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When I read this passage, I’d like to hear the inflection that Jesus gave to these words. "Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?" The inflection of the words makes a considerable impact on the meaning of the reading as heard, and would tell us much about Jesus’ reaction to the healing of the lepers.

A good reader is a good actor, drawing from the words a richness that they would not otherwise have. Just as there is a great difference in reading a play and seeing and listening to it being performed, so there is a difference in reading scripture silently and hearing it read aloud in church. I sometimes wonder at the grace brought to a reading by a lector who bothered to learn about the text and its meaning, and then tried to give voice not only to the words but their power. And, of course, I sometimes cringe when a stony reading of a lively story makes it leaden and deadly.

It is too bad that we often put readers, ordained and lay, in costumes that shackle the creative reading of texts. No matter one’s interpretation of the text -- reading in cassock and surplice or robe puts a patina of ecclesiastical seriousness on the text and quells more adventurous interpretive intonations and inflections.

Some argue that that is precisely what we must do, that the role of preaching is to bring out the interpretation of texts and the responsibility of the individual hearer is to be informed by the text. But the quandary remains: if inflection and intonation are a natural part of speaking, what are we to do with them when sacred texts are read? And, more specifically, what are we to do with the Gospel text today?

How is the one speaking Jesus’ words to say, "Where are the nine?" Harshly? With paternal interest? Should the reader sound scolding? And how should the reader give inflection and tone to "Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" What sort of stress should be put on "foreigner"? Scorn? Affection? On the whole phrase? Amazement? Disappointment?

Perhaps we must come at it another way. Rather than wonder about specific inflections for these words and how each inflection influences the next, we might go back a step and ask a more general question. In this case we might ask, "Was Jesus smiling when he spoke to the one (now former) leper who turned back to give thanks?"

To answer that question we need to go back a bit. At the beginning of Luke’s long section of Jesus sayings and actions, Jesus sent out 70 of his followers to the towns and villages he would visit on his way to Jerusalem. Their commission was to heal the sick and say, "The kingdom of God has come near you" (Luke 10:9). They were clear that, whatever else this advance-party business was about, they were about healing, and they did so in Jesus’ name, having made the connection between Jesus and the kingdom of God coming near.

Luke records that when they reported back joyfully, Jesus rejoiced as well and prayed "in the Holy Spirit and said, ‘I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes; yea, Father, for such was thy gracious will"’ (10:21). Now whatever else one might say, we would probably be right to assume that there were smiles enough to go around. After all, it worked!

I like to think Jesus was laughing with delight when he prayed, "I thank thee, Father. . ." Stage directions for reading this would perhaps indicate that the laughter here is the laughter of relief, not laughter at a person, but laughter with a person -- in this case, laughter among the members of the Trinity. The healing was entrusted to people, and they did it! No wonder Jesus had that strange vision earlier, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven" (Luke 10:18).

So here Jesus is, on his way to Jerusalem to meet his end at the cross, and ten lepers call out to him, using his name and asking for mercy. Jesus seems preoccupied, and tells them to show themselves to the priests. "Right," say the ten, and they shuffle offstage and are cured. When the Samaritan -- now an ex-leper turns back, surely Jesus realizes what has happened. The whole bunch has been cured of leprosy, and that’s no mean feat. The strange power of this peculiar sickness was so strong that all people could do was recommend that they be warned when it was near.

And this power had been put down and a new power was near. It was enough to make him smile, perhaps even laugh. Not only can the 70 do it; these poor lepers can do it! It seems to me his comments to the one who turned back are not a condemnation of the other nine, or some sort of commentary on ungrateful Jews and the humility of the foreigner, but an amused, delighted, smiling and soon-to-be-laughing reaction to wonderful news. The whole of this little snippet of conversation should he read, I suggest, as an explosive delighted laugh, the laugh of triumph over a great evil.

And perhaps the last sentence should be read as a triumphal proclamation of what has happened: "Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well." And it should be said with a smile, for after all it is something to make us smile, laugh and dance.

Jesus is reported to have said, "The law and the prophets were in effect until John came; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is proclaimed, and everyone tries to enter it by force" (Luke 16:16). This might also be read, "The law and the prophets reigned until John, but now we are confronted with the preaching of God’s reign, and people demand to be part of it."

Jesus just won’t let go. Over and over again in Luke’s long narrative of Jesus’ interactions on the road to Jerusalem, Jesus persists in his effort to make us squarely face the fact that it is the reign of God that he is proclaiming and confronting us with -- not the reign of human perfectibility or even life under the law. He pushes and pushes against every excuse, every modification and every "weasel way" out of that confrontation we can invent.

And it is a confrontation, for as long as the reign of God is equated with perfectibility we can think that we can be part of the action if only we are righteous enough. We can also believe that we are better than "they." Being better than someone is a comfort, while confronting what has colorfully been called our "total depravity" is no comfort at all.

