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The Prophet Jeremiah had warned the people of Judah for decades that their persistent religious hypocrisy and social injustice would have dire consequences. At last the day of reckoning came when the Babylonians swept down and destroyed the holy city of Jerusalem, razed the Temple, and carried thousands off into exile. The people of God had been forced back into the wilderness again. Why? Was it God’s punishment, or the inevitable consequences of sin, or God’s gift of opportunity? This new wilderness wandering made Israel recall the old wilderness wandering. From the pain of bondage in Egypt, God had liberated Israel into the wilderness. There they had learned that all they really needed was the grace of God and that grace brought everything with it. They survived. They survived on God and God’s gifts alone. God’s message to them was "If you want true freedom and real life, you must enter the wilderness. It is not just an experience you must endure – either as trial or punishment. It is simply the best place to encounter God." They journeyed on and eventually entered the Promised Land and the gifts of God showered over them. But in time, they forgot the Giver and took credit for the gifts themselves. When God’s people forget God, two things always happen: their worship and gathered life become an exercise in self-congratulation and they ignore the injustice around them.

Prophets like Jeremiah warn and warn, but soon it is too late. And the people are thrown into the wilderness again. But then something wonderful happens. They again discover grace. God speaks through Jeremiah saying:

I have loved you with an everlasting love
     Therefore I have continued my
         faithfulness to you.
Again I shall build you,
     and you shall be built.

When we are living in a world of illusion, God’s word is one of doom and disillusionment. But the minute we are stripped of our illusions, detached from our attachments, and find ourselves in the desert again, God’s word is one of hope. "The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness."

It’s hard to see the desert as an opportunity. What happens when your illusions are shattered and you are detached from everything you believed necessary for happiness? People can succumb to despair and bitterness. Or? Or you can find grace. God says "I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you." There seems to be a spiritual law that it takes the depths of disillusionment and detachment from attachment to open us up to the presence of grace.

The Christian mystics of antiquity may seem annoying to us with their insistence on suffering and mortifying the flesh. The truly wonderful Julian of Norwich, when she was in good health, prayed for some illness to afflict her in order to deepen her spirit. That may seem strange to us today. But her prayers were answered.

I have been blessed here at CCC with a support group that I meet with regularly as part of my Shalem Spiritual Deepening Program. We pray for one another and for CCC. After our last meeting I found myself reflecting on the spiritual depth of the eight individuals in this group. And I concluded two things. First, that each of these people, in his or her own unique way, has a wonderful capacity to understand and express their own spiritual journey. Each does so powerfully and movingly in ways I deeply admire. They are spirit-filled people. And secondly, each person in that group has known significant suffering. Whether it is illness (theirs or others), physical suffering, loss, tragedy, they have each known real pain. And it seems to me that the power and profundity of their spiritual journey cannot be separated from the depth of their suffering.

I am convinced that when we do not take our own suffering and pain seriously, we are led into the double kind of sin that the prophets and Jesus warn against. When we don’t accept our suffering, we become superficial. We become competitive and yearn for approval and status, which becomes a kind of false god. We don’t bring all we are to worship because we don’t know who we are. And when we are not in touch with our own suffering, we cannot feel the suffering of others. We can overlook injustice because we are overlooking a part of ourselves. To take our pain, and the pain of others seriously, means we are then motivated to do something about it. Last week Chuck Short, the director of the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services resigned after serving the country for thirty years. He will now work full time for the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington. I can’t think of many other public servants whose lives better embody Christian vision, energy, sacrifice and struggle. His own sensitivity to the pain of others was forged through facing the blindness of his own son. Social services in our County are facing hard times, especially mental health. Expressing Chuck’s vision Toko Ackerman, who worked closely with him, was quoted in the newspaper as saying, "The people who are vulnerable should be protected and we should stand up for them." Isn’t that the mission of CCC and Christians everywhere?

The simplest yet hardest message of the Christian faith is that in order to embrace life you must first embrace pain. In order to live fully you must be willing to die completely. In order to have all you need, you must be willing to let go of all you think you need. Christianity is not about finding ways to cheer you up. It is about leading you into the deepest suffering in order to find the deepest joy. When we reflect on the life of Joey Noble, the two words that best describe her spirit are suffering and joy.

The disciples that first Easter were led into the most profound depths of suffering. Each of them had their illusions stripped from them. They felt they had attached themselves to a winner and would ride Jesus’ coattails to glory. They had even argued with each other about who would have status and be most respected in Heaven. Now they were a smashed, battered, scattered band of losers who had backed the wrong horse. Talk about wilderness. But the Easter Good News is that they experienced grace in the depth of loss. All the Easter stories of Jesus’ appearances say the same thing in different ways. Everything that Jesus embodied and stood for – love, justice, and peace – could not and cannot be killed. The Resurrection doesn’t just mean that though the man died, his idea and his mission live on in the hearts of his followers. It’s much more than that. It means the mission embodied in him is alive with power because it is embodied in us – not just in our hearts, but in our flesh and bones, and hands and feet, and will and being. We are that mission. We are the Risen Christ in this world. That is the Resurrection.

In closing, let me say that we had hoped we could celebrate Easter having returned to our new building. It wasn’t possible. But the more I think about it, I am in some ways glad we are still here. Why? Because Resurrection is about flowers blooming in the desert. It is about finding God on the journey. It is about meeting Jesus on the road. I want joy to dawn again on this Easter Day before we have come home. Yes, when we get back it is going to be wonderful. We will all be pleased and relieved. We will be grateful that we came through it and have hung together during this last year and a half. And there should be and will be plenty of thank you’s to go around.

But I am glad Easter is today here in the wilderness. Because God is telling us that we are the Risen Christ now. We, here and now, are that Good News of justice, peace, and reconciliation that was and is and will be Jesus Christ. We are and will be the Resurrection People, because the Easter moment is now. AMEN.

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