I have vivid memories as a child of our family boating excursions on the Amite River.  Water-skiing was one of our favorite outings during the Spring and Summer months, and into the fall and winter given Louisiana’s climate.  After learning how to get up on two water skis, I distinctly remember my Mom telling me that I could not get back into the boat until I learned to get up on one ski.  I don’t need to tell you how that ended up.  Once up, skiing behind the boat was exhilarating and at times harrowing.  I was never as venturesome as my brother, who would play around on the skis and attempt – many times successfully – to jump the wake behind the boat.

The wake behind the boat was always mesmerizing to me.  It was quite a different experience though being pulled behind the boat and actually dealing with the wake of the boat, as opposed to simply watching the wake of the boat from inside it.   I remember also how difficult and dangerous it was to attempt to cross the wake without going out far enough out to angle so that your skis intersected the wake head on instead of sideways.  If you approached the wake too indirectly, you risked falling under the powerful flow of the wake.

Today’s Easter Gospel reminds me of this “wake.”  And more so, it brings to mind the idea of a “wake” as a gathering around the death of a loved one, to celebrate the life of the one gone, and then to eat and drink and fellowship.  This sense of “waking” is an important aspect of life and death.  We need each other to gather around the mystery of all that life presents us, not so much to figure it out, as to simply share together in the mystery and to “ride the wake” so to speak.

The “wake” of a boat traveling through the water is the track of the boat’s movement.  Many times the wake seems to be all that we experience.  We seem to live in the “wake” of our lives.  It is a kind of “letting go,” or surrender, that is not a “throwing your hands up,” as much as a simple nod or acknowledgement that there is so much in life that we have no control over.  The wake represents the effect that life has upon us, but perhaps more importantly it represents the movement forward that we are making, albeit mysteriously and sometimes unwittingly.

The gospel today (Jn 20:1-9) seems to be talking a little bit about this kind of “waking.”  It is interesting that Mary Magdalene first goes to the tomb, sees the stone rolled away and then immediately returns to the disciples to report what she has seen, or more so what she hasn’t seen:

“They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him.”

Jesus is gone and Mary doesn’t know where he is.  Then apparently, Peter and John decide to race to the tomb, and John arrives first, only to peer into the tomb but not to enter.  When Peter finally shows up, he does enter the tomb. They both see the burial garments in the tomb, but the haunting mystery continues.  The Gospel passage ends with “For they did not yet understand…that he had to rise from the dead.”  And yet they believed, the Scripture tells us.

I am no scripture scholar, and there may be very reasonable reasons why there was this staggered entry into the tomb by the Lord’s closest disciples, but the fact that it was staggered points something else out to me that seems important.  Each one of the Lord’s friends approached the tomb of mystery differently.  Mary fled at simply seeing the stone; John went up to the tomb but did not go inside; Peter was the one who actually went inside the tomb.  Isn’t this our experience of life…and death?  Sometimes it horrifies us when we look for what we are used to seeing and cannot find it.  Other times we can get close enough to peer into the mystery of death and loss in our life, but not quite able to move inside the space of the loss.  And then perhaps other times, we are able to actually see the loss and take the risk to venture inside that hollow space to see deeper into what it could mean for us.

If it’s true that we are the Living Body of Christ in the world today, then this Easter story of not being able to find the body of Jesus is not an annual celebration alone, but something that we are forced to encounter on a daily basis.  We need to be able to share our stories of loss and in particular our misgivings and fears about those losses in order to “cross” them or work through them.  Like being in the wake of a boat traveling through water, we must seek to balance and share our experience of this mystery of life and death so that we can move forward.  When we do this, the “wake” is not just about what has happened, but what can happen, i.e., what newness can come from this experience.  And we can truly only find that together.  We can “ride the wake” together.

This is when we really “wake” Christ, when we can tell our stories in the story of Jesus the Christ who led us ultimately to that place that we most fear – death – only to show that it is somehow (albeit painfully) the only way into new life.  Why this is may not be as important as how we embrace that it is!  We “wake” Christ when we can stay in the “wake,” and embrace it for the symbol of life’s track through death into new although mysterious new life!  Then Easter becomes the profound celebration of perhaps the most powerful question that we can ask…together… “what does it mean to have to rise from the dead?”  “What meaning can there be in being  brought to the brink of loss, devastation, misunderstanding, what we call ‘sin,’ and the uncertainty and lack of control that comes from simply living our lives, and find something transformative?”  The question confronts us everywhere – the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, the killing of peoples, the scandal of hatred and bigotry, and the privilege of blindness.

Maybe the Easter event is simply this profound question that God asks us through Jesus.  If so, then we can risk “crossing” the wake by “waking” each other in shared stories of sorrow and joy, and eating and drinking together, so that what eventually is awakened is the Body of Christ, Who can only be found when we look for It together.  It takes community to share death enough wherein its mystery, rather than being “solved,” can instead be transformed into new life.  Perhaps this is what Paul means when he tells the Colossians (Col 3:1-4) “you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”  We are hidden in the mystery of death, but only as it appeals to our lives.  We discover the hidden meaning in literally the “breaking of the bread,” the sharing of the mystery of the Body of Christ.

Is this what “Easter” can really mean?  Is this our way of embracing the “wake?”  If so, then we can ask that question together again and again, with the hopeful and joyful eyes of belief, “where have they taken the Christ,” and “what does it mean to have to be raised from the dead?”

Peace
Thomas