Preaching the reign of God is not preaching the law and the prophets, but then it is not preaching contrary to them either. Preaching the reign of God is a "not this, not that" preaching. We would like this: to have God’s justice rain down on the world, but have God’s mercy fall on us. We would like that: to have the world be a more just place and ourselves forgiven. But what we have in Jesus’ parables and stories is more than these. The reign of God is not only more justice, more mercy, but something new.

Jesus’ in-your-face remarks in response to the apostles’ plea to "increase our faith" are wonderful examples of his teaching dynamic. The apostles are asking for more -- more insight, more understanding, more depth of belief. But Jesus’ first comment pushes his followers in a different direction: if you had any faith at all you could do impossible things -- so it’s not that you need more faith, you need any faith.

His second comment pushes his followers in the other direction: You are to be faithful in what you do, but there will be no special reward. You are just doing what you are supposed to be doing, so don’t think that a greater understanding of what faithful service is about will get you greater reward.

Yet here we are: we could use some faith, and it would be nice to be rewarded for work well done. Jesus doesn’t let up. It is difficult for me to see today’s reading as good news -- not if the headlines read, "Citizen Mark has no faith, demands better pay anyway." How in the world then do I have any chance at all of being part of God’s people or feeling appreciated? Where is the good news in Jesus’ resounding No?

Strangely, this reading becomes good news as we realize that it doesn’t let us off the hook. It is finally a relief to know that reading one more book, contemplating one more pithy saying, meditating on one more piece of scripture, doing one more good deed -- none of these is going to make the difference. It is finally a relief to know that my reward is not going to be greater if I think of God as a boss who will be somehow gratified that I did what I was supposed to do. It is a relief not to have to spend time worrying about these things.

If we are no longer caught up in such worries, and if we know that this preaching of the reign of God is "not this, not that" preaching, maybe we are ready to jump on the train, to take the leap toward the "what is" of God’s reign. If the reign of God is not gotten to by having more faith, or by doing good works, how do we get to it?

In our better moments we Christians believe that God has joined mercy and justice in compassion, in the person of someone new in this world. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the incarnation of the dream of the writer of Psalm 85, who says that "mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other" (KJV). Jesus is called "God with us" and through the ages has been seen as the guarantor of our belief that the same God who demands justice also will show mercy

The reign of God is a reign of compassion in which we are to participate. As we practice compassion, we are not to gather rewards for our service, but to see our service as bringing in that compassionate reign. Our struggles to do this will in no way hinder us, even if we fail.

We will be free from contending to be more of something (faith-filled), free from contending to be better and therefore deserving of reward -- and we can practice loving-kindness and make Christ real in this day and time. Jesus and his in-your-face preaching leaves us nowhere else to go. In the end, we run pushing and shoving to jump on that train that is bound for glory.

What the widow in the Luke parable wants from the judge is vengeance or vindication. True, some have translated the original into something more polite such as "give the verdict to my side" or "give me justice." Well, it is true the widow wanted justice done, and to her benefit. But it seems she wanted more. It was not enough that she get her due; every person should hope for that. She demanded to be heard for who and what she was, a person wronged. She did not simply want justice done, she wanted to be avenged. She was vindictive.

Christians believe that to the extent that vindication or vengeance is necessary, it is the Lord’s to provide (Deut. 32:35). We want to let that be our final word on the matter: vengeance is the Lord’s, and although not pretty at least in reference to the Holy God it is magnificent, as befits God’s stature. Even vengeance can be made acceptable as the wrath of God working its way out to final payment.

The widow, however, is not about to let the satisfaction of vengeance be felt by God alone: she wants to feel it herself. And it is the feeling, the passion of it, that constitutes the heart of the matter in this passage. Justice is mostly a matter of what is due, what is required by law, what is right. It can be obtained without a shred of vindication, without a bit of feeling, without passion. But justice in itself does not satisfy. It is not tasty, it does not make us feel full of life. The widow knows all this and wants more. She wants vindication: to experience the feeling of righteous triumph or perhaps just plain delicious gloating.

We are told that the judge feared neither God nor the powers of others. Perhaps this made him a good judge -- judging impartially and without feeling. Jesus says he was unrighteous, which is not a comment about his abilities as a jurist. Jesus means that he had or exhibited no ability to show righteous indignation or delight.

The widow wanted no part of this. She wanted partiality to her side. "Vindicate me against my adversary!" she cried. In the end the widow provoked the judge to feeling, to passion, to partiality, for she bothered him. He was moved to choose sides, and acquired something of what we call "heart."

Does God take sides? Jesus himself asks, "Will not God vindicate his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you he will vindicate them speedily." If we believe, as we have good reason to, that God’s justice is preferentially directed to the poor, then they are numbered among his elect, among those who will be vindicated. This little lesson suggests that God is at least as passionate as the pestered judge. So keep praying and do not lose heart.

Yet, there is more here than drumming up a little passion for the poor in the Great Judge.

