Jesus (58 page)

Her comment has stayed with me for twenty-five years. It was so unexpected. And so personal. And so hard for me to understand. Doris's cross led to her highly personal resurrection. It was a reminder that where the world sees only the cross, the Christian sees the possibility of something else.

Finally,
nothing is impossible with God.
That's the message I return to most often. On the first day of the week, the Gospel of John tells us that most of the disciples were cowering behind closed doors, out of fear. After Good Friday, the disciples were terrified. Earlier, on Holy Thursday, we are told by Matthew and Mark that all of them fled from the Garden, in fear. That evening Peter denied knowing Jesus. If they were afraid before Jesus was sentenced to death, imagine their reactions after seeing him marched through the streets of Jerusalem, nailed to a cross, and hung there until dead. Their leader was executed as an enemy of the state.

Locked behind closed doors after the death of the person in whom they had placed all their hopes—is there a more vivid image of fear?

The disciples fail to realize—again—that they are dealing with the Living God, the same one whose message to Mary at the Annunciation was “Nothing will be impossible with God.” They could not see beyond the walls of that closed room. They were unwilling to accept that God was greater than their imaginations.

Perhaps they can be forgiven—Jesus was dead, after all. And who could have predicted the Resurrection? Then again, maybe we shouldn't let the disciples off so easily. Jesus had
always
confounded their expectations—healing the sick, stilling a storm, raising the dead—so perhaps they should have expected the unexpected. But they did not.

Often we find ourselves incapable of believing that God might have new life in store for us. “Nothing can change,” we say. “There is no hope.” This is when we end up mired in despair, which can sometimes be a reflection of pride. That is, we think that we know better than God. It is a way of saying, “God does not have the power to change this situation.” What a dark and dangerous path is despair, far darker than death.

How many of us believe parts of our lives are dead? How many believe that parts of our family, our country, our world, our church cannot come to life? How many of us feel bereft of the hope of change?

This is when I turn to the Resurrection. Often I return to the image of the terrified disciples cowering behind closed doors. We are not called to live in that room. We are called to emerge from our hiding places and to accompany Mary, weeping sometimes, searching always, and ultimately blinded by the dawn of Jesus's new life—surprised—delighted and moved to joy. We are called to believe what she has seen: he is risen.

T
HE
R
ESURRECTION IS A
message of unparalleled hope—and unparalleled joy. A seriously underappreciated part of the Christian life, joy undergirds Jesus's preaching, is the fruit of most of his miracles, and is the most natural response to the Resurrection. Consider how often the word is mentioned in some form in the Gospels:

The most joyful day in the disciples' lives was Easter Sunday. We'll look at two more Easter appearances in the next two chapters, which are characterized first by confusion, but then joy. So, with joy in mind, let me end this chapter with one of the more amusing things that happened during the pilgrimage. It happened in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also known as the Church of the Resurrection.

A
LTHOUGH THE
C
HURCH OF
the Holy Sepulchre is closed from eight at night to four in the morning, on some evenings pilgrims can be “locked in” to spend the night in prayer. Father Doan had casually mentioned that to George and me early in our stay at the PBI. George's ears perked up. “Oh, I definitely want to do that,” he said over dinner one night.

Did I? Not really. I worried that, like the apostles, I wouldn't be able to stay awake. Also, I was concerned that the experience might be too intense. Even standing before the Tomb of Christ for a few minutes overwhelmed me—imagine being there for an entire night! So I declined. George looked disappointed.

The big day came near the end of our pilgrimage. That evening we dined at the Jesuit community with Peter, an American Jesuit who taught religious studies at Bethlehem University. Like all the Jesuits I had met there, Peter was highly knowledgeable about the region's politics, and he also knew the city well. Even though we had been in the Holy Land for almost two weeks, it was still amusing to hear the holy sites referred to in casual conversation: “The traffic from Bethlehem was a
nightmare
today!”

Around seven o'clock, George excused himself so that he could make it to the Holy Sepulchre in time for the closing. Peter said, “Oh that's a wonderful thing to do. You won't be sorry.” Instantly I was filled with regret. What a bad Jesuit I was, missing out on an evening vigil before the Tomb of Christ. But by the time my regret registered, it was too late. George had cleaned his plate, left the table, and departed for what promised to be a night of mystical prayer.

The next morning I rose early. There was, I had been reliably informed, a Mass at the Holy Sepulchre celebrated by the Franciscan priests at seven thirty. If I couldn't spend the entire night in rapt prayer at the holiest spot in Christendom, at least I could begin the day with a Mass there. On my way to breakfast I noticed George's door was closed.

Apparently, he was still asleep, which was to be expected given that he must have returned home at four in the morning. I wolfed down a breakfast of toast and juice and arrived at the church with time to spare.

