Including the Scars Including the Scars An Easter message from the Synod Moderator.
In all our glorious images, in paint and words, of the Risen Jesus, we must include the scars. This is no mere detail, for resurrection is linked to this specific death and only through these nails, these thorns, this spear can resurrection be a promise for all humankind. For all death is specific, and the promise of risen life comes to each of us through the resonance of our death with that of Jesus.
This was as politically expedient a death as that of any poet in a gulag or shrapnel torn child in an Afghan street.
This was as meaningless a death as any cancer patient or flood victim.
This death had the integrity of any rescue worker walking fearfully into danger rather than be false to himself.
This was as sacrificial a death as any who accepts injustice so that nobody else need suffer in fruitless conflict.
This death was as reluctantly accepted as any who, after long struggle, recognise the inevitable end.
The list could continue but it can never include a failed struggle to deny the mortality which is part of our nature or a cowardice which tries to avoid death at all costs.
When we can hear echoes of Jesus death in the contemplation of the ways in which death might come to us, or has come to those we love, we can enter into the promise of life triumphant and death defeated.
Paul says ‘For surely you know that when we were baptized into union with Christ Jesus, we were baptized into union with his death. By our baptism then, we were buried with him and shared his death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from death by the glorious power of the Father, so also we might live a new life.’ (Romans 6:3-4)
A poem that shows the depth of dying and rising as two sides of one coin for Jesus and for all who seek to be in communion with Christ:
Face what must be faced.
Life moves with great complexity.
Stark simplicity marks death.
Avoidance of life and fear of death
would keep us alive but lifeless.
Join Jesus in death
by partaking of the cup.
Break bread and share fish.
This supper is common fare for those
whose goal is communion at the cross.
This way through death
makes life endurable.Emerge now with all fullness.
Burst sanctuaries with lilies.
Raise the day with singing.
God's word is light.
The baptism of little ones
makes death acceptable
through a dark night.
On the way to Easter expect death and resurrection.
Meet and greet each one
as a creation of God's love
and open to JOY!© Doris L Judy
Touch Holiness - ed Duck and Tirabassi
Christ has died,
Christ is risen,
Christ will come again.
Alleluia.
Rowena Francis