Mark 16:1-8
Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark
April 4, 2021
It is a heart-breaking story—of a twelve-year-old girl who survived a nuclear bomb only to die a painful death. Inspired by our Lenten origami project, I read The Complete Story of Sadako Sasaki and the Thousand Paper Cranes, written by Sue DiCicco and Sadako’s brother Masahiro. There are many versions of Sadako’s story; this one reflects her brother’s memories. Sadako was born in Hiroshima at the height of World War II. She was two when the atomic bomb was dropped. When she was twelve, she was diagnosed with leukemia, known there as Atomic Bomb Disease.
When a nurse came by her hospital room with origami cranes folded by a local youth club, Sadako learned the ancient legend that making 1000 paper cranes would give the artist long life or the fulfillment of a wish. Sadako was inspired, hoping to make a thousand birds to get her wish to live. She worked through her pain, recruiting patients and staff to collect scraps of paper for her. She completed her goal; still her disease progressed. She began her next 1000, this time with a new wish, for her family to be all right. By the time she died, she had made 1600 birds.
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It too is a heart-breaking story—of three women coming to their friend’s tomb with spices to anoint his body. All three had been transformed by Jesus’ ministry; they had experienced the healing power of love. They had heard his promise that the kin-dom of God was at hand. They had waved palms in joyous hope as he entered Jerusalem only a week before. Then they had watched, powerless, as their dreams were crushed, as their friend was arrested, tortured and crucified. All they could do was stand by, letting him know they were there. All they could do was show up at his tomb to anoint his body as an expression of their love. They arrived to find his body missing.
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Heart-breaking. A child ravaged by a disease caused by war, whose most fervent efforts cannot extend her life. Three women who can’t even offer their executed friend the dignity of anointing his body. The heartbreak in both of these stories is real; thanks be to God it is not the end of either story.
The gospels of Matthew, Luke and John end with a series of appearances by the risen Christ. Mark’s gospel ends with the story Karen Nell and I read by the crypt. The women discover the empty tomb. They don’t know what to believe. They flee.
Mark uses a striking phrase to describe their state of mind: “Terror and amazement had seized them.” When we are seized by terror, our lives become small. We narrow our focus. Our hearts contract. When amazement seizes us, we awaken to wonder. Our imaginations soar. Our hearts expand.
I imagine the struggle within these women as terror and amazement each tried to grab hold of their hearts. Which one would dominate? Was there a point when the women could choose which one to embrace? Would they choose to embrace terror or amazement?
Mark leaves the question unanswered—perhaps so his readers could ask themselves about terror and amazement in their own lives, perhaps so we can ask ourselves what we will choose. We know the women ultimately chose to embrace amazement. Thanks be to God! We know they found courage to proclaim the good news that Jesus had risen. Alleluia! We know they and the other disciples went out from their hiding places to heal the sick and form communities of compassion and radical sharing. Christ is risen indeed!
I imagine their choice to embrace amazement didn’t happen in a single moment. Surely there were times terror seized them with such force they were overwhelmed. I imagine their embrace of amazement was a series of small choices that built upon each other, until terror lost its hold.
What enabled them to make that series of small choices? Maybe they had already experienced the transformative power of God’s love, and so they were prepared to believe God’s love could even defeat death. Maybe a voice within—their inner sacred wisdom—spoke to assure them, and they listened. Somehow, the heart-breaking story of three women at an empty tomb became the heart-transforming story of new life.
Which brings me back to Sadako and her heart-breaking story of a thousand cranes that could not save her life. Somehow, as Sadako made cranes from scraps of medical paper in her hospital room, her definition of hope was transformed—from magical thinking that folding paper could save her life to a prayer for her family’s well-being. The meaning of hope transformed again after her death, when school friends raised thousands of dollars for a statue of Sadako to be installed at the Hiroshima Peace Park. They draped her statue with a thousand cranes as their prayer that no more children should die from bombs.
The meaning of the cranes expanded even further as they became an international symbol of peace. In 2012, after the Sandy Hook shooting in Connecticut, Sue DiCicco, an American artist, began searching for a way to bring communities together. In conversation with Sadako’s brother, she created the Peace Crane Project. More than two million children from 154 countries have participated in the project: folding a crane, writing a message of peace on it, sending it to a child far away, and receiving one in return. The project tears down walls by building friendship across difference.
How did this transformation happen? What enabled Sadako to broaden her definition of hope? What led her friends to choose hope over bitterness? What