When we celebrate Easter, we get a lot of help:
from liturgical rite, music, art and spring growth.
The greening and warming of nature externalize
our inner state. As the season blooms with new life, we
rejoice in our risen Lord, who has conquered death. That all
happens because we know how the story ends.
Instead, consider Joanna. Only Luke records her name (24:
1-13). She is mentioned earlier as “the wife of Herod’s steward
Chuza,” one of the women who accompanied the disciples
and “provided for them out of their resources” (8:3,
NRSV).
Joanna and her companions
approach Jesus’ tomb with spices to
embalm the body and cover the
stench. The women must have slept
little the night before, with haunting
visions of his brutal crucifixion.
What appears from a distance like
a stone before the tomb is a gaping
black hole. When she sees “two men
in dazzling clothes,” Joanna and the
other women “bowed their faces to
the ground.”
That’s not the posture we usually
associate with Easter. We think of
upraised arms and jubilant “Alleluias.”
This tale blows our cozy associations
with baskets, bunnies and
pastel dresses.
Even worse is the skepticism
Joanna encounters. She probably anticipated an empathetic
hearing when she told the apostles what she’d seen and
heard. Instead, her story “seemed to them an idle tale” (11),
which they do not believe. The Greek word is even stronger:
Leros refers to the wild talk of a feverish person in delirium.
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 Strength to Speak the Truth
But like women today who insist on the validity of their
experience despite dismissals, Joanna sticks to her story.
What gives her the inner strength to speak her truth despite
cavalier denials? She must have carried in her heart the
words, “He is not here, but has risen” (5).
Like generations who followed, Joanna knew that a voice
buoyant with song had robbed death of its sting. Nothing
would be the same; tragedy no longer had the final word.
Japanese-American poet Janice Mirikitani believes the
woman at the tomb brings hope to everyone told to keep
quiet, not reveal family secrets, not disrupt complacent
silence: Joanna, “with the throat full of grace/tells us
truth....Her words breaking like light.”
The angels’ words to Joanna translate for us today. “Why
do you look for the living among the dead?” might mean,
why cling to sterile routines, self-blame, dead-end jobs or
relationships, destructive patterns, simply because they are
secure, familiar or expected? Can’t you trust the God who
has cared for you assiduously to bring new life and growth?
Why watch TV when a beautiful world beckons?
Joanna and her friends planned to anoint Christ’s body.
But their jars of spices are left in the dust, just as the Samaritan
woman left her water jug behind. Author Marie-Eloise
Rosenblatt thinks these abandoned vessels symbolize the
transformation of women’s status.
No longer will they merely do repetitive
physical work. They are called
to be witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection.
In fact, women’s memories will sustain
the community of faith. The
angel directs Joanna: “Remember.”
At first we think of ordinary terms:
Remember Sue’s birthday and the
oil change. But here the word has
larger connotations: “Remember all
Jesus told you of his crucifixion and
resurrection.”
Can we too remember all God’s
graces in the past, strung through
our lives like pearls? Even if we
haven’t experienced luxury, we have
known the fragrance of a meal, the touch of a loved one, the
unexpected graces that retrieve work from drudgery and rescue
our days from numb routine.
Greedy for more, we forget too easily how much we have
already received. Joanna reminds us: Things may look puzzling
or even terrifying now. But memory recalls the beauty,
the meaning, the promise that we can move forward with
trust because we have known goodness before. God continues
to be as faithful as God has always been.
We may be sad but we cannot be hopeless. No matter what
black hole we peer into, we can remember that the stone has
forever been rolled away. The details of Joanna’s experience
may not parallel ours, but her story signals clearly
that the same resurrection awaits us all.
Next: Joseph of Arimathea
Kathy Coffey has won 13 writing awards from the Catholic Press Association. She
gives retreats and workshops internationally. Her newest books are Women of
Mercy (Orbis Press) and The Art of Faith (Twenty-Third Publications). |
