Barnabas column - Stories of Encouragement
Gathering for Easter Reflections by the River
Reflections on Reflection by the River
Pre-dawn Easter morning; the paddocks are silent and still, guarded by shadowy hills. Reflections of the full moon repeat on the silver frosted leaves of the low-growing eucalypts that line the dusty road and catch in the beam of our headlights.
It’s misty by the river and along the river flat at Longley. We see the outline of a car parked under the sole street light; someone is waiting for us. In the park the grass is wet with dew and so is the picnic table on which we are going to prepare our feast.
And it’s cold. Little puffs of breath mark our quiet communication as we set up for our gathering.
I wonder if it was like this when the women rose early and gathered with their ointments in a final act of loving service to wash Jesus’ hurriedly buried body and so give it the respect and care accorded to the dead, that was customary in Jewish tradition.
Did they draw their cloaks tightly around them, quietly stamp their feet and chafe their hands to get the blood moving as they set off in the darkness to the tomb?
Our early first-comer gets the fire going, so now we have a focal point and a beacon to guide anyone else who comes to join us. Will anyone else come?
This is a new thing in this community – church that isn’t church as most people know it.
On the brick-topped wood-store area beside the fire we place a candle and shape a cross in sea-tumbled rocks, simple symbols of the Christian faith that we hope to share in a simple way this morning.
We wipe down the table and on it put a rubber-backed picnic rug on top of which we then place the tablecloth and lay out mugs, plates and all the necessary things to make and eat pancakes. Gradually half a dozen people arrive in ones and twos and gather around the fire and greet each other.
A little way off Marion plays her guitar and sings songs that tell of hope, just loud enough for us to hear, maintaining an atmosphere of solemn expectation.
Meredith welcomes us all and outlines the shape of our time together. Then Marion sings once more; ‘All my tears be washed away’, this time with our full attention. At the close of the song she invites us to take some time to be quiet and listen to the sounds of this Easter morning. We can hear the water gurgling over the rocks lining the river bed and a bird calls somewhere among the trees.
Suddenly, amidst the general stillness and hush, a kookaburra breaks into a raucous laugh, and we smile at his hearty celebration of this Easter Day.
Did the women and the disciples laugh out loud when they finally realised the joke Jesus had played on death? The gospel writers indicate that it was a little while before they fully understood the significance of the empty tomb, but when they did, did they laugh for all the world to hear like our kookaburra broadcast his joy this morning?
After the kookaburra’s greeting Meredith reflects on how the disciples must have felt on Good Friday seeing all their hopes for the future die with Jesus on the cross, and wondering what their lives were now going to be.
What is Good Friday to us was a black Friday for them. Should they go back to collecting taxes and catching fish? How they must have wished for a new dawn when hope might be reborn. Then, two days later, Resurrection Sunday with Jesus alive and hope restored, death beaten at its own game.
And so it is for us.
We can be in the darkness of black Friday when everything seems against us and we don’t know how we can go on, wishing for a new dawn, only to find that, through Jesus, God offers us new life and new possibilities.
I think about the times in my life when I have felt overwhelmed and wished for a new dawn. I take a banksia seed pod from the basketful I have collected and offer them to others, inviting us to consider the way many native seeds will sit dormant and only germinate after they have been exposed to extreme heat like the destructive bushfires recently experienced in Victoria; so similar to the pattern of black Friday despair followed by Resurrection Sunday hope. I, too, put the seed pod in my pocket to take home and remember the Easter promise of re-growth and regeneration.
As the sky starts to lighten and the sun returns from it night’s wanderings, I share a brief reflection titled, ‘What Easter tells us ‘.
Then Marion sings us the gospel in the words of Garth Hewitt’s ‘Don’t look for the living’. Meredith and I join in the chorus and I hear some of the others do so too. Then it’s time for blessing followed by a hot drink and blueberry pancakes.
Annette Sims