Tell Us Where by Bishop C. Joseph Sprague

(Published Spring 2008) The hard question, resulting from the deadly actions taken against Jesus on Friday and Saturday, is uttered by Mary Magdalene. Stooping and weeping, she peers into the empty tomb and insistently asks, “Tell us where...” Tell us where the Crucified One is? Tell us where our friend and teacher is? Tell us where our Savior, the long-awaited Christ is? Tell us where the One who knew all about us and loved us nonetheless is? Tell us where the meaning of yesterday and the promise for tomorrow is? Tell me where he is and I’ll take his battered remains away. “Tell us where...” “Jesus said to her, ‘Mary’!” The Risen One called her by name. And she came to see and believe that Jesus was not and is not trapped in the ditch of death. Like Mary Magdalene, today’s church comes asking, “Tell us where ...” And, I proclaim what the holy messengers proclaimed to an insistent Mary two millennia ago. Namely: The Risen One is not trapped in the ditch of death; but rather, he is on the glory road, that highway of heaven, where life trumps death, justice bumps oppression, and the sheer audacity of hope thumps the lingering tenacity of despair.” 1. Many of us are well acquainted with the hard, often unfair, and, sometimes, ugly reality of death. We have glimpsed that empty place at the family table, felt that absence of warmth from a partner no longer lying in bed beside us, searched for that suddenly missing link in the family chain, visited that haunting memory where only yesterday a treasured friend dwelt. Because we are not strangers to death, we nod in agreement, as the ancient poet intones, “Death is here and death is there, Death is busy everywhere, All around, within, beneath. Above is death and we are death.” (Percy Bysshe Shelley) Truth be told, and it must be, the ditch of death is no small rut; it can be deep, wide, and encapsulating. I dare to believe that life trumps death. William Sloane Coffin was one of the great prophets of the second half of the last century. As the Chaplain at Yale University, and, later, as Senior Minister of Riverside Church in NYC, Dr. Coffin stood tall with Dr. King. His was a consistent voice for racial justice, peace, and an international nuclear weapons freeze. During his storied tenure at Riverside Church, Dr. Coffin’s son’s small car was swept off a bridge in a violent storm. The young man drowned, while tragically trapped inside the submerged vehicle. The next Sunday, Dr. Coffin said in his sermon that, while God did not cause the tragic accident, Jesus was there beside his son, as the water filled the trapped vehicle and his son breathed his final breath. 

Years later, before his recent death at age 82, William Sloane Coffin wrote the following in his marvelous book, “CREDO,” “The more we do God’s will, the less unfinished business we leave behind when we die. If our lives exemplify personal charity and the pursuit of social justice, then death will not be the enemy, but rather the friendly angel leading us on to the One whose highest hope is to be able to say to each and every one of us, ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant; enter into the joy of the Master." (pg.169) Last evening at Church Council, it was noted in a prayer concern, that Shirley Hall’s son had suffered another stroke. I called Shirley. Unable to talk by phone, Shirley quickly sent an e-mail, which in part says, “This second stroke was more severe than the first...Please share with everyone that just because I am not present there physically...that my thoughts and my prayers are always being lifted up on Covenant’s behalf each and every day. This experience with my son has increased my faith because I have seen God’s hand in everything that has occurred. I continue to ask for prayers...God is good everyday and mercy is everlasting.”  Continue