October Saints and Seasons

Saints and Seasons 

The basic truths of our faith just keep going deeper and deeper. I remember coming out of the old church into the hallway after my meditation one morning. Fr Lief and Pat Backman (Moore) were standing talking and I said in amazement “When Jesus died, he was deader than a doornail!” “Yes..........?” they said. It seemed self-evident to them.  Every Sunday for decades I had said “he died  and was buried,” but somehow that particular day the knowing crashed through from my head to my heart.  That day it struck me that when he died he was well and truly dead!

And now, decades later, and with much more experience of the stark finality and mystery of death and loss, it has just occurred to me in a flash of insight (don’t laugh) that before Jesus, there was no resurrection - everybody was deader than a doornail!  I should have known that - did “know” that.  “He descended to the dead” we proclaim in our Baptismal creed. It should not have been astonishing, but it was. And so, when Jesus says  “I AM resurrection, I AM  life” he was not (IS not)  talking metaphorically. He meant in Him is life, in his resurrection there is resurrection and without it there just isn’t. Or wasn’t.  I hadn’t really gotten it even though I love the marvelous ancient sermon for Holy Saturday where Jesus is in hell addressing Adam and Eve, and thus all the dead. Taking them by the hand, he says ”Rise up, work of my hands, let us leave this place. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell, Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise, up, work of my hands, let us leave this place....”  

Pain and suffering and loss - sometimes senseless loss- is woven into the very fabric of our life, into the very universe.  Somehow it is necessary to bring us - and all things - to completion. It’s nothing that I understand, or hope to in this life, but sometimes I get a glimpse of illumination as if from a lighthouse to my little vessel adrift on this tempestuous sea.  It doesn’t stay, the beam sweeps over me and passes on to illuminate others, but it is enough for me to steer toward.  As much as I rail against disease and diminishment and loss, I do believe that God gives us “the treasures of darkness” as Isaiah said so long ago. 

            Abide with me, fast falls the eventide; 

            the darkness deepens, Lord with me abide:

            When other helpers fail and comforts flee, 

            In life, in death O Lord, abide with me. 

            (Hymn 662 1,4)  

Louise Buck 

October 2010

@ Saints and Seasons is a monthly (except for August) column written by Louise Buck for "The Gospel at Saint David's," the monthly magazine of St David's Episcopal Church, 5050 Milton St, San Diego CA.