Open Up in the Name of the Lawd

In the old cops and robbers movies, the cops would come to the door in their tight uniforms and lean in toward the door of the robber’s apartment.  ‘Open up in the name of the law!” they’d shout (usually in an Irish brogue).  If their command was not enough to motivate the robbers, the biggest among them would put his shoulder to the door and they’d all follow him in like water rushing down a drain. 

Revelation 3:20 takes a slightly different approach.  “Behold, I stand at your door and knock.”  And unlike the cops and robbers, the open or not is up to us.

Knock, Knock.  It’s Holy Week.  It roared in last night with howling winds and late snow.  I awakened a number of times with the ominous sound of it, chilling the air and frosting the ground after two weeks of warm spring weather.  And I thought of the verses of today’s long Gospel referring to the moments after Christ died on the cross, that the old movies showed with such an ominous change in the sky, its portents clear:

And behold, the veil of the sanctuary
was torn in two from top to bottom.
The earth quaked, rocks were split, tombs were opened,
and the bodies of many saints who had fallen asleep were raised.

The opening of the graves generally struck me in the past as, well, ghoulish, like a scene out of “Night of the Living Dead”.  But this year I recognized something different and encouraging

Open up, Jesus has said for the past three weeks in the Gospels.  Open up, woman!  Open your mind to the possibilities of living water instead of daily self-defense.  Open up, blind man, and see.  Open up, Lazarus, and come alive.  It was up to them to tear it down, the door that had become a wall, the closed mind, the closed eyes, the lost hope. And those three “Open up” calls seem to be ratcheted up in today’s Gospel.  As the ultimate act of sacrifice is finished, Matthew draws from the orchestra a crescendo that would make Mahler blush.  The curtain is torn in the Temple of Jerusalem, and now the door to God is eternally open.  The tombs open us and we are free to remember, to heal and be healed in memory, to again be accompanied by the blessed spirits of our own histories. 

The Grand Opening is announced: our own opening to all that God is all around us, and can be within us.  Seven days to prepare.

Tomorrow – handling mystery