On Resurrections
AM Psalm 103 • PM Psalm 111, 114
Exodus 12:28-39 • 1 Corinthians 15:12-28 • Mark 16:9-20
About March 21, as I listened to an NPR commentator in Karachi reporting that many mosques in Pakistan were staying open for evening and morning prayers, a woman on a bicycle noticed her speaking with a microphone in English, figured out what she was talking about, stopped, and asked permission to say something. The reporter gladly held the microphone up to her, and the woman, whose English was excellent, said, "I am happy the mosques are open. As long as they are open, I will go there to join my fellow Muslims in prayer. Telling us not to pray together would be like telling us not to eat or breathe." Though I prefer our church's present online ministry to soul and body, I believe this good woman was expressing her faith, as a Muslim, in the resurrection of people's souls. The pandemic could kill her body, but not her soul.
St. Paul believed in our resurrection, too, and cited the resurrection of Jesus, which we celebrate in today's gospel reading, as proof and promise of our own resurrections.
Early Christians were disappointed that the world wasn't ending during their lifetime and that Christ didn't return to resurrect them straight up to heaven without their even having to die. Instead, humanity has gone through a series of historical deaths and resurrections. These days we tend to remember the black death, all of those corpses of loved ones thrown pell-mell into ditches, and the survivors holed up alone for months before finally, half starved, emerging from their musty houses and huts into the light and clean air, to form new relationships, pray in companionship again, and plow their fields. Millions died in World War I, but Corporal Ted DuVal survived and came home to the United States from France, speaking French. Hard upon the war came the Spanish Flu, killing more millions, including immigrant Jean Cau, in Virginia, but through hardship his daughter Hélène survived to marry Ted and bear and raise my brother, sister, and me in a loving home. Praise God for that resurrection!
So many deaths and resurrections. A month and a half from now, or two, or three, having overcome our lonelinesses through the miracle of internet, we will come forth, like Jesus bursting from the tomb. With hugs and handshakes of peace, we will celebrate and pray together, because we are an Easter people.
Written by John Tabb DuVal
John is grateful for the online connections with St. Paul's activities, which he is trying to work in between his attempts to teach and cheer up his students.