Pondering the Empty

Dear Mayfield,

Today is the fourth day of the great Fifty Days of Easter, stretching from Easter Sunday until Pentecost. A year ago today, April 15, 2019, a great fire gutted much of the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. On Good Friday there was a service in the fragile remains of Notre Dame. It was only the second liturgical gathering there in the past year. A small number of celebrants were scattered in the massive space, wearing protective hard hats and in some cases, surgical masks. The damaged, roof-less, and largely empty space, was filled with sunlight and these words from Michel Aupetit, the Archbishop of Paris: “Today we are in this half-collapsed cathedral to say that life is still here.”

The persistence of life even in stark emptiness is a primary Easter theme. We call it the empty tomb. In Web Notes today, I offer us four different empty tomb encounters to ponder, to reflect with.  There is so much emptiness in this pandemic time. If ever there was a year to linger with and to enter deeply into the empty tomb, it is this year.  We are wise to be gentle with ourselves, trusting the unwavering presence of God in the challenges we face.

First we turn to scripture. The Letter to the Philippians is the most affectionate and joy-filled of Paul’s letters. The first eleven verses of chapter two are often supposed to be a very early hymn and are known as the kenosis passage.  Kenosis is rooted in a Greek word for empty. Kenosis points toward the centerpiece of incarnation in the Christian story, the drawing of the divine right into the midst of our daily lives.  Incarnation, Emmanuel, God-with-Us, affirms the presence of the Holy throughout human life, empty of the privilege of distance or safe boundaries from the messiness and struggle that we know. Let’s listen now with Philippians 2:5-8:  Let the Spirit of Christ Jesus be yours also.  Being in the form of God did not count equality with God something to be grasped at, but he empties himself, taking the form of a slave, becoming as humans are; he was in every way like a human being, and was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross! What are the particular ways by which we feel emptied-out by Covid-19? Are there deaths that we face?

Next I offer a photograph. This is my favorite image of new life rooted in emptiness. I came upon what was left of this once great tree on an early morning Easter walk. It has been a long time since this mature tree soared into the air. Its large trunk is now rotted out. In the decay and the unfilled space, new life is rising, the beginnings of fresh green, nurtured by the tree that once was.

What new life do any of us hope to see, whenever it may come, or perhaps we are seeing it already, in the ravages of Covid-19?

Jan Richardson, United Methodist pastor, artist, and writer, experienced the sudden and unexpected death of her husband and creative partner, Garrison Doles, just a few years into their marriage. At the time, she had been writing blessings as a part of her liturgical gifts to the rest of us. She continued to pour out blessings in her grief for as she knows: “A blessing helps us to keep breathing—to abide this moment, and the next moment, and the one after that.” This quote and “Blessing for Coming Home to an Empty House” are borrowed from her book, The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief. There may be strength and language for us in what she has written. The home we call our lives is being shaken, turned upside down, and emptied out by our experience of this time of pandemic and sheltering-in-place. Perhaps Jan can point out directions of blessing for us even now.

I know
how every time you return,
you call out
in greeting
to the one
who is not there,
how you lift your voice
not in habit
but in honor
of the absence
so fierce
it has become
its own force.

I know
how the hollow
of the house
echoes in your chest,
how the emptiness
you enter
matches the ache
you carry with you
always.

I know
there are days
when the only thing
more brave than leaving
this house
is coming back to it.

So on those days,
may there be a door
in the emptiness
through which a welcome
waits for you.

On those days,
may the delight
that made a home here
find its way to you again,
not merely in memory
but in hope,

so that every word
ever spoken in kindness
circles back to meet you,

so that you may hear
what still sings to you
within these walls,

so that you may know
the love
that dreams with you here
when finally
you give yourself
to rest—

the love
that rises with you,
faithful like the dawn
that never fails
to come.

We can imagine the empty tomb, both on that first Easter morning and now as, “a door in the emptiness through which a welcome waits for you.” For early followers and for us today, there is a welcome into a new spaciousness and connection.

And finally, I encourage you to listen to Andrea Bocelli’s “Amazing Grace” from his free Easter Sunday Music for Hope – Live from the Duomo di Milano, streamed around the world.  The YouTube music video,  “Amazing Grace” was the last number in his concert and was sung in the great open space, outside, in front of the Duomo di Milano. As his voice soars you will see images from Milan, Paris, London, and New York. Major cities with streets, plazas, and landmarks empty of residents and tourists nudge us to consider new ways of filling our lives, of weaving connections for new life in the wake of pandemic.You may want to check back on YouTube again tomorrow. He has just uploaded more images of empty cities around the world. That new video will be available at 9 am April 16, 2020. Alleluia. Amen.  Peace, Martha