Jackson Free Press

It's easier to gather a breeze in a basket than to totally grasp the mystery of Easter.

That mystery confounded Mary Magdalene and other women who entered Jesus' empty tomb. They became terrified. Suddenly, two men in dazzling clothes appeared and asked them: "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen."

I was terrified, too, and focused on death when as a shy, skinny pre-teen, I attended a summer revival in a central Alabama church. Hellfire and damnation rolled in over me from the fundamentalist pulpit: We were all sinners and headed straight to hell unless we were saved.

I believed the preacher. When he wasn't in the pulpit, he was a really nice person.

Trembling, I flapped the handled paper fan back and forth with all my might, but it didn't cool me or my fear or my conviction in that un-air-conditioned country church. The situation—as I understood it—was not pretty: Death was lurking, and if I had any chance at all of escaping hell fire, I had to walk the aisle, repent, accept Jesus as my savior and join the church.

I did it, and felt immediate relief. It was similar to that feeling that follows barely escaping a head-on collision on the highway.

But I quickly became confused. It seemed that to stay on the safe side, I had to resist evil, like dancing and drinking. Suffice it to say, I didn't hear many sermons in our church about there being a time to dance (Ecclesiastes 3:4) or Jesus turning water into wine (John 2: 1-11).

Honestly, the drinking was not much of a problem for me as a kid entering junior high in a dry county, but I loved sock hops.

Since I equated "religion" with God at that time, and my religion was chock full of "no," I was left in a quandary about how I could simultaneously enjoy life and stay safe for dying. For a long time, religion meant a fair amount of perpetual guilt and fear, and feeling that I was falling short of pleasing a judgmental demanding God.

Ironically, however, over the years, as I experienced personal losses and deep pain during the death of loved ones and relationships, I would be aware of an intimate presence deep inside me which comforted me in a manner that was as different from judgment as life is different from death.

Eventually, I was no longer able to tolerate participating in a fundamentalist Christian religion; I became active in a Christian denomination where I grew in awareness of Jesus' humanity as well as his divinity.

That understanding began to open me to a process of spiritual freeing that eventually climaxed in a dream: A numinous figure embraced me in forgiveness and unconditional love and acceptance. In that embrace, all that had ever indicted me with guilt was erased, and love released me from my own personal tomb of guilt and fear. I awoke shaken to the core by my own unexpected Easter.

There are many kinds of personal tombs and many kinds of personal Easters.

Recently, I visited my 94-year-old mom in the nursing home. She wasn't there. Time has entombed her personality. Macular degeneration has entombed her sight, deafness her hearing.

Nearby, her young, comatose roommate lay rigid, frozen by a stroke. I felt like I was entombed in a place of living death.

Suddenly, an immaculately groomed smiling woman dressed in bright pink walked into the room. She'd come to visit the roommate. As she walked toward me, she apologized for her broken speech: It was left from the wreck she'd had, she told me.

After the wreck, she was airlifted to a hospital. She died, and doctors brought her back to life.

"It was a miracle. Praise Jesus!" she said.

I gulped.

The butterfly pin on her blouse caught my eye.

"What a marvelous symbol of your life," I said, trying to find my bearings.

She said she was resuscitated but remained in a coma for months. One day she just woke up, as if she'd never been asleep.

Then she said: "Jesus is coming back again."

"It looks like he's already come back for you," I said.

"But He's coming back to show me the beauty and life," she said,

"My," I thought. "What more beauty and life can there be than resurrection from one's own death?"

Her husband walked in, lifted the roommate's twisted hands into his and began slowly, gently massaging them.

The lady in pink sat down by the roommate's bed and spoke with authority that the roommate could wake up, too. She knew. It had happened to her.

This weekend, Christians will celebrate what Jesus' resurrection conveys for all humanity. But for each of us, experiencing escape from our self-imposed tombs creates a personal Easter, one with all the power and awe of the Easter mystery.

Previous Comments

ID

157025

Comment

Jackie, this is inspiring, thanks for sharing...

Author

ceejaygee

Date

2010-04-02T06:40:32-06:00