping?

Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where, so that I may take him away.

Whenever I read that response, I always want to offer my own translation which would be: “Sir, if you have put him somewhere, tell me where, so that I can have him back.”

What an incredibly poignant moment, a moment that was reserved for grief and its rituals. For Mary and the disciples—Jesus was dead and his death had devastated them, but to be deprived of closure and process made the loss all the more painful. So Mary tearfully begs:

“I want him back.” Implying, of course, “then and only then, will I be able to go on and get my life back.”

You know, leaving aside the issue that this story has to do with Jesus and his resurrection, I think that Mary represents us all. Have you ever, at any point in your life, had this kind of experience or known this kind of loss? Both on the human level and maybe even in terms of your faith, (and maybe in the end, they are one anyway) --- carried away by the torrent of tragedy or hidden in the midst of very confusing circumstances, have you ever felt like if you did get back what you have lost--- you’ll never be able to get beyond the emptiness and the pain?

I just finished reading a terrific book called: A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows Through Loss by Gerald L. Sittser. It is the account of his journey through the tragic loss of his mother, wife and daughter in an automobile accident. (He and two sons survived.) He described some of his experience in the following words:

“Sailing on a Sea of Nothingness”

“I remember dreaming once of a vast ocean. I was on a ship with my three children, and we were sailing out of a safe harbor, which was lush with green and alive with activity. It was somehow familiar to me, and I wanted desperately to return, though for some reason I was unable, as if the ship itself had a will of its own and would not let me. Then I walked to the bow with my children and looked out over the ocean which, from, horizon to horizon, had no land or vessel to let us know there was something out there to sail toward or someone to sail with. In that moment I felt utterly alone.” (p. 56)

Sittser talks not only about his loss but all the losses that devastate our lives such as death, divorce, job loss, illness, shattered dreams etc.) They threaten to take away forever our hope, our joy, and our faith and yes, even our lives. Ultimately, isn’t that what its all about—our lives. Mary might just as easily have pleaded with the gardener: “I want my life back!!!!”

“He was my north and my south, my east and my west; my working week and my Sunday rest!”

In a truly profound way, both lives are inextricably bound together, His life and ours.

In an equally poignant and provocative poem, “Woman, Why are you Weeping” Jane Kenyon writes of loss--- as a result of her experience in India amidst its poverty, its disease and despair. Are you up for hearing some of it?

I’ll try to read it in such a way as to do it justice:

“Woman Why Are You Weeping?’

“One morning after the Crucifixion, Mary Magdalene came to see the body of Christ. She found the stone rolled away from the empty tomb. Two figures dressed in white asked her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”

“Because,” she replied, “they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”

Returned from long travel, I sit

in the familiar, sun-streaked pew, waiting

for the bread and wine of holy Communion.

The old comfort does not rise in me, only

apathy and bafflement.

India, with her ceaseless

bells and fire, her crows calling stridently

all night; India with her sandalwood

smoke, and graceful gods, many headed and many-

armed, has taken away the one who blessed

and kept me.

The thing is done, as surely

as if my luggage has been stolen from the train.

Men and women with faces as calm as lakes at dusk

have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know

where to find him.

What is Brahman? I don’t know Brahman.

I don’t know saccidandana, the bliss

Of the absolute and unknowable.

I only know that I have lost the Lord

In whose image I was made.

Whom shall I thank for this pear,

Sweet and white? Food is God, prasadam

God’s mercy. But who is this God?

The one who is not this, not that?

The absurdity of all religious forms

Breaks over me, as the absurdity of language

Made me feel faint the day I heard friends

giving commands to their neighbor’s dog

In Spanish… At first I laughed,

But then I became frightened.

They have taken away my Lord, a person

Whose life I held inside me. I saw him

Heal and teach and eat among sinners.

I saw him break the Sabbath for a higher

Sabbath. I saw him lose his temper.

I knew his anguish when he called, “I thirst!”

and received vinegar to drink. The Bible

does not say it, but I am sure he turned

his head away. Not long after he cried, “My God,

My God, why have you forsaken me?”

I watched him reveal himself risen

To Magdalene with a single word: ‘Mary!”

It was my habit to speak to him. His goodness

perfumed my life. I loved the Lord, he heard

my cry, and he loved me as his own.

A man sleeps on the pavement, on a raffia mat

the only thing that has not been stolen from him.

This stranger who loves what cannot be understood

has put out my light with his calm face…

I’m sure that we have all had times when we have felt what Mary felt--- and maybe what the disciples were feeling in today’s lesson, hiding behind closed doors in fear wondering what would become of them or what kind of life they would now have without their Lord.

What good could possibly come from all this?

As an Easter people, though, we know what good. A grace is disguised somewhere in the process of dealing with our losses and those experiences that threaten our sense of security, our hope and our very lives.

For we know that Jesus appeared to Mary and then to the disciples. The very marks of his death, the nail holes in his hands and the slash in his side are the very wounds that give rise to renewed faith and a new future!

Death does not have the final word but life does!

Sittser begins one of his closing chapters with the following quote:

“The edges of God are tragedy. The depths of God are joy, beauty, resurrection, life. Resurrection answers crucifixion; life answer death.”

Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki

INDEED IT DOES! AND PRAISE BE TO GOD FOR THIS JOYOUS EASTER TRUTH!

AMEN