Dear friends,
While baking granola this weekend, my friends Bob and Lenya and I were listening to a recording of a Pascha service on CD, courtesy of my Orthodox brother Brian Whirledge. I told my friends how startled my soul was upon hearing an Orthodox priest read a lesson from "the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to St. Mark." I am startled and amused by the way the priest reads the words of "a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side," whom the women found in amazement when they arrived at the tomb expecting to anoint the Jesus' corpse.
The angel says to them, "Do not be amazed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. HE HAS RISEN. HE IS NOT HERE." Because the priest reads all seven of these latter words with the same emphasis, I find them startling.
But one of my friends laughed and said, "It sounds like a computer talking. Or rather: 'He is not here.' Jesus cannot come out to play."
I laughed with my friends, since Jesus indeed could not come out to play. He would only be with them forty days until he was taken up to heaven.
Glad that Jesus could not come out to play,
Scott - yours truly
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