Open

“Each day holds a surprise. But only if we expect it can we see, hear, or feel it when it comes to us. Let's not be afraid to receive each day's surprise, whether it comes to us as sorrow or as joy It will open a new place in our hearts, a place where we can welcome new friends and celebrate more fully our shared humanity.”

-Henri Nouwen

When we chose “The Terms of Resurrection” as the theme for our Easter series this year, we hoped it would function in a couple of playful ways. First, we wanted to celebrate some of the words that come out at Easter, or show up in this season with a special resonance and radiance. To that end, these daily devotions will grab a word from the pile every morning and marvel at it with you.

We also liked the way the word “terms” works in our language. After Easter we celebrate living according to a new reality–a reality that invites us to think and to live in new ways. We wanted also to play with the “terms of service” that arrive with resurrection; the truth that we live, post-Easter, according to a whole new set of theological and relational rules.  

As a term of resurrection, open works in both of these ways. It was an open grave that met the women on Easter morning - the earth’s own surprised O-shaped empty mouth. And the news that poured forth from that opening was both simple and alarming: He is not here. He has been raised. Something has been opened in the universe that was once closed. We live, now, under the circumstances of resurrection.

God has been about the business of opening graves and making ways before, of course. Refusing to let the people perish beneath the chariots of Pharaoh’s pursuing army, Yahweh opened a path through the sea. Refusing to let the exiles wither and waste away beside the waters of Babylon, God opened their hearts with the prophets’ words and opened possibilities when it seemed like there was no way home. In this coming Sunday’s gospel, Jesus comes alongside the closed-up disciples in their closed-up room and invites them into his still-open wounds.  

And now, today, on the far side of Christ Jesus’ open tomb, God is still refusing to let the forces of death close their bony fingers on the future. The future is open now not simply because it’s unpredictable or as-yet-undefined, but because it has been opened for us. 

“And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act.”

-Ezekiel 37:13-14