Easter and A Ministry of Hugging

     We were hot – working indoors and without air-conditioning on a warm spring day in New Orleans will do that to you. We were covered with dust – sanding dried plaster overhead for hours on end will do that to you. We had plaster caked on hands and shirts and shorts – being novices at spreading mud, a form of plaster, on wallboard will do that to you. So when a nicely dressed African-American woman pulled up in her car and with a “yoo-hoo y’all” summoned us out of doors, we were happy to take the break.

            She was there, she explained to us with a big smile and a twinkle in her eye, to thank us – some 15 members of this church and two other congregations here on the Cape – for coming down to New Orleans and spending a week helping renovate homes devastated by Hurricane Katrina over five years ago. She told us her name was Elizabeth, and that she worked for the St. Bernard’s Project – the organization for which we were volunteering – as their official hugger. And her job, she told us, was to go to all the volunteer work sites every week, thank all the volunteers, and give them each a big hug.

            Of course we asked Elizabeth how the hurricane had affected her – had she evacuated, or had she been there when the levees broke and water often fourteen feet deep had flooded the area? She was fortunate, she told us – had not been in New Orleans at the time, and unlike many people, she had flood insurance, and so was back in a rebuilt home in about 14 months.  But then, two years ago, someone broke into her home, and right in front of her eyes killed her 18 year-old daughter, and then shot her in the face.

            After she recovered physically, Elizabeth went to St. Bernard’s Project and asked if she could have access to the mental health services they provided for those traumatized by the flood experience.  And although her trauma was not directly related to the flooding, they took her in, and eventually she recovered from the almost unimaginable psychic injuries that she had sustained.

            And when she had healed, Elizabeth realized that she had a choice. She had every right in the world to be bitter, angry, despairing, full of hatred at a world and a God which could let such terrible things happen; she could have turned away from this cruel world and in on herself.  Like those fearful, angry, shame-filled, despairing disciples long ago, she could continue to live, if you can call such an existence living, in a Good Friday world.

            That is, after all, where those followers of Jesus were living on the evening of that first Easter – in a Good Friday world. Cowering in fear behind closed doors. Fearful of the authorities, the same ones that had arrested their leader, Jesus, had tortured him cruelly, had nailed him to a cross in the worst form of capital punishment the world knew.

But also fearful that Jesus himself had come back, that as Mary Magdalene had told them that morning, he had been raised from the dead. Given that they had abandoned him in his hour of need, had cut and run when the authorities had moved in, had not even shown up at the foot of the cross to be with him in his time of direst need, they had no reason to expect that a reunion, unlikely as though it might be, would be a happy one.

            And then suddenly, mysteriously, Jesus is among them. Here is the amazing thing: Jesus comes back, not to the perfect, not to those with straight As or 100% Sunday School attendance, but to this band of pitiful, despairing, fearful failures. And what does he say to them? “Peace be with you.” In other words, “Do not be afraid. I forgive you.”  And perhaps because they can’t believe their ears, he says it to them once again: “Peace be with you.”

            But Jesus does not leave it there, with allowing his followers to feel relieved that they have been forgiven. Jesus breathes on them, and gives them the gift of the Holy Spirit, the spirit of power, and a mission – to carry on the mission which had been entrusted to him by his father: to love, to heal, to reconcile, to seek justice, to promote peace. To live in the light of Easter.

            With all that had happened to Elizabeth, who could blame her for choosing to pitch her tent in a Good Friday world. But she chose Easter. She chose to live with the unfathomable mystery of why bad things happen to us, why hurricanes rage and violence invades homes, and she chose to embrace the call she had – the call each of us have – to partner with our Creator is bringing new life to this world.

Like Mary Magdalene, who because of her tears cannot see clearly until Jesus calls her name, Elizabeth heard the call to rise to new life, and everything changed.

Just as those wounded and fearful disciples had God’s restoring Spirit pouring into them, so too Elizabeth was filled with the empowering Spirit.

Just as the newly en-Spirited church was given Jesus’ mission, so too Elizabeth received her mission. And so this is her calling, to take that gratitude that just overflows out of her, and to share it with others, and to go around giving the world hugs every day.

            Easter is about God giving us what we need: Jesus risen from the dead, offering us forgiveness, healing, the breath of a new start, and a new calling.  It is a gift of new life, a gift graciously taken up by those early disciples, a gift gratefully taken up by Elizabeth in our time, a gift there for the taking by you.

            So maybe you, like Mary Magdalene in the garden, like Elizabeth knocking on the door at St. Bernard’s Project, come this morning with tears in your eyes, grief having its way with you.

            Or maybe you, like the disciples huddled in that upper room, come this morning with regret, with shame, cynical, scarred.

            Or maybe you, like those in Jerusalem who had somehow missed it all, come distracted, worrying about the kids and whether they are making too much noise, or thinking about how you might best navigate that difficult family gathering after.

            Or maybe you, like one of those followers of Jesus, the one we call Doubting Thomas, come with questions, doubts, uncertainty about how these matters of the spirit fit into your rational and scientific world-view.

            It doesn’t matter. The gift of Easter is there for you, a new world of forgiveness and healing and comfort and new purpose, all wrapped up and ready for you today, or whenever you are ready to accept it. 

And so I say to you, with all my heart and soul, Happy Easter! Amen.

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