THE DOORS WERE CLOSED

 

THE DOORS WERE CLOSED

‘The sun rises; the sun sets. The wind turns and turns again. The rivers flow into the sea but it is never filled.’ Qoheleth finds the repetition of days and years futile and ‘chasing the wind’. ‘All things are wearisome. There is nothing new under the sun.’

So, it is Holy Week again. So it is Easter again. So what is new? We have heard it all before. Perhaps some weariness comes to us as we see the same things repeated. Nothing seems to be new.

It takes attention on our part to stop and ask; ‘Is this really so? Is it really all weariness and repetition?’ Each Easter, each day, each moment is something new that we can explore, attend to, rise to. Everything is alive with freshness if we look hard. Easter is a door that opens on a new world if we can be explorers. ‘Unless you become like children …,’ says Jesus. Children are explorers. Everything is new to them. Can we be explorers this Easter?

Can we explore, for instance, what Jesus has just done in his Passion? We are told by Isaiah that ‘He made no resistance.’ This does not mean he was passive, like a ball, kicked this way and that, by opposing players. He submitted, yes, to his captors but we quickly sense that he is always in charge. His words to Caiphas, to Pilate, to the women, to Peter, are always the words of the Master. Everyone is silenced by him. There is a great strength about hum. He shows this by submitting. But all the time he is pushing back against lies, hypocrisy, fear, darkness, sin and death. He fights them to his last breath. And, although his body dies, his spirit triumphs. The person we call Jesus triumphs.

This is something new, staring us in the face: we can pass through the closed doors of sin, darkness, lies, hypocrisy. We can burst them open, discover our true selves, our new selves. If we are to follow him, we do not resist in one sense but we fight vigorously in another. Easter means we become new people. We don’t achieve it in one Easter alone. We have to return, Easter after Easter, each time coming closer to our goal. Each time opening the door wider and wider

It is a task far from chasing the wind. We have a goal, an end to which we are striving. We have a longing within us straining to be fulfilled, ‘striving towards the goal’ (Phil 3:11). ‘You are fighting the same battle which you saw me fighting’ (Phil 1:30). Each Easter brings us closer to our destiny.   

17 April 2022, Easter Sunday.