Mary's Saturday

Yesterday’s death is sinking in.  …It is a huge lonely hole.  I have so many questions—so many desperate thoughts, and a sad, unquenchable grief that has found no comfort.

…Who was he?  How did this blessed miracle man die and leave me so alone with so many gaping feelings?  Everything is raw and fraying.  In fact, it feels like the fabric of my life has been ripped in two,  …never to be normal again…never to have the pieces intact…nothing to ever be the same.  I’ve never felt such emptiness.  This man I thought I knew is gone.  I knew him.  I did.  …At least I thought I did.  He was an edgy comfort.  A security of some kind, but “was” now rings in my ears.  He’s gone.  No more.  The night is so dark.  This deep blackness will never end, will it?

That pain.  That blood.  …I want to clear my head of those horrific images.  And yet I can’t.  His eyes were never vacant of love as he hung there, scanning the crowd for the faces of friends.  He seemed to be in whispered conversations with some invisible companion.  He had often gone off alone to pray.  I guess it had to be done publicly as he hung there, the life pouring out of him.

How will I ever sleep again?  Peace seems a distant, if not impossible, goal.  …Agony is gripping every part of my heart, body and soul, thrashing me around in the turmoil.  How do I escape this wretched hell?  Is there no release?  No hope for dawn and a warm sun to make anything ever seem at peace again?

That blood was running everywhere.  It was dripping down his face, into his eyes, onto thick warm pools on the ground.  And then finally, after what seemed like an eternity of torturous hours, he stopped breathing and then hung there lifeless.  Everything gone.  Spent.

When did I leave the foot of the cross?  It is such a blur, those hours.  They seemed endless.  Yet here I am.  Broken.  I’m poured out too, exhausted.  I don’t even know how I got home.  How can I possibly put together the pieces of his life…and his death…so that this could make any sense?

John was here.  And Peter.  We spent these few years with this mysterious man who pierced our souls.  He turned everything on end,  He seemed to ask something to die and yet brought unexpected life where we’d never thought we’d find it.  I was a social outcast, and yet he welcomed me, not to use me as so many others had, but to show me what real love looked like.  He made me feel I deserved to be loved.  There was something about him that made me believe it and I could, for the first time in so long, open my heart.

There is a deafening silence.  The city seems both chaotic and empty in a ghastly way.  Nothing has ever felt like this.  So raw.  So ragged.  So ______________.

………………………………………………………………………………………….

The linen cloth is folded neatly.  Even upon his moment of bodily leaving the tomb He began to put order back and death in its proper place.  He was in charge.  Oh my…He still is!  He was the one who set the tone, who wrote the score, who put every grace note in exactly the right place.  He…well, you couldn’t imagine a more amazing person.  He was indescribable love and unmatched authority.

Every time the Pharisees had tried to trick or trap Him, He responded in a way that was so purely right, and revealed the soot on their own thinking.  Yes, He was the one in control even when He was in the hands of the officials.  Ha!  Official what?  He was in charge and yet fully obedient even to the extent of His horrible death.  This wooden crossbeam of a doorway had seemed the end.  Fate sealed shut and locked down when He said, “It is finished.”  But He has had the last word after all.  The victorious first sentences were “Why do you weep?”  and “Who are you looking for?”  Hope infused each word He spoke. 

And then He said my name.

He called me by name.  He knows me.

My tears have dried, only salty streaks are left on my face.  My heart began to burn again—a flame relit and quickly fanned into a blaze.  It seared through every bit of grief I had felt in those horrible hours.  I am bursting now with anticipation.  I still cannot fathom what this all means, except I know He is alive!  He is alive.  And so am I.

The blood that seemed to pour forever has really poured forever.  I’d wanted it to stop, the misery to end, His pain to be over.  But it didn’t then.  It couldn’t.  All of it had to come.  It had a lot to cover—an earth’s lifetime of bad choices and selfishness and evil and chasing after other things.  It had to permeate all my angry looks, gossip, jealousy, putting others down, and vying for focus, adoration, and worship.  I am not the center—He is!  This magnificent, beautiful, strong, obedient Jesus who did it all!  He took back the reins of broken earth.  He set up a new kingdom, a new order, an answer to every problem, a hope for each hurt, healing for every wound.  He is the way, the truth, the LIFE!

Words are far too limited to describe this.  God help me to find the words and to be a voice…to see clearly, to give more, to love, to come and be and trust and heal and live.  It is too vast, too astonishing, this story You have put forth.  This story You’ve lived.

How do I wrap my head around all this?  It may take my whole life to scratch the surface and to even start to grasp it.  But I will give it all I have.  Every day.  Every moment.  Every opportunity to love.  Each inconvenience give the space to consider that He may want to do something wonderful in it.  If I can trust and yield and hope and ask, seek, knock, what may occur?  Maybe the kingdom will run through my veins and mouth and life.  Maybe I can flow in that stream of goodness and healing and power, in the things that His blood has made a way for.

Mary…what was it really like to experience those gut-wrenching hours of pain and loss and vanished hope?  How did you endure the pain of Saturday, not knowing what was next?  Did you consider that His life might not be finally over?  Did you thing for even a second that it was all part of a larger grand design, of the bigger story, with the most unlikely of endings, the twists in the tale that He was scripting?  How could you know or fathom or guess that there would be such an ending…a new life and the beginning of a new way of life?

God is back in charge, though clearly He wasn’t ever not in charge.  Hope is released, never to be fully shut down again, God welling up in every available source and open and yielded place.  “Yes” becomes both a cup and a conduit.  The cup of suffering and the cup of blessing.  He had shown us all along…wedding at Cana…Last Supper…Gethsemane prayer…Heaven’s banquet.  He is the center of them all.  And communion…come to the table to remember, to sup with Him in obedience and nourishment, in death, and in everlasting life.

The quiet of the night helps to remember.