We lose heart when we believe that no one cares for us, that no one is on our side taking our needs to heart or loving us for who we are and what we have experienced. We lose heart when we feel like we are alone. What we expect from God, which we do not expect from the judge, is a passion with us. We expect compassion.

The unrighteous judge is driven to take the widow’s side, to be her advocate and avenge her. But there is no suggestion that he is with her in her feelings. This woman is in no way someone the judge has chosen as his own. She is a bother, and he is bothered.

God, on the other hand, vindicates those who are God’s own, God’s chosen. God chooses to be with us, and in doing that God also commits to taking our side and being by our side.

The incarnation (not the doctrine but the fact) is precisely about how the Judge became the Friend; how God took our side, stood with us and finally for us. The incarnation is about how God moved from impartiality to partiality, from distant thunderer to compassionate companion.

It turns out that life is not fair -- not to the poor or the poor in spirit, to the comfortable or uncomfortable, to the rich or powerful. Everyone agrees, the world is basically unfair. Just when it gets comfortable, people do surprising things -- like die -- and we are left holding the empty bag. Neither the judge nor God can make this unfairness go away. Justice has nothing to do with ridding us of the unfairness of the "changes and chances of this mortal life."

But our vindication is nearer than we supposed. All the widow had to do was pester the judge until he felt something. All we have to do is find God in Jesus Christ by our side, no stranger now, but someone who feels for us, and with us. We ought always to pray and not lose heart, says Luke. We ought always to pray so that the judge as well obtains a heart -- a heart of compassion for all of us, together and separately.

Justice alone is cold and calculating. The heart gives justice some breadth of emotional engagement, some passion. And the heart of God, whose preference is for all of us in our mortality and our various poverties, hears our cry for vindication and comes close by, speedily.

As long as the ascension is in any way related to upward movement (like an elevator going to the clouds), I am and will continue to be unmoved. The vertical directional imagery just doesn’t do it for me. I am not even moved to argue about whether or not "it" happened.

The doctrine of the ascension may have been given bad press because of its popular meaning, which seems related to ideas like "ascending to the third floor," and less often to "ascending to the place of power." That is, it’s vertical. Most people’s views of the ascension center on the image of Jesus going up in the clouds.

Over the years my thinking about the ascension and doctrine in general has changed in several ways. I have a growing sense, for one thing, that it is not necessary to discard doctrines that seem more or less senseless. Better to simply let them be. If we need them they will be there waiting for us to pick them up. Meanwhile let them lie fallow.

Even more important, I believe that we can change the popular view of the ascension, with its limitations. If the ascension is not about a direction but about the place Jesus occupies in creation and in our hearts, it becomes a powerful counter to the powers of these days. In the unending wars against drugs, terror, Iraq, etc., we need such a doctrine. This doctrine of the ascension is not new; it reaches back into the earliest believers’ views, which emphasized our allegiance to Jesus Christ.

The problem is that the event doesn’t read that way in the texts. What we get is, "As they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight" (Acts 1:9), and "While he blessed them, he parted from them, and was carried up into heaven" (Luke 24:52). These passages leave very little question -- the activity was about leaving, being lifted up, being carried. The activity was called by the church "the ascension."

In the early days of the church, belief in the ascension had political consequences, since the ascension was understood to be about the power of Jesus. Jesus was more central, higher, more like "the head" then the head of state was. Astounding witness and martyrdom followed.

By the time the full-blown doctrine was in place and creedal, the hope was that Christians would be respectful of those in high places. So it is no wonder that the ascension came to be visualized as Jesus lifted up into the clouds. It made for really great paintings, a fine casting of prayers and incense, and not too much threat to the powers that be. That visualization was a bit more respectful to the emperor then telling him that he was not actually the head of all, but that Jesus was.

In Ephesians we are presented with a stark reminder of the early church’s understanding of the power of the risen Christ, who was placed by God "far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.

In the early church there also arose a theory about just who Jesus Christ is: it was the notion of recapitulation -- that somehow in Christ the church, the people of God, got right-headed. That too grew from the notion of ascension as expressed in Ephesians. God has "put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all."

We might also think of the ascension as an expansion of the theme of the incarnation in the light of the imagery of the Last Supper. If in sharing the eucharistic meal we become the body of Christ, he remains our head. We imagine Christ as the head of the body of which we are all parts. He has also ascended to the head of the table, where he presides.

The ascension proposes that Jesus Christ has taken a place above all the principalities and powers in the world. He has become that to which we turn in order to find meaning and fulfillment in living. In this sense the ascension is a key doctrine in these latter days. It is not one that patriots of any stripe will like very much. If we turn to Paul, we see that he speaks of the "spirit of wisdom" by which to discern these things. If we use that spirit, we’ll be led to proclaim Christ’s absolute rule -- not as king, but as one who feeds and sustains.

Giving all other powers their due and their respect, we Christians cannot as a matter of total confidence or supreme trust embrace the flag, support the government, or pledge allegiance to the country for which they stand. Rather we end up having to say with Paul that Christ Jesus is "far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come."

