Bonus: Grounding Ourselves in Life and Resurrection

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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James Finley (0:08)

Greetings, I'm Jim Finley.

Kirsten Oates (0:11)

And I'm Kirsten Oates.

James Finley (0:13)

Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Kirsten Oates (0:23)

Welcome to another bonus episode of Turning to the Mystics with Jim Finley. We're so glad you're with us. We're recording this episode on Easter Monday, and it's been a very strange, holy week in Easter for us all. And yesterday, Easter Sunday, where we're normally invited to celebrate in community, life and the risen Jesus. Instead, we're seeing on the news, some of the worst days that we've faced in terms of death from the coronavirus.

So in solidarity with people going through this experience, Jim wanted to share an Easter message that will help us reflect on the truth of resurrection, of life and resurrection. So we might ground ourselves in that story as we continue to face this strange time, this sad time together.

So Jim, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us.

James Finley (1:26)

Good, thank you, Kirsten. Yes, please, we can have this session together. Throughout this session, we would round out this series, at least for now, on how to be contemplatively, spiritually grounded in the midst of this pandemic that we're all going through, and tying it in liturgically to Holy Week. So how our faith can be that grounding place for us. And so I think last time I reflected on Veronica's veil, kind of the passion of Christ and tying that in poetically. So in this session, I'd like to, seems appropriate with Easter to tie in a resurrection theme in the gospels. And this is one of the post-resurrection narratives. And in the gospels, there's these narratives of the appearances of Jesus after the resurrection. And I'd like to look at the gospel of John chapter 20 on a post-resurrection narrative. I'd like to look at that. And I would like to say also about this, that this reflection first came to me maybe 10 years ago. And I kind of put it aside and just recently, in the light of this, just resurrected it. So it was kind of poetic and a little bit open-ended. And so we just hope the spirit of it comes through. So you can kind of, in the meditation, you can kind of sit in the spirit of it and how it might possibly help you.

So I think when we read any passage in the gospels really, in scripture, we're really attempting to see not just what the narrative is telling us happened in the person's encounter with Jesus, but how the story of the person's encounter with Jesus in the situation they were in reveals our situation to ourselves because it's essentially the same situation. It's the same situation, essentially. And so I would like to look at it this way. And especially I wanna look at it in the light of the pandemic and a sense in which we can feel understandably, individually and collectively quite overwhelmed and kind of just unbelievably so. And the more we turn on the images, the media, we can feel even more that way. And insofar as we've internalized some of our own past traumas and abandonments, what we're seeing now can reactivate those. And so I think it makes this passage, this we're about to read here, particularly potentially helpful to us. How do we look at this in the light of the resurrection and so on. So I'm gonna read the passage and poetically walk through it with you. This is the Gospel of John, according to John chapter 20 It begins, verse one. It was very early on the first day of the week and still dark when Mary of Magdalene came to the tomb. She saw the stone had been moved away from the tomb.

So, Mary Magdalene is in a situation and very similar to ours and that she and the disciples were just bereft and beside themselves. That Jesus had been put on trial, was crucified, died and was buried. And still in the tomb, everything which they had based their hopes were lost to them.

And also the times were dangerous times. The same forces that brought about his crucifixion could easily spill over onto them. And so they were sequestered off, afraid, and what are they gonna do? And so Mary Magdalene, and very significant about Mary Magdalene, because in the gospel stories that she was a prostitute and in the meeting with Jesus, she was set free. That is, Jesus saw in her the God-given invincible preciousness of herself. That all whatever she may have done just paled in significance. And she was able to be set free from that and having the power to name who she was and see who she was with who she was in the eyes of Jesus, in the eyes of God. Other passages in the Gnostic Gospels of Mary Magdalene and so on didn't see her that way as a prostitute, but they do see her as the beloved of Jesus. And Jesus is her beloved. And I'd like to see her also as a woman who's on a spiritual path, maybe seeking an interior prayer, this deep bondedness of the disciple with the deathless presence of Jesus. She's us that way. And she's us in this hour of darkness, she's lost. And so she comes in this state of mind, in this situation, the death of Jesus. She comes to the tomb and it was still dark, it says. So this is pre-dawn on Easter. And I think the darkness is the darkness of the situation. So she's a seeker, she has the awakened disciple's heart, bereft, and she's all alone, there's nobody with her, and it's dark, out.