The Messy Middle

What Resurrection Means to Me: The Messy Middle

Written by: Lindsay L. O’Connor

Resurrection is messy. In my evangelical Christian upbringing, I learned that Easter is a time to celebrate, but I never heard anyone talk about the complexity of learning to hope again after death. This never occurred to me until I experienced death and resurrection within my own body.

A liminal space exists in which the lines between life and death are blurry, scary, and confusing. When Jesus appeared to the disciples, their initial reaction to his resurrected body was terror. Was he dead or alive or caught in some strange in-between place? If he was alive, was that supposed to suddenly erase the trauma they had endured when they witnessed his torture and death just days earlier? How do you celebrate life while your body carries the fresh scars of the death that preceded resurrection?

Early in my first pregnancy, I remember the intense anxiety of waiting for a week between appointments to find out if I had miscarried. I stood in the hospital parking lot with my husband when we got the call notifying us that the pregnancy was ending. As I grieved the loss of a life that had barely begun, we discovered days later that our baby was in fact alive and well. Now she is my 10 year old reminder that sometimes, miracles happen.

The evidence of life after supposed death—my daughter’s tiny flutter of a heartbeat—remains one of the most beautiful sounds I’ve ever heard. We were shocked and relieved. Still, after receiving the good news, my husband put it succinctly when he said we were “cautiously ecstatic.” That experience was a fresh reminder of the vulnerability of our joy. We had seen how fragile life can be.

The scar my body bears from the birth of my daughter was reopened twice. My second pregnancy ended in a miscarriage with complications that required the doctor to reopen the scar. What had been a reminder of miraculous life became associated with loss. In the first pregnancy, we learned to hope after grief. After the miscarriage, I saw a therapist who walked me through learning how to grieve after hope. I’m still not sure which was more difficult.

The scar was opened a third time when my second daughter was born—life, again, and almost unbearable joy that was entangled with my grief. As we delighted in our second daughter, I remembered in my second pregnancy when I had allowed myself to dance and sing with abandon to Pharrell Williams’ “Happy” song, only to find out there would be no baby. I don’t regret my joy then, brief as it was, and I don’t regret the joy I allowed myself to receive when our rainbow baby was born after a blissfully uneventful pregnancy. 

My body carries the literal scars of my deepest joy and pain, all at the same site. Everywhere I go, I bring along this embodied reminder of life, death, and resurrection. Resurrection is glorious, but first, in my experience, it is scary, disorienting, and entangled with grief.

When Jesus appeared to the disciples after He had arisen from death, His response to their terror was to draw them in closer to Himself. “Touch Me and see,” He said (Luke 24:39). In answer to the disciples “While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering,” Jesus ate in their presence, offering further physical evidence of His resurrection. Then, He opened their minds to understand the scriptures He had fulfilled. Jesus offered a wholistic response to the disciples amidst their fear and confusion, connecting with them and meeting their needs in body, mind, and heart.

Throughout our lives, we move in and out of liminal spaces. Some are filled with joyous anticipation, others are marked by great suffering, and most are entangled with grief of some sort. Pregnancy, engagement, job loss, a cancer diagnosis, shifting beliefs, and significant life changes propel us into the discomfort of leaving behind one place while not yet being firmly planted in another. Every day, we stand in the liminal space between who we were and who we will be.

Jesus moves toward us in the uncomfortable thresholds between life, death, and resurrection. He stands with us in the liminal space and invites us to touch Him and see. May God give us eyes to see, minds to understand, and hearts to receive the mysterious gift of God with us in the in-between as we experience the discomfort and the glory of resurrection.

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What Do Methodists Believe About Ash Wednesday?

What Do Methodists Believe About Ash Wednesday?

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the season of Lent. Lent is a time when many Christians prepare for Easter by observing a period of fasting, repentance, moderation and spiritual discipline.

Ash Wednesday emphasizes two themes: our sinfulness before God and our human mortality. The service focuses on both themes, helping us to realize that both have been triumphed through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

During some Ash Wednesday services, the minister will lightly rub the sign of the cross with ashes onto the foreheads of worshipers. The use of ashes as a sign of mortality and repentance has a long history in Jewish and Christian worship. Historically, ashes signified purification and sorrow for sins.

It is traditional to save the palm branches from the previous Palm Sunday service to burn to produce ashes for this service. Sometimes a small card or piece of paper is distributed on which each person writes a sin or hurtful or unjust characteristic. The cards are then brought to the altar to be burned with the palm branches. The ash cross on the forehead is an outward sign of our sorrow and repentance for sins.

— Adapted from The United Methodist Book of Worship

Read Next: What Do Methodists Believe About Lent?

What Is Shrove Tuesday?

What Is Shrove Tuesday?

Shrove Tuesday is the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday which is the first day of Lent. It's a day of penitence, to clean the soul, and a day of celebration as the last chance to feast before Lent begins. But there's more to Shrove Tuesday than pigging out on pancakes or taking part in a public pancake race. The pancakes themselves are part of an ancient custom with deeply religious roots.

Shrove Tuesday gets its name from the ritual of shriving that Christians used to undergo in the past. In shriving, a person confesses their sins and receives absolution for them. When a person receives absolution for their sins, they are forgiven for them and released from the guilt and pain that they have caused them.

So Shrove Tuesday is the last chance to indulge yourself, and to use up the foods that aren't allowed in Lent. Giving up foods: but not wasting them. In the old days there were many foods that observant Christians would not eat during Lent: foods such as meat and fish, fats, eggs, and milky foods. So that no food was wasted, families would have a feast on the shriving Tuesday, and eat up all the foods that wouldn't last the forty days of Lent without going off.

The need to eat up the fats gave rise to the French name Mardi Gras; meaning fat Tuesday. Pancakes became associated with Shrove Tuesday as they were a dish that could use up all the eggs, fats and milk in the house with just the addition of flour.

The ingredients for pancakes can be seen to symbolise four points of significance at this time of year:
Eggs ~ Creation
Flour ~ The staff of life
Salt ~ Wholesomeness
Milk ~ Purity

Read Next: What Do Methodists Believe About Ash Wednesday