The sermon at tonight's Easter Vigil was about the Keith Haring altar in one of the chapels of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine. The preacher's focus was on the lower half of the triptych, which are throngs of familiar Haring figures with their arms in the air. But are they the crowds welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the (same!) crowds crying "crucify him" five days later, people mourning his execution or celebrating his resurrection? Maybe, she said, we can take the easy way out and say a little bit of all of them?
Her point was that the Easter story is to be experienced in community, something that comes a little hard to me. The stories, and the litugies of Holy Week, are so intimately scaled. Where the crucifixion was, according at least to Luke and Matthew, widely felt - darkness descended, the earth shook, rocks were split, tombs opened, and the bodies of the saints entered the city (yoicks!) - the Easter discovery is as low-key as could be: an empty tomb, discovered by a few women ignored even by the men they knew. My hands are lifted in confusion.
