Prayer: Come Holy Spirit, come.  Take my lips and speak with them.  Take our minds and think with them.  Take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you.  In Christ’s name, we ask it.  Amen

Owls and cemeteries—you might not think of them as being connected, but they’ve been together for a very long time.  For centuries, the call of an owl has been linked in mythology to the end of life.  I have mentioned before that Native Americans, for one, have considered the owl to be the bird of the shadows, the darkness, the night—it has been, for them, the messenger of death.  For example, in the Pacific Northwest, some of the Native American people believe that when you hear an owl call your name it is time for you to die.  Moreover, in ancient days, pagan Celts, in the British Isles, believed that owls were able to actually communicate with the dead, and their presence in cemeteries has long been seen as a sign of this supernatural ability. 

The close connection between owls and graveyards is really no myth at all.  The fact is, many owls live in the hollow cavities of trees, and old trees in cemeteries often have the largest hollows.  Graveyards that shelter the last of the big trees with large cavities are life-giving sanctuaries for endangered owls.  In fact, all around the world, scientists are discovering that graveyards are some of the very best life-giving refuges for all kinds of endangered plants and animals.  And if you really think about, it makes sense that cemeteries are full of life.  They are after all gardenesque (I don’t think that’s actually a word)—but what I mean is that cemeteries are garden like, green spaces void of the environmental havoc wreaked by industry and urbanization.

And historically this phenomenon was actually intended.  You see, at about the time of the beginning of the 20th century, the people who created the first modern cemeteries hoped that they would relieve, at least, two problems associated with industrialization and urbanization.  First, they hoped to provide necessary space to respectfully bury the dead.  Church yards simply could not handle the population growth in the cities.  And second, they hoped to create a garden like setting for people who lived most of their days surrounded by pollution and urban sprawl.  The first modern cemeteries where intended to be gardens in which families and individuals could spend free time enjoying the promise and potential of life witnessed in the beauty of creation.  Although today most people don’t use cemeteries like gardens, the owls remind us that life is still teeming among the tombstones. 

In fact, the entire story of the Christian faith, and for that matter, the entire story of human history comes to its dramatic climax in a cemetery—first on a cross and then in a borrowed tomb.  Enter the story with me once more.  Jesus is dragging a heavy wooden beam up the center of the street.  In fact two soldiers try to lay it on his shoulders, but the weight of the rough wood startles the lacerations in his back, and the pain becomes something so intense that light explodes into Jesus’ skull, and he faints to the ground in a heap.  So now he is cradling one end of the beam under his arm dragging it over the stones in the street.  He’s moving toward the walls of the city outside of which the place of his demise awaits.  He is wearing his own robe again though it’s lost its shape.  It’s scabrous and fouled with human discharge. 

His hair, because he bends so far forward, nearly touches the ground and the sandaled feet of a Centurion are walking in front of him, just within his vision.  He’s following them.  Trailing behind the sad procession are voices wailing hauntingly.  Just then the beam sticks between two stones.  Jesus groans and drops heavily to his knees and the lumber falls to the ground.  He just can’t carry it any longer.  Motion makes his skin scream.  And beneath all, his bones are weak and tired.

Someone is now parting his hair and drawing it back from his face.  She wipes his forehead.  He is able to see an elderly woman perhaps someone he knows.  The face seems familiar…perhaps even Mary…mother…it’s hard to say.  The soldiers are already placing the crossbeam on someone else’s back.  Jesus is overcome with gratitude—his chest heaves with weeping.  He rises, finds his body very light, and continues to walk.  The morning drizzle begins to turn to rain.  Everyone is wet and the sky is more than merely grey now.  Darker clouds are rolling in from the west along with thunder and lightning.  There is a breeze.  It is 9:00 in the morning, a Friday.

Out through the city’s gate they go.  The city walls stretch out behind them as the procession continues on.  Standing just ahead is a hillock by the side of the road in which for stout poles are fixed…forever ready to receive the crossbeams and the bodies of criminals sentenced to death.  The hill allows a public viewing of a humiliating and excruciating death.  For some it is shear entertainment.  The hill is called Golgotha which means the skull.  Four soldiers strip Jesus down to his loincloth.  At that moment another group of soldiers arrives brining with them two more men with crossbeams on their backs.  All three are then stretched on the ground, each beside a different pole.  Jesus stares at the black clouds lowering.  His back is a field of fire.  He can not swallow.  He wishes he could, but his tongue is thick and stuck to the roof of his mouth.  Some one lifts his head by the hair and then pillows it on wood.  His arms are yanked left and right as far as they will go palms up.  A cold point touches his wrist.  Jesus hears the thump of wood on metal: once, twice.  He feels a spike probing the bones in his right arm: once, twice, three times.  As his bones separate and the spike bites the hard wood, a dull pain pulses up to his armpit and his neck.  His left arm, likewise, is nailed to the cross beam.    

Using pikes and human strength, Jesus is lifted bodily from the ground.  Soldiers climb ladders behind the stout pole, hauling him up and allowing him to swing from his arms alone until the crossbeam is lashed to the pole and the cross is formed.  They then bend his knees and drive a third spike through his ankles.  His muscles convulse.  He begins to tremble as if he were very cold.  His teeth chatter.  He bites his tongue but doesn’t notice, except that there is the taste of blood in his mouth.  “Father,” Jesus speaks through the taste of blood and through the shivering, even while one of the Roman soldiers climbs up behind him.  “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  That soldier hangs a shingle at the very top of the cross.  Printed on the shingle in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek so that all can read it are the words: Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.

Rain falls steadily now, and the breeze is stiffening.  Nevertheless, pilgrims still travel up the road and into the city.  They see the inscription above Jesus and grin—a mocking grin.  Jesus then drops his eyes and sees familiar women at his feet, and involuntarily cries out.  This is sorrow.  This is suffering greater than whips and spikes and a universe of derision.  His mother is there.  Mary, still supporting herself by holding John’s arm, is looking directly at him, pleading with him.  Her face is at the level of his waist.  She is crying and her eyes are begging him…Why…Why are you dying?  Jesus wants to howl in grief.  Instead, he shuts his eyes.  He’s occupied by elemental things like life and death.  Whenever he moves, his bones make grinding sounds and the pain descends into his pelvis and he loses control of all his physical functions.  He groans in human filthiness. 

It is now noon.  The day is now dark with a thick darkness.  The thunder and lightning have passed.  The earth is utterly black.  The fierce wind makes the rain sting like sand on the skin.  The wind pulls and snaps Jesus’ hair like a banner.  All his wounds have tongues screaming in pitches higher than hearing.  He has been swallowed in chaos.  This is the place…it is here that he is dying.  And not even God is there.  No, not even his Father, whose will he is even now obeying, the Father who has loved him from the beginning of time, whom he has loved back, whom he called Abba.

The rain slowly ends.  The wind dies.  A little light sifts down like flour from the clouds.  “It is finished,” Jesus gasps.  And his body falls forward.  His head sinks down between the wings of his rising arms.  His heavy black hair, his long wet hair falls over his head like a curtain.  An everlasting sigh issues from his open mouth, and that is the end.  He dies. 

Now I want you to hear something more.  And these words are not mine.  These are the words from John’s gospel which follow the story of Jesus’ death.  John writes this, “Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid.  And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.”  “Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden was a new tomb…and…they laid Jesus there”…a cemetery in a garden…life teeming among the tombstones.  You see, through God’s love, life begins at the grave.  It doesn’t end there.  Amen.         

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