Life after . . .

Easter grace and peace to you,

Easter?!? Doesn’t it already feel like Easter Sunday was months ago? Such is the nature of time these days, especially pandemic time. Wait, what day is it? When was that? Did we miss it?

We may very well feel like we missed it. While many of us got to return to worship with others in some form or fashion, things may still have been pretty different. Wearing masks, keeping distance, trying not to sing too hard, we may have offered up a muffled Alleluia, both literally and figuratively. While we may be seeing more light at end of the pandemic tunnel, it still feels like the stone is only partially rolled away. If Christ is risen, how is there is still so much tragic injustice, suffering and death among us?

This year, as I was planning for the first worship circle in the Easter season, I had an especially hard time choosing music. Old favorite Easter hymns like Christ the Lord is Risen Today and Easter People, Raise Your Voices didn’t feel quite right. They felt too triumphant, too cheery, too shiny-happy. Like the equivalent of saying to someone in deep pain, “Look on the bright side . . “or “This will make you stronger,” or “Everything happens for a reason.”

What saved me were the biblical stories themselves. Just like Jesus was born into the world in relative obscurity, he returns in quiet mystery. There are no large crowds, no trumpet fanfares, no crosses flowered with Easter lilies and daffodils. There are weeping women going to tend the body of their deceased friend, disciples locked behind closed doors in utter terror and immense doubt, others walking in the dark trying to process what has happened.

And when Jesus comes back, he does not come in victory or vengeance. There is no splashy public appearance proving he is alive, nor sticking it to the empire that unjustly crucified him. In other words, if you didn’t already know him, you probably completely missed it. He was dead and gone, and you moved on, certain he was in that tomb.

But to those who knew and loved him, those who found a whole new way of being when they were with him, and now felt completely lost without him, Christ returned mysteriously. He quietly slipped into the places they were grieving, doubting, wondering, and offered them yet another round of life-transforming experience.

One of my favorite post-resurrection narratives comes from the very end of John’s gospel. The setting is the sea of Galilee. The disciples have already experienced their risen Lord once in the upper room where they were hiding out on that first Easter day. Some weeks later they’re back at home in the Galilee region. I imagine they are still trying to make sense of what they have seen and heard. How could their Teacher have been crucified? And how did they see him again, in the flesh, and yet mysteriously different? And what in the world does it mean for them now?

Peter says he’s going fishing, and several others join in. Perhaps they’re trying to get back to some semblance of normalcy, life as they knew it before they met him. They head out to sea, fish all night and catch nothing. I imagine that empty net may mirror an inner emptiness.

As the sun rises, Jesus stands on the beach, unrecognized. He instructs them to try fishing on the other side of their boat. And then they experience such a haul of fish, they can hardly pull in the net.

And that’s the tip off, that net teeming with abundant life. That’s when they recognize him. As they make their way to the beach, hauling in their awesome catch, he beckons them to come join him around a charcoal fire where fish are roasting, and bread is waiting. Jesus says, Come and have breakfast.

Again, there is no fanfare or dramatic proclamation. Just their friend and teacher, meeting them where they are, as they are, inviting them to share a simple, yet intimate, holy meal on the beach.

I think of all the times in our lives when things don’t go as planned or hoped. When we experience heart-breaking death and loss. When the road we were on seems to vanish. When things fall apart or the bottom drops out and we are left bereft, confused, frightened. How could this happen? This is not the God we thought we knew. This is not the way we thought life would go, should go. We too, may struggle with an inner emptiness and ache that feels like it will swallow us whole.

I think of us right now, after the year or years we’ve just come through, where so much has been lost or radically altered. Maybe like those disciples, we’re just trying to get back to some sense of normalcy. Wondering how life is the same, yet how it is forever changed. We show up with beloved companions, go back to fishing, try to make sense of things.

Might we imagine how the Risen One slips quietly into these moments. Not loudly or dramatically, but gently, mysteriously. There on the shores of our lives, in that haze between darkness and dawn. Meeting us right where we are, just as we are, in all our confusion and doubt, grief or fear. He beckons us as that still small voice, that nudge or invitation, that quiet intimacy of love. We think it’s him but we’re not quite sure. He calls to us to try doing things another way. He offers us radical peace, forgiveness, acceptance. He welcomes us back into his loving embrace. He invites us to come and join him for intimate, sacred meal. And life after begins, the net suddenly pulsing with new life and hope.