December 27, 2024

In this season of Christmas, the quiet time between Christmas and New Year in the Western system, try not to let daily tasks and to-do lists crowd in too much on this time of peaceful stillness.  This is a liminal time, when time moves both fast and slow motion in ways that confound the conceptual mind’s attempts to grasp it.  The conventional wisdom that new habits can be formed and old ways cast aside in this liminal time is actually true.  Let us confirm ourselves in the stillness and in listening for the promptings and guidance of Spirit.

John 20:1-8

In this reading, Mary Magdalene was the first to discover the empty tomb where Jesus had been laid.  She ran and told Peter and the other disciples. Peter and another disciple ran to the tomb and saw the burial cloths put aside and the tomb empty.

Just as we are celebrating the birth of Jesus, we are now also recalling his rising from the dead – a kind of second birth as the risen Lord, now about to be spiritually present for all humankind. Jesus birth and rising are like book ends, like the two cherubim on either side of the ark, like the two angels sitting at the ends of the tomb, and between them the profound emptiness of the tomb.  The profound dark and emptiness beyond conception.  This too is the liminal time of transition, in which mind is open and seeking. 

God is close when mind is open and seeking.  God is close when people are vulnerable and don’t feel they know everything already.  God is close to the broken hearted, as the psalm says.  That is all.