Lent 5 | Bright Sadness
““When Jesus saw Mary weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping, he became perturbed and deeply troubled…and Jesus wept… Then Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise.’” ”
Lent is the season of “bright sadness” – of profound mingling of joy and grief. Jesus accompanies us in our sorrows, just as he did at the death of his dear friend, Lazarus. Standing with grieving Mary and Martha, Jesus weeps, even as he promises, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”
With each day we draw closer to the grievous remembrance of Jesus’s suffering and crucifixion, even as we are assured of a luminous Easter morning yet to come. Let us sit with the very human experience of “sad brightness: the sadness of my exile, of the waste I have made of my life, and the brightness of God’s presence and forgiveness, the joy of the recovered desire for God, the peace of the recovered home.” (Alexander Schmemann) Jesus is with us -- in it all.
Thus says the Lord GOD:
O my people, I will open your graves
and have you rise from them,
and bring you back to the land of Israel.
Then you shall know that I am the LORD,
when I open your graves and have you rise from them,
O my people!
I will put my spirit in you that you may live,
and I will settle you upon your land;
thus you shall know that I am the LORD.
I have promised, and I will do it, says the LORD.
-Ezekiel 37:12-14