Made for Joy

Are you Willing to Be Resurrected?

"I don't care if you're dead! Jesus is here, and he wants to resurrect somebody!"
Hafiz

Happy Easter Everyone!

A LITURGY OF PRAYER FOR EASTER DAY

Opening Prayer

The risen Lord stands in our midst and says, ‘Peace be with you.’

Take three slow, deep breaths. Receive that peace. Connect to all that gives you joy. Smile!

1^st Readings

Psalm 118.14 - 24

The Lord is my strength and my might;
he has become my salvation.

There are glad songs of victory in the tents of the righteous:
‘The right hand of the Lord does valiantly;
the right hand of the Lord is exalted;
the right hand of the Lord does valiantly.’
I shall not die, but I shall live,
and recount the deeds of the Lord.
The Lord has punished me severely,
but he did not give me over to death.

Open to me the gates of righteousness,
that I may enter through them
and give thanks to the Lord.

This is the gate of the Lord;
the righteous shall enter through it.

I thank you that you have answered me
and have become my salvation.
The stone that the builders rejected
has become the chief cornerstone.
This is the Lord’s doing;
it is marvellous in our eyes.
This is the day that the Lord has made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Luke 24. 1-12

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body.While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.’Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

REFLECTION

The Sufi mystic Hafiz wrote:

I called through your door,
"The mystics are gathering in the street. Come out!"
"Leave me alone. I'm sick."
"I don't care if you're dead! Jesus is here, and he wants to resurrect somebody!"

Are you willing to be resurrected?

Strangely enough, in some ways it is as difficult for us to embrace our joy as it is our pain, perhaps for the same reason. In both pain and joy we make ourselves vulnerable, whereas the opposite is a dull sort of defended living or forced happiness. If we open our hearts to either pain or full-hearted joy, we are both more vulnerable and more fully alive. This is, in many ways, what this journey has been about.

Resurrection is an invitation to take a risk: to be more vulnerable in order to be more fully alive. But resurrection is also a discipline. Despair is easier. Cynicism is easier. Escapism is easier. But this world desperately needs our Easter selves – hopeful, irrational, bursting out of the tomb, aspiring to faith, hope and love.

Richard Rohr writes:

I want to enlarge your view of resurrection from a one-time miracle in the life of Jesus that asks for assent and belief, to a pattern of creation that has always been true, and that invites us to much more than belief in a miracle. It must be more than the private victory of one man to prove that he is God.

Resurrection and renewal are, in fact, the universal and observable pattern of everything. We might just as well use non-religious terms like “springtime,” “regeneration,” “healing,” “forgiveness,” “life cycles,” “darkness,” and “light.” If incarnation is real, and Spirit has inhabited matter from the beginning, then resurrection in multitudinous forms is to be fully expected.

So to be a Christian is to be inevitably and forever a person of hope. God in Christ is saying this is what will last: my life and my love will always and forever have the final word.

Pray and Ponder

The gospel gives us many wonderful resurrection stories – a name called in the garden, peace given in a locked, fearful room, a net bursting with fish, a cooked breakfast, a journey with a stranger we recognise as Christ..

Take a moment to connect to one of these stories, if you can, or just your strongest connection to new life, be it in scripture, or relationship, or nature.

And now (notice that vulnerability) slowly raise your hands above your head: like a green blade arising from the earth, tender and still pale, a greater life emerging. How does this life emerge in your imagination? What do you want to open to? What is given?

However difficult you might find it to connect to anything particular, feel what happens when you raise your hands and nevertheless open to this possibility.

What are you feeling? What do you want to say to God right now? What might God say to you? Take some further time in prayer, sitting with whatever arises from these questions.

Widening the Circle

Take another few minutes to name anyone or anything else that might be on your heart, knowing that the mystery of Christ’s solidarity with suffering, and his offer of impossible new life, extends to the furthest reaches of our world.

The Lord’s Prayer

2nd Reading

I sometimes forget
that I was created for Joy.
My mind is too busy.
My Heart is too heavy
for me to remember
that I have been
called to dance
the Sacred dance of life.
I was created to smile
To Love
To be lifted up
And to lift others up.
O’ Sacred One
Untangle my feet
from all that ensnares.
Free my soul.
That we might
Dance
and that our dancing
might be contagious.

Hafiz

Blessing

May we remember that we were made for joy. May we dance and may our dancing be contagious. May we dare to believe in resurrection.

And the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all, now and evermore. Amen.

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