Perhaps the visual notion of the ascension is the movement of the Christ to the place at the head of the table as our great high priest, the head of the true state that is the church, the body of Christ of which Christians are all parts. Friend Jesus, move up!

Our reformer ancestors would be appalled by some of the small traditions of joy and triumph that have crept into the Christian celebration of Pentecost. We’ve added trumpet blasts to mimic the great sound of the wind of the spirit, we wave red streamers on bamboo rods, raise clouds of red and white balloons, and even nibble on birthday cakes for the church. We want to signal "Tada!" We made it!

For those of us who’ve carefully followed the drama of Christ’s passion, death, resurrection and ascension, there is a moment of satisfaction and delight in the arrival of Pentecost. We’ve made it through the strange and prayerful time following the Pascal feast, in which Jesus who was dead is now known to be alive, and in which we lived in anticipation of the Spirit coming into the lives of believers. Now we live knowing the Spirit’s presence. Even if we are not so good at making a spiritual journey of the drama, we can at least act as if we have the Pentecost spirit. Wave those streamers, sound those trumpets!

It does not hurt, of course, that in this part of the world Pentecost comes with spring well under way and summer not far behind. Early lettuce is in, the price for corn in the husk is dropping. Pentecost is often in the lusty month of May, and if not then, in June. Time for a bit of wine, and who knows what else? Celebration is easy!

The liturgically minded are divided: Pentecost is maybe white (Whitsunday), with the sun’s lengthened days and the spring-full moons, or maybe red (the color of fire and martyrs), with the fire of sundown and moonrise in the pollen- and dust-laden sky that appears before the green of summer settles in. Red or white, take your choice.

In a good year, when my internal chemistry is chugging along just fine, I love the celebration of Pentecost in all its little excesses. In a not-so-good year, when I haven’t shaken the feeling that there are hard times ahead, I think that the congregation and I both deserve better than the innocent triumphal "Tada!"

Peter, however, in one of the more sobering moments in Acts, dispels the notion of a giddy high tide of spiritual excess by quoting the prophet Joel, who proclaims that God will pour out his Spirit upon all flesh, yielding prophecy, visions and dreams -- and then proclaims that all this is God’s own word:

Peter looks into the heart of the believers’ experience on that day and sees a spiritual harvest that grows from God’s promise in a time of terror, death and death-dealing. What he saw then makes sense now. The Spirit comes when the light is almost gone -- tile sun darkened and the moon like blood.

On Pentecost "we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God" (Acts 2:llb). What are those mighty works? Given the quote that Peter uses from the prophet Joel, those are perhaps known in the utterance of prophecy and in dreams and visions. Perhaps such utterances are not about the death and resurrection of Jesus alone, but about the death and resurrection of hope, for which Jesus is the banner, the icon.

Years ago when my theology had become unfettered by too many Pentecost services in too many liturgically proper churches, I might have identified the red of Pentecost with the red of revolution, with the red flag that appears on the stage in the last act of Les Misérables. That of course is too simple, and yet I want to recapture something of that hope as Pentecostal hope. I want the streamers to be at least about what T. S. Eliot called "pentecostal fire in the dark time of the year.

Perhaps I want it to be my turn to be an old man dreaming dreams. I want this, of course, because I really am getting older. The other options are out. I also want the dreams promised because it is a dark time for the United States of America. How long our "year" will be I do not know, but I believe that unless there is a perceptible, exponential growth in prophesy, dreams and visions, we will die. I dream of a revolutionary Pentecost in America.

Pentecost, however, is not an event to be wished for lightly. The Spirit is somewhat cranky and given to its own thing. "The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit" (John 3:8-9).

Hunter S. Thompson Jr. commented on the millennium, which was signaled with the same giddiness as Pentecost in most congregations. "Look around you. There is an eerie sense of Panic in the air, a silent Fear and uncertainty that comes with once reliable faiths and truths and solid Institutions that are no longer safe to believe in . . ."

It is time to take Pentecost back from the celebrants of exuberant but easy triumph. It is time to pay attention to Peter and Joel, to T S. Eliot, to Thompson. The best Pentecost is a gift of the Spirit that comes when the need is greatest.

I didn’t want to come back. My consciousness hovered somewhere above the body lying on the gurney. It was all over, I thought. The last sensation I remembered had been incomprehensible pain, then a tunnel, and a grinding noise as described in other "near death experiences." But unlike other people who tell of "NDEs," I saw no lights, no angels, no dead relatives, no friendly saints; rather, I found myself very much awake in a weightless, imageless, gray hyperreality. I experienced a blessed clarity, freedom and relief, and a stunning sense of the illusory nature of the life I’d left behind.

