After we buried my dad, my world was as dark as death. Every time we visited the cemetery, I would throw myself on his grave and sob until I thought my lungs and heart would burst. And I kept crying in hopes they would burst. My deepest desire at that moment was to join him under the ground, to join him in death. In my mind that was the only way the pain of his loss running through me like dull electricity was going to stop.
I can relate then to how despondent Mary Magdalene felt as she dutifully visited Jesus’ tomb on that sacred Sunday two thousand years ago. Death is final, powerful, and desperately ugly. There is no metaphor of the circle of life, of seeds bursting through dead soil in spring, of a legacy being left for us to carry on that can parry death’s knock out punch. These things can assuage our fear or grief. But they cannot redeem it, turn it into hope and healing.
I still miss my father. I still grieve other losses in my life. But I know death is not the end. Only one thing defeated death’s power. The promise of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection is a red thread of hope from Genesis through Abraham, Ruth, David, Esther, Anna, the woman who touched him, Mary his mother, Mary Magdalene, and to me and you. And that truth changed my life forever.
I hope Mary Magdalene’s poem below communicates that truth.
Mary Magdalene: Resurrection
For Holy Week this year I wrote a Trilogy of poems, The Woman Who Touched Him: Life, Mary’s Loss: Death, and Mary Magdalene: Resurrection to show how that thread ran through and touched and transformed three remarkable but also ordinary women.
Please let me know how the scarlet thread of redemption has run though your life!
Gaped the cave
Before me
Lifeless tomb
Of
Trusted friend.
Dawn stood still
Dead with chill
Darker than scarlet sky.
Seven times
Possessed was I.
Named devil’s child.
I carried evil inside.
My demons
Each answered
Varied name,
“Torment,” “Reproach,”
“Abyss” and “Shame”
“Dog,” “No-worth,”
And “Magdalene,”
Convinced death
My only escape
I lay in dirt
To Wait.
Instead
Life truer than
Fresh day’s sun
Burst from the heart
Of One
Called by
God, “Deliverer!”
In his presence
My devils fled.
“Child of my Father,
Of Light and Life,”
Of me, he said.
Together then
Forgiven, healed
We traipsed with him
Across wild desert field.
Truth poured
From his heart
Like rain from
God’s very vault.
Now his lifeless
Body moulders.
His death!
My fault.
We died too.
We prayed and hid
And gnashed our teeth.
Silent was God
For what seemed eternity.
Today,
Jonah’s Day,
Rather would these spices adorn
A meal
Than his thorn
Crowned head.
Rather would I have hung
On that lifeless tree
Instead.
Bent over with
Weight of grief
I peer tomb-ward
Fearful as if
A thief.
“Mary!” I heard
Sweet, soft, strong.
As if the
Morning stars
Burst out in song.
Glanced behind
Stood a man
A gardener,
Except his eyes.
Held no guile or surprise.
Rather wells of life
Unquenchable.
“Teacher,” I cried
Reached and tried
To hold him
Never to let go.
“Do not, yet,” he said.
“Tell them so!”
Over earth he waved
Pierced hand
Like wand bringing birth,
Drawing hope from
the thread of a
New day’s
Blood
Red dawn.
From Luke 8:1-3 & John 20:11-18
Read by The Redheaded-Wildflower, a.k.a. Dee Dee Scott my wife and best friend and a gifted adventurer, teacher, chef, reader, and athlete.
“He is risen!” ~ Hallelujah!
He is risen indeed!