The awaited resurrection

It was only after we traveled home from the service that our Easter baskets were put out and we had Cadbury chocolate eggs for breakfast and one or two neon marshmallow peeps while my mother popped the pot roast in the oven before we left for our regular church service to join in with the crowds. Again, we rushed out the door, my mother yelling instructions over her shoulder to my father to keep an eye on the roast.

Today, I have given up my Easter dress, my cowboy boots and the neon peeps but I still enjoy a Cadbury chocolate egg from time to time. I still go to church and, strangely enough, I am still awed by the resurrection, but not in the way you might imagine. Along the way I gave up trying to answer the question of what happened long ago. I find that I am no longer bound by creeds that limit my imagination, or a faith, no matter how dear, that forces me to exclude others who believe differently.

Truth is, I’ve lived long enough now to experience resurrection, regardless of what actually happened that first day. I’ve witnessed people “coming back to life” — coming out of depression, rising up out of grief, up out of alcoholism, up out of death-dealing situations. Having lived through two pandemics now, I’ve watched people find life in the midst of great suffering.

In the first pandemic during the AIDS years, in took nearly a decade, but I witnessed scientists develop anti-retroviral meds which made HIV a manageable disease rather than a death sentence. My friends stopped dying. As ministers, we were no longer burying two to three young men every Saturday in San Francisco and losing over a quarter of our congregation each year. It was a Herculean task to preach hope during those years and I had to find a way to believe it myself. I had to look for resurrection wherever I could find it — I had to choose to believe life was possible.

In the second pandemic, I’ve witnessed scientists develop a vaccine at record-breaking speed and we are starting to see a significant step forward toward a post-pandemic life. Fewer people are dying. We can almost grasp a post-pandemic world even if we cannot yet define it.

Resurrection is messy and it rarely comes on our timeline. And, sometimes it feels random and not accessible to everyone. The societal crucifixions of race and class continue, and many are still mired in the agony of Good Friday. But part of the Easter story is being given the ability to see resurrection, even when it seems most impossible.

The Easter story can speak to us whether or not we embrace the Christian tradition. It is a beautiful story, a human story of grief and loss, and of hope and possibilities. It reminds us that transformation is possible, even during the darkest times.

In that original resurrection story, when Mary Magdalene was in the garden at the tomb weeping, she looked up, and saw the gardener. When the gardener spoke, she realized that the gardener was Jesus, the risen Christ. Maybe the greatest moment of that first Easter was Mary seeing the divine in the gardener — an essential worker bringing beauty and life to each of us. Maybe resurrection can happen right here in San Mateo as we choose new life by seeing each other differently. By opening our eyes to the messy and beautiful humanity and divinity in all.

And, as we head into our second COVID spring, we can look for resurrection wherever we can find it. Resurrection can make the long night of suffering bearable because we can look for the dawn of healing. Resurrection can give us the confidence that things can be different. Resurrection can lift us out of the tomb of the impossible into the garden of the possible.

Sometimes it takes an out-of-tune trumpet on a snowy hill at dawn to announce resurrection. But most of the time, it simply takes us choosing to see one another differently, to recognize the holy essence of each person, and to choose to live fully with eyes wide open to the wonder that is all around us, and is in each person.

The Rev. Dr. G. Penny Nixon is the senior minister of the Congregational Church of San Mateo and co-director of the Peninsula Solidarity Cohort.