Then the recovery room nurse enforced an alternative plan for my life. Someone was shaking my body and calling me by name. No! NO! Unprepared and inept, I slipped, as if falling on ice, into that lesser "reality" in a helpless panic of anguish and anger. Suddenly I was back in the confines of that little life of mine. Now I carried a memory of the futility of this "fake" life. It was as if I hadn’t had time to drink the magic "forgetting potion" that makes you immune to truth. I came to consciousness disappointed, frustrated, unspeakably sad -- and in excruciating pain.

How did Lazarus feel about coming back? How far had he traveled along the way of clarity, truth and reality in those four days? How deeply had he journeyed into eternal life? How transformed had he become as time and space separated soul from the prison of blood and bone and brain?

When Lazarus heard his name did he want to shout, "No! Not even for you, my friend and Master! Please, NO!" With what sense of contempt or ambivalence did he slip through his grave clothes into his body and back to his troubles? Could he have refused to respond?

That Jesus did not go into the tomb to touch him or shake him awake or draw him out puts the resolve upon Lazarus himself. Jesus stood outside calling. And Lazarus responded, now double-bound by winding sheet and by the limits of the old life. He brought himself out, burdened with the fetid grave clothes he would need again and the feeble body which would die again.

Unbind him and let him go, said Jesus. But go where? Home? Could Lazarus dwell contentedly at home again in the house of Mary and Martha? If you come from eternal life, how do you settle for anything less than eternal life? But Lazarus, the ultimate human witness to the way, the truth and the life, is called forth from eternal life . . . to mere everyday life. That is, in Johannine terms, to engage again in the ominous final struggle against the powers of darkness over the Light. And the world cannot bear the Light.

By a cruel irony, Jesus will be put to death because he brought Lazarus back to life. After the raising of Lazarus, the Sanhedrin gathers in that famous meeting where Caiaphas presents his troubling prophecy. Worried about the Roman occupiers and the attention drawn to Jesus by the people, they ask, "What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on thus, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation." But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year. said to them, "You know nothing at all; you do not understand that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish." So "from that day on they took counsel on how to put him to death" (John 11:47b-50, 53).

Aware of the threat, Jesus withdrew into hiding in Ephraim on the edge of the wilderness. But people kept coming to see Lazarus. So the chief priests planned to put him to death, because on account of him many were going away and believing in Jesus.

Double irony. Lazarus comes forth from death for death, this time not by disease but perhaps by the disturbed Sanhedrin -- to be put to death for responding to life, Just as Jesus would be put to death for bringing forth life.

"See how he loved him!" said the crowd. Indeed, Lazarus is the type for the lovers of God, along with his quick-witted sister Martha and the intuitive Mary. Jesus’ love for the family represents God’s love for us. But the love we return is not without sacrifice. In small ways we practice dying: dying to sin, dying to shame, to prejudices, opinions, stagnant ideas, dying to one old life and then another, ever striving toward new life. You consciously practice rising from whatever tomb you have holed yourself up in lately.

But practice only reminds us of the perfect sacrifice toward which we strive. We practice dying in prayer and asceticism not because we are afraid of death but because we are called forth to witness to an eternal life that is not contingent upon earthly life and death.

And as our practice increases, we can aspire to imitate St. Paul’s confidence: "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Gal. 2:20).

A few hours after the recovery nurse shook me away from gray reality, another nurse put a beautiful but hungry infant boy into my arms. As I held his tightly wrapped body close to mine, my baby suddenly sensed proximity to the solution of his ravenous need. Instinctively, but not less miraculously, he grasped my breast to suckle.

I once lived in a village in Germany that lay at the foot of a mountain covered in deep forest. A narrow farm separated the houses from the forest, and a cemetery occupied a piece of land part way up the mountain.

Sometimes on my daily walks I stopped at the cemetery. It was the busiest place in town. The steep slope never deterred the widows who busied themselves there in a kind of competitive grave-keeping. Their plantings changed with the seasons: early primroses and pansies, spring bulbs, summer annuals, fall displays of berries and chrysanthemums, winter pots crammed with pine I branches and the well-placed artificial but discreet hellebore blossom. No weed dared grow near the cemetery. As the last snowflake dribbled down from each storm, the widows arrived with brooms to sweep the granite and marble and limestone clean; they carried buckets and brushes to scrub their family gravestones and marble slabs.

This last custom was the most puzzling to me. I felt vaguely hostile toward the dead in all that ferocious cleaning. I remembered the cemeteries of my childhood, which were most beautiful in winter, blanketed with snow like a down comforter; silent, spotless havens where the dead may rest in peace. In my mind, I connect the sleeping snowy cemetery to the burial and entombment of Jesus. Joseph of Arimathea and the women have left for the Sabbath day "On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment" (Luke 23:56b). The admonition to live one day a week, as if in paradise restored and paradise to come, extends even to the grieving. The faithful practice hope even in despair. Even the dead rest on the Sabbath. Christians practice this most silent, sacred Sabbath on Holy Saturday.

