Easter and expectations. The pressure of what we should do. Be perfect. Figure it all out. All of that is erased.
Easter B | John 20:1-18
I remember the call. It was a Thursday night, March 19th, I think. I was stopping by Meijer for a couple things, checking to see if they had any toilet paper. My Dad was calling because the four dioceses in Michigan were closing their churches immediately.
Our call came the following morning.
All that planning the previous week, to help destigmatize communion was out the window. Only a skeleton crew joined us for our last service in the building.
What followed has been 55 straight weeks of asking ourselves a simple question:
What should we do?
It’s such a simple question, after all. But a pernicious and devious one.
It’s one that assumes a right answer.
Should isn’t open-ended. It doesn’t assume difference or encourage diverse conclusions.
It assumes there is only one.
What should we do?
It appeals—to a teacher, a rabbi, a leader. Someone who knows. Someone other than us. They will know what we should do.
It also assumes certainty. That there exists out in the sequence of time and space a firm hierarchy of action that corresponds to this moment. What should we do? Well, let me consult the org-chart.
The problem with What should we do? is plain. But not all of it is obvious.
The Tyranny of Should
What should we be doing? Shouldn’t we be better? Shouldn’t we be doing more? Like my favorite: Shouldn’t we have come up with the perfect sourdough starter?
How many of us saw that meme suggesting that if we didn’t come out of this pandemic with a new skill, we didn’t try hard enough? Yeah, OK.
This thinking has been everywhere. Shouldn’t we be gathering a certain way? What technology is the right one that we should be using?
I’m reminded of when Jesus is trying to share with his disciples that they are heading to Jerusalem to face the cross and that he will most certainly die. And guess what they’re doing? Arguing about which of them is the best disciple. They’re all saying to each other You know, I’m the one really killing it out here; doing more of the stuff I should do.
Should, right, best. It is all pressure. Subjective pressure on each of us. When you’re talking about a community that has experienced pain, what is should in this moment?
Our Should
Maybe we should be dealing with hope. Or building each other up.
Maybe we should be wrestling with the hard decisions we’ve all had to make. Or the loss we have all experienced.
Perhaps for us it wasn’t a very Holy Week. And it wasn’t just a Lent. It was a year.
And even when we confront that sensation we get sucked into evaluating and judging. Who is best. What is right.
Re-watching Frozen 2 last week, I was confronting this again in the movie’s theme: The next right thing. Anna is able to move forward by shrinking the weight of all things in her future down to what is in front of her. And yet even that phrasing, the next right thing implies a certainty. The next right thing.
That’s a lot of pressure on us. To get it right. Every time.
But none of it comes from God! Jesus didn’t leave his followers a rulebook full of shoulds, rights, and bests. It’s nonsense. It’s like the scene in Elf when Buddy runs into the coffee shop because it has a sign that says “NY’s best coffee” and he shouts “You did it!”
What are we thinking? Should/right/best is insane!
Blinding Us
So what is it then? What is it to step into this next thing? This moment? To take and let go of the should so we can see what is really there?
We’d see the hierarchy of should doesn’t do what it claims to do. It doesn’t create the generosity and faithfulness and love evoked in Jesus’s teaching. It constructs a paradigm of power, prestige, and pressure to perform perfectly.
Should doesn’t match the gospel of love. it doesn’t match the vision offered in the resurrection.
In fact, should is what prevents Mary from understanding what she’s seeing. Until Jesus says her name, she can’t even recognize him.
Her vision of what she is supposed to see prevents her from seeing. Mary should see a closed tomb. She should know that Jesus is in there, dead.
Nothing here fits theshould she arrives with.
The Resurrection Shouldn’t. But it is.
What should be there, what we think is supposed to be there: this is always really just about us.
And instead, God surprises us with something else. Something off-the-wall or from-out-in-left-field, or let’s call it what it is today, something from-out-of-an-empty-tomb. If we use it, it’ll catch on.
For us, the resurrection frees us from should. Because death isn’t final. And our mistakes aren’t forever. We are witnesses to the power of change and transformation.
This doesn’t mean we don’t take responsibility for our behavior. That there aren’t things God has commanded we do. But Easter is the day we are called to wipe those slates clean, forgive the repentant, and face a new world together with new friends!
We’re addicted to evaluation, but today, we need to let it go.
We are called to emerge from this time, this place, this prison, this place of death into freedom and life. Through hope, faith, and love.
This is the resurrection, our new birth, our time of new life and a wide-open future.