Jesus and the women

Jesus tomb is secured to guarantee that he who had died should stay dead....but there is an earthquake, and a numinous being appears, and the guards at the tomb swoon in fright....it is they who become as dead men, telling us that if we seal ourselves up against renewal it will come anyway, but frighteningly, as a shaking of the earth we stand upon, of the very foundations of what supports us...if w want to guarantee that our God is dead and hold that, then we will become as dead guardians at the empty tomb, holding fast to our emptiness......

Open for transformation - the women at the tomb are not sealed up against renewal...so it is that we are opened to transformation of the flesh by the females among us, or symbolically the sacred feminine within us....this capacity can stand for "fear and joy" that the angel's announcement brings...

Apostles - the women at the tomb run to tell the others, acting as apostles to the apostles...and there is initial disbelief among the men....showing how hard it is to recognize old truths in new forms....and with what distrust we receive the wisdom of the resurrected body...we are endlessly uneasy with those modes of being in us that are simply open to God.

Sharing - God comes to us across the gap, bringing the capacity to let be what is before us, to look at it and take it in, and then respond to it...this showing off of the new and transformed that comes so unexpectedly brings an impetus, indeed a necessity, to tell others, to share it, to give it away....this we cannot receive without sharing.....this is not a private showing, but a breaking into the lives of all of us.....

Ordinary tasks of life - Jesus has been doing this always, appearing in the ordinary tasks of life...when John and Peter are fishing, Jesus tells them where to find their catch; he reveals himself when they break bread together...the literal taking in of food for the body opens the soul to its nourishment, to taking in transformed values, old truths made new...the life of the soul is always rooted in the body...the sacraments are always directed to enter the body...

Community - when Jesus comes to his disciples as a new community made up of those who have seen his new form, the coming to them entails their going to others in the body...Jesus tells them to Go, teach, preach, feed, forgive, show visible signs of the invisible, God coming across the gap to us brings us the power to see and to receive and sends us on to others to share the transformation now taking up residence in our own bodies....

Holy Spirit - that is what it means for Jesus to breathe on the disciples and say, Receive the Holy Spirit...the new value is personal and it is special for the soul and the body of humanity in the world...it enters history as well as the psyche; it changes individuals as well as society...we can't have it for one without the other....to receive is to give, to give is to share, to share is to join in a new Being that comes across the gap between our finite images of God's infinite mystery to make us a new creation...
Amen
Ann and Barry Ulanov