During years of parish ministry I’ve often felt at odds with the good people who come on Holy Saturday in work parties to scrub and clean, wax the floors, rake the grounds, trim the bushes outside and perform the minor repairs after winter. They polish the brass and silver, iron the altar linens and prepare to relight the sanctuary lights. Quick! How anxious the crew is to get those Easter lilies out into the sanctuary so that all can get home to prepare their own homes and tables for the Easter feast.

All those chores need to be done, but in my soul I want to give the church a time to rest, to stay barren, with the tabernacle open and empty, the sanctuary stripped of all decoration, and the building quiet with no sense of that electric spark that dances in the atmosphere during worship. After the extreme emotion of Friday’s liturgy, silence is necessary, like the silence in the house after a funeral when the guests have left, and you no longer have to keep a brave face.

I also secretly object to the Garden of Repose in the small chapel -- why flowers ? Why a garden for the anguish of Gethsemane, the arrest, the torture, the trial, the flailing, Peter in the courtyard, the horrible hours of the night and the early morning, the obscene events of the next day? "Wait with me one hour." How nice -- and how strange -- to wait surrounded by flowers.

Neither do I like to think about the harrowing of hell -- at least on Holy Saturday. It’s a Line and even biblical idea, but I don’t like to think of Jesus being so busy between his death and the manifestation of his resurrection. Let him lie for a while in solidarity with the dead, just as he suffered in solidarity with the living.

I realize now the cause of my irritation with the busy-ness of Holy Saturday. The day after Good Friday has particular holiness and poignancy to me. For many years of my life, the time span between the death of Jesus and the morning of the resurrection was the one day of the Christian calendar that I understood and practiced devotionally. I eventually embraced the other seasons and feasts and fasts of the church year with similar reverence. But Holy Saturday was the first day that matched the state of my soul. Instinctively, I "got it."

The incarnation and the resurrection require athletic leaps of faith. Christians don’t just sit down and decide to believe in the mysteries. Yes, we find ourselves ‘drawn to Jesus’ teaching, ministry, death -- and yes, to the resurrection and ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit. Something here seems deeply true in nonrational ways. But some of us need a great commitment of time and practice and learning before this consciousness becomes part of our inner landscape.

And I suspect many people live their spiritual lives in this threshold of silence before the resurrection. Frankly, I trust the skeptic more than the happy "Blessed . . . who have not seen and yet believe," as the resurrected Jesus said to Thomas. Let the people come through this silent door. Let them come into the sanctuary of empty presence and foolish hope. Keep the Easter lilies locked in the sacristy until an appropriate time of mourning is past. Keep holy the Sabbath day.

The holiness of this day intensifies for me over the years. Now, I hold in my hand the secret key that once opened the treasure of sacred time. Holy Saturday is the measurement of my lifetime’s desire to believe in the resurrection of Jesus. Once a year I take the time to contemplate the event that took place in the tomb of my heart, while in the hidden darkness over years of Sabbaths, that heart of stone turned to a heart of flesh.

HEY YOU! Don’t even think of parking that sermon near this playground! Take your Doubting-Thomas-Mobile to some other lot. Don’t even wait here with your motor running.

OK -- maybe it sounds like I don’t have a life. But Bible people are real to me. And my relationships with them change as I mature, just as you come to appreciate relatives at family reunions. The stuffy aunt who once shooed you away from the dessert table before lunch reveals that she backpacked across Mongolia. The boring old uncle who wouldn’t play croquet with you is not only a particle physicist but possesses an ever-flowing fountain of dry wit. The distant cousin who delighted you playing "Happy Birthday" at a party is now a world-class jazz musician.

As a child I might have stared at Cousin Thomas after some aunt whispered to another aunt that he was a "doubter." By the tone of their voices, I knew I didn’t want to be one. Nevertheless, in spite of best intentions, you grow up to be a doubter. And Cousin Thomas becomes your hero.

Here’s how I came to know the real Cousin Thomas.

A message that Lazarus is sick unto death comes to Jesus and the disciples. While Jesus prevaricates noisily, I won’t go to Lazarus, OK it’s two days, now I’ll go to Lazarus, Lazarus has fallen asleep, no, I mean he’s dead, the disciples try to persuade him not to venture near Jerusalem. "Rabbi, the Jews were but now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again?" (John 11:8).

Thomas, with piercing resignation, says, "Let us also go, that we may die with him." After that, what are the others going to do? Slip off into the desert? Skulk away up to Galilee?

Again, during the last discourse, the incisive Thomas inspires. Jesus, carried away metaphor by beautiful metaphor, offers eternal hope in the mansions prepared by him.

"Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way where I am going" (John 14:1-4).

Wait a minute, Thomas interrupts. Maybe the disciples were falling asleep already. We don’t know where you are going. So how can we know the way?

The discourse shifts. Jesus replies frankly. "I am the way, says Jesus (John 14:6). I am the way, the truth, the life.

If Cousin Thomas had not already become my hero in these two scenes, at the very least they set the stage for the moment he does become my hero. Like Thomas, I was absent when Jesus breathed on the disciples. I was missing from the line-up when the faith gene was distributed. (What do those believing Christians have that I don’t?)

