How might we all arrive at resurrection on Easter? Bishop Brian Cole reflects on the journey of Holy Week with his travels across East Tennessee and his arrival at Resurrection, Loudon, for Easter.
We invite you to join us at any of our communities in East Tennessee for Holy Week and Easter services.
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Transcript
Hi, I’m Bishop Brian. My oldest brother Keith and I talk on the phone a great deal and almost every phone call at some point involves him saying to me while I’m driving in the car, “Where are you?” And so often the answer is either “I’m on my way to Chattanooga,” or “On my way back from Chattanooga.” During this past week, we had a phone conversation and he said to me, “So where we be during Holy week?” And I mentioned to him that on Palm Sunday I was going to be in Elizabethton on Monday. Thursday I’d be at Saint John’s Cathedral. On Good Friday, I’d be at Saint Stephen’s, Oakridge. On Easter Vigil, I’d be at St John’s, Johnson City. And then he said, “And where will you be on Easter Sunday?” And I said, “I’ll be at Resurrection Resurrection Church, Loudon.”
In many ways, all of us on Easter Sunday will be at a place called Resurrection. We have walked this story the way of the cross with Jesus during Holy week. We have taken on his suffering as He took on our suffering. We’ve entered this story.
Many of our parishes have had seasons of walking the Stations of the Cross. We’ve allowed the stations to touch us for that suffering, to touch us. And now all of us on Sunday, regardless of the name of the church where you will be worshiping, will be at a place called resurrection. While that is good news, while that is life that comes out of death, it’s important to remember that Mary Magdalene, when she meets Jesus in the garden, when she meets him with a great sense of joy, when she goes back and she tells her friends, I have seen the Lord, she does so still with tears in her eyes, still with a sense of grief, with the sense of loss. Knowing that grief and that loss has been redeemed in the resurrection, but that there’s still been a pain that she’s borne.
You and I are living in a fragile season this year in Tennessee with gun violence, with storms all around, with a very divisive state legislature. But we’re also a people that will find ourselves on Easter Sunday morning at a place called Resurrection. So allow your whole self to show up with the sense that Easter is breaking in again, that you’re at a place called resurrection. But if you still have tears in your eyes and a sense of trauma, a sense of grief, you are still welcomed in that place called resurrection. Mary Magdalene, who was that first apostle, was the first apostle who went back preaching and proclaiming, but preaching and proclaiming out of a sense of hope, but a hope that has known grief.
So please know you are welcome. All of you are welcome, your whole self on Easter Sunday morning at a place called resurrection. Amen.
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