But there was no Mass. The friendly Franciscan friar, an American whom I had come to know, said that no liturgy had been scheduled for that time. “By the way,” he said, “your friend left early last night.”

“Really?” I said. “What time?”

“Around midnight,” he said. I thought it strange, so asked why.

“Beats me,” he said.

While I puzzled over that news, I noticed that the line to enter the Tomb was the shortest I had yet seen, only two or three people. “Shhh!” said someone beside me. “Mass is starting.” I hung around the entrance to the Tomb, and a priest approached us, wearing his Mass vestments and holding a chalice and paten. He had a vaguely Gallic air, so I asked in French if I could join him. “
Ja
,” he said and started speaking German to a sister standing behind me. We entered the Tomb.

In that cramped space, perhaps three by five feet, he began the Mass on the stone slab that I had kissed. Next to the German sister was another sister who introduced herself; she was from Burma. After Mass had begun, another woman pushed her way into the chamber. I had noticed her over the past few days praying her Rosary near the Tomb. She was either very holy, like Anna, the woman who spent “night and day” in the Temple and who greeted Mary and Joseph and Jesus, or very crazy.
²⁵
Or both. Maybe because I was squeezed in next to the crazy/holy woman who kept poking me in the ribs, my first and only Mass in the Tomb of Christ wasn't especially moving. Again I regretted not going to the vigil with George.

After Mass I popped by some favorite sites in the Old City and spent an hour in prayer at the Pool of Bethesda. For good measure, I purchased small souvenirs in the market. For my nephews, ages twelve and five, I bought a variety of headgear—
yarmulke
s (or
kippa
s) worn by the majority of the Jewish men in Jerusalem;
taquiya
s, the colorfully embroidered round caps worn by many Muslim men, and even a bright red fez, which I knew my older nephew would like. For a Jewish friend's son, age ten, I bought a handful of rubber wristbands stenciled with a Hebrew saying that the shopkeeper promised was the
Shema
prayer (“Hear O Israel, the Lord is One”), but which turned out to be the name of the shop.

When I checked my watch it was lunchtime. On my way to the PBI dining room I ran into George. I looked forward to hearing about his night of prayer, and started to regret my decision all over again.

“So how was your night?”

“
Not
what I expected!” he said.

“What happened? Weren't you alone?”

“Well, I
thought
I was going to be alone,” he said. “So I got there around eight, just in time for the big closing of the door, and the caretaker let me in. But just as the guy was closing the door, a group of about twenty tourists from God knows where scooted in. And they were incredibly noisy. I thought,
Well it's a big church. I'm sure there will be a quiet place to pray.
So I went over to the tomb. Anyway, they followed me, and then started to take out their cameras and rustle their bags of food, and talk some more, and eat, and take pictures and talk, and walk around, and eat some more, and they would just not
shut up
.”

“What were they talking about?”

“I don't know!” he said. “But they sure had a
lot
to say!”

After an hour of vainly hoping the tourists would move on, George decided to withdraw to a more secluded spot. So he walked downstairs to the Chapel of the Finding of the True Cross, a lovely space where St. Helena, the mother of the emperor Constantine supposedly discovered the remnants of the cross. (The chapel is most likely not from the time of Constantine, but was built on the remains of a quarry dug three centuries later.) I knew the chapel, an ideal place to pray, away from most tourists, dark, quiet, secluded. George sat on a small wooden chair near the altar.

“Then some priest comes out of nowhere and says, ‘Hey! You can't pray there.' I guess you can't sit in those chairs.”

George searched for another spot. He chose one of the most unusual altars, positioned in front of a window affording a view of the side of the hill of Golgotha. Here the architects had removed a portion of a wall to expose the side of the hill on which Jesus was crucified. A window was placed there, so that the faithful can see the chalky white hill. George figured that the tourists were busy chatting, the priest wouldn't be bothered, and so this would be his place to pray for the entire evening. He settled in and closed his eyes.

“So just as I was getting into my prayer, these eight nuns carrying plastic buckets came up next to me, dropped their buckets on the marble floor with a bang, took out some window cleaner, sprayed the windows, took out a squeegee, and started cleaning the windows! It was incredibly loud! Squeeeak! Squeeeak! Squeeeak! I couldn't
believe
it!”

George rolled his eyes and shrugged his shoulders.

“So I left at midnight and came back here. It's a good thing you didn't go.”

I felt sorry for George, who had high hopes for his vigil. It was another reminder that spiritual experiences often don't happen when you expect them and do when you don't. God is always a God of surprises.

Afterward George laughed about his silent night in the Holy Sepulchre. “I'll have to find somewhere a little quieter to pray today,” he said over lunch. “Like a construction site.”

T
HE
R
ESURRECTION

John 20:1–18

(See also Matthew 28:1–10; Mark 16:1–8; Luke 24:1–12)

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus's head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and she told them that he had said these things to her.