Like Thomas, I want truth. I don’t want a faith of smoke and mirrors. I know that a faith even slightly off trajectory eventually veers far off the mark. Faced with my own tardiness, depending upon second-hand accounts, whom will I believe? Imagine what Thomas is thinking when Simon Peter declares, "We have seen the Lord!"

You have seen the Lord, Mr. Simon Let’s-build-three-booths Peter?

You have seen the Lord, Mr. Simon God-forbid-Lord-This- shall-never-happen-to-you Peter?

You have seen the Lord, Mr. Simon You-shall-never-wash-my-feet-Not-my-feet-only-but-also-my-hands-and-my-head Peter?

You have seen the Lord, Mr. Simon I’ll-never-deny-thee-deny-thee-deny thee Peter?

Family-picnic-wise, who would I believe? My own mother? (pause). Nope. My brother? (long pause). Nope. My children? (even longer pause). Nope. Cousin Thomas? Cousin Thomas who said, "Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe"? Yes!

For 11th-hour laborers and others who are slow-of-heart. Thomas’s caution makes him a more credible witness. Furthermore, after the invitation to touch the wounds of Jesus, he penetrates even beyond the superficial excitement of the moment. It is Cousin Thomas who delivers the punch line that kicks off the next 2,000 years of professional Christology: "My Lord and my God!" The beatitude that follows is not meant as a whack at Thomas, the doubter. Rather, Jesus encourages those of us who did not witness these events for ourselves to discover the truth alone in the prayer room, or in struggles for justice, by serving the weak, by worshiping in spirit and in truth, or by schmoozing with the Bible people at family reunions.

Late have I loved you, beauty so ancient and so fresh. Late have I loved you. Behold, you were within and I was outside, and I was seeking you there. I, deformed, was pursuing you in the beautifully formed things that you made. You were with me, but I was not with you. Those things held me far away from you, things that would not exist if they were not in you. You called and clamored and shattered my deafness; you flashed and gleamed and banished my blindness; you were fragrant and I drew in breath and now pant for you. I tasted and now I hunger and thirst for you; you touched me and I have been set ablaze with longing for your peace. (St. Augustine, Confessions [10:38], translated by Scott MacDonald)

Very early in the morning, on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb. Dark. First light. Dawn. A few minutes of extraordinary encounter. This scene at the tomb of Jesus bestows a supreme gift upon the beloved of God. Time and place and character unfold and then reveal a threshold through which the hearer of the word may enter, Here, as in an icon, you experience Mary’s transformation from desolation to animation, from inertia to action. Within a brief moment, a lifetime of journeys over oceans, abysses, deserts and mountains condenses and collapses into one life-defining revelation. Like Mary, you, the beloved, transfigure from myrrh bearer to message bearer.

Mary Magdalene expected no such thing. She just came in the dark. What kind of sabbath had she passed the day before? Surely not a day of holy rest and paradisiacal anticipation. More likely, she spent her sabbath in a hell-fury of grief and recriminations against Romans, against the Sanhedrin, against the very Creator of the universe.

And perhaps against Jesus himself. Could you not wait with me one hour? you said. Could you not walk one more mile? we said. One more mile and you would have been safely in the desert. You let it happen. You and your Abba.

Nevertheless, at the first possible q moment, alone and in danger, Mary comes into the thundering absence of the one she loves -- and by so doing, puts herself where revelation finds her ready to face the sacred moment.

What is loss but the experience of love, after all? If you did not love, there would be no loss. Absence becomes a kind of presence. But during this particular dark hour in this particular place in time, the emptiness becomes real presence. This scene of Mary’s love piercing the darkness invites you into your own inner being. You are taught to go to the boundary of the soul in the dark to wait with your offering -- the bitter myrrh of tears and grief.

What man or woman or child does not bear grief? Even a happy and healthy childhood has its frustrations, and too often war, hunger, injustice, poverty, disease and natural disaster prevail. What drove Abraham and Moses to plead for their generations? What drove the prophets to pit their lives against their society and culture? And, absorbed as he was in that same tradition of the patriarchs and prophets, what drove Jesus to the cross?

Love. And love and mourning and emptiness and faithfulness drive us to the tomb with our myrrh. Not to expect a miracle, but to witness to a grieving world. To simply be there, in the dark. Thomas Merton, another prophet and master of prayer, describes what happens at this place of darkness: "Love gives an experience, a taste of what we have not seen and are not yet able to see. Faith gives us a full title to this treasure which is ours to possess in the darkness. Love enters the darkness and lays hands upon what is its own!"

What is prayer but this entry into darkness and waiting and sense of loss? And while love impels us toward the dark to begin with, Love meets us there. Maybe not in the brief iconic moment of Mary’s Easter morning, but over the oceans and abysses and mountains and deserts of our life through time. Faithful to the unknown and unknowable, Love not only transfigures the lover, but calls her by name:

Mary! "I will give you the treasures of darkness and the hoards in secret places that you may know it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, who call you by your name" (Isa. 45:3). She recognizes her beloved in the speaking of her name. And she can respond: Rabboni!

