Two Sundays ago, I felt how Palm Sunday seems to represent all Sundays for me. Dear Lord, I am always so full of praise and thanksgiving for your entry into the Jerusalem of my heart– but as the week goes on, I always catch myself betraying you, saying I do not know you, falling asleep when I should be keeping watch, fleeing from your side and even, in some sins, nailing your hands and feet, piercing your side. Every week. But beneath all of it is your murmuring, “All Sundays are echoes not of my journey into Jerusalem, but of my journey back from the dead. Every Sunday is not a little Palm Sunday, but a little Easter.” What is this grace? My heart cannot comprehend it.
Untethered on Good Friday, I remember entering the pew, wondering: should I bow to the empty altar? He is not there – and it was this same incomprehensible grace that spoke again to me the angel’s words: “He is not here. He is risen!” It is this grace that makes me see the empty tabernacle as the empty tomb. My Lord has risen? This is surpassing sweetness, most dear and overwhelming wonder! But here– he comes to me! How can this grace be yet more? I am not worthy– I kneel at your pierced feet–That thou shouldst come under my roof. I open my mouth– But speak the word only– your Word is laid on my tongue– And my soul shall be healed. The curtain of my temple is torn in two. Who is it that you seek, Margaret? Surely it is the one who found you, the Lord of Hosts.
I remember on Easter Sunday, lingering on the threshold of the parish hall, about to leave, but stirred inside by the laughter and those dear faces– I did not want to leave. I woke up early today on my day off to see my husband leave for work. Lying in bed, something welled up inside of me– I did not want him to go. It feels wrong to me to spend the first week of Easter at home alone– should we not be feasting and fellowshipping still? It is only Easter Wednesday, and already, I hear Jesus’ question again: Who is it that you seek?
Lord, I want you to be my everything. I want your Easter to change me. Somehow, my week always begins with Sunday rejoicing and ends with betrayals and wanderings– my palms are continually folded into crosses. But at the Easter Vigil, Father Paul bent the Paschal candle to me and with my little candle, I shared that light, and the gathering gloom in the knave was banished with the soft warmth of that triumph. My days are not marked by my darkness, but by Your light, dear Jesus. My weeks are at the same time punctuated and capitalized by your empty tomb, your rising again.
It has always been my tendency to shrink from longing, sure that it’s wrong, to run from suffering, begging you to fix it, to dread pain and sickness. But oh Lord, let that be my pre-Easter self. I want to relish yearnings, to see through their already baptized misty veil to gaze upon your face. I want to run towards suffering, and in all that pain, look up to find myself beneath your outstretched arms on the cross. Or, in my running, find myself at your empty tomb, you waiting for me in the garden.
“Awake sad heart, whom sorrow ever drowns;
Take up thine eyes, which feed on earth;
Unfold thy forehead gather’d into frowns:
Thy Saviour comes, and with him mirth:
Awake, awake;
And with a thankfull heart his comforts take.
But thou dost still lament, and pine, and crie;
And feel his death, but not his victorie.
Arise sad heart; if thou dost not withstand,
Christs resurrection thine may be:
Do not by hanging down break from the hand,
Which as it riseth, raiseth thee:
Arise, Arise;
And with his buriall-linen drie thine eyes:
Christ left his grave-clothes, that we might, when grief
Draws tears, or bloud, not want an handkerchief.” (George Herbert, “The Dawning”)
Who is it that I seek? Surely it is the one who found me– even the Lord of Hosts.
Photo Credits: Emily Barbee, Greenville SC