But in this world you cannot cling to love. You cannot hold or hoard it. In a suffering world, there is no time to linger in the sacred moment. Instead, every love must transfigure into ever-widening circles of compassion. This love must go out to the ends of the earth with the message of hope. "What I tell you in the dark, utter in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim upon the housetops" (Matt. 10:27).

The Sforza Hours, a 15th-century image by Giovan Pietro Birago, shows Mary Magdalene ascending into heaven. Clad only in her own hair, illustrating her complete dependence upon God, she leaves behind scenes in which she preached the gospel message of hope. As she is borne aloft by four handsome angels, below her are the oceans, abysses, deserts and mountains where she witnessed to the sacred moment of her encounter with the risen Lord. In the foreground is a rocky path inviting you and me into the rugged landscape.

In garden design, gates and curved paths and alcoves satisfy a human desire for mystery and resolution. A well-planned garden mirrors the invitation to pilgrimage and spiritual completion. Ascensiontide -- this most profound time of the Christian year -- invites a man or woman of prayer to make a turn on the path that reveals that he or she has only been idling near the gate, and is only now beginning to explore the vast richness of the garden.

This Sunday finds the Christian world poised upon the edge of Ascension’s night of the soul. We hear the resurrected Jesus say to the disciples, "I am going away." He has been with them 40 days. Jesus will take them once again to the Mount of Olives, that threshold between desert and city, sacred and profane, where the cloud of Divine Presence will absorb the risen Lord and leave his friends bereft once more.

The disciples have just gotten used to recognizing him again. He is teaching and breaking bread with them at Emmaus, appearing suddenly in the Upper Room, showing his wounds to Thomas, eating a fish. On the Sea of Galilee he calls out to the fisherman to "try the other side of the boat." He cooks breakfast for them. Finally, after 40 days, they are getting used to his presence among them.

And now he says, "I am going away."

Could the extraordinary circumstances of resurrected encounter have lasted forever? Could these men and women have remained in that first union of intimate and personal friendship with the risen Lord? He tried to tell them, of course. "It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Counselor will not come to you: but if I go, I will send him to you" (John 16:7). Winding through those last discourses in John is this message: You must go on. There’s more. You are not finished with your journey, you are not yet mature apostles. This is merely a resting place. I go to prepare another place for you. "I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you maybe also" (John 14:3).

Easter is not the end after all. Easter is not the final destination for the disciples, and not the final destination of the soul. Nor is Easter the final destination of the church. Easter begins the transition between one reality and another. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit cannot take place in that outer garden where Jesus has not yet ascended to the Father, where he has presence and voice, wounds open to the touch, where he is the risen Lord of a hot breakfast and a marvelous catch of fish. The disciples must once more taste emptiness and detachment, and open again the once-broken heart yet to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Only then will they go to "the ends of the earth."

We know what’s going to happen. After Jesus is taken into the cloud the disciples go back to Jerusalem. Ten days later, while observing the Jewish feast of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit comes upon the company. And because we know what is going to happen, we tend to lose this crucial season of the soul -- like decorating the house for Christmas and skipping Advent. I’ve actually heard Christian educators say, "There’s no point in having church school after Easter -- we’ve come to the end of the church year, and besides everyone is so busy!"

When I was a little girl, the Paschal candle was extinguished in Ascension as a sign of the mystery of Christ’s departure. Basic to all prayer is the observance of cleansing purgation and ablution upon the threshold of fulfillment: Advent for the incarnation, Lent for the resurrection, Ascension for the Coming of the Holy Spirit. Ascension recognizes the separation of the Risen Lord from the disciples as he goes to dwell at the right hand of the Father. The cloud that takes him symbolizes the practice of a dark night of the soul. By practicing the seasons we know how to be in prayer. Why do modern Christians tend to dismiss Ascension? Is it part of our American denial of death? Is it fear and awe -- the mysterium tremendum -- of ascending in heart with Christ to the throne of God? Would we rather not accept the responsibility of apostleship at Pentecost and its radical implications?

St. Augustine urges, "Today our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven -- let our hearts ascend with him." But we must also enter that cloud, that ancient euphemism for the unknowable Divine presence. The walk through Ascension may not be peaceful or beautiful or clear. But it is the way home. "Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them." The indwelling of the spirit will become home.

"I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light shall the nations walk; and the kings of the earth" (Rev. 21:22-24).

The temple is the Lord God almighty dwelling within us. Our home will be wherever the Spirit sends us as apostles to the ends of the earth. But we don’t know all that yet. To find our way home we must go where Jesus has gone. We must take that surprising turn in the garden path. At the edge of Ascensiontide, we know only the threshold beyond which Jesus has gone, into a cloud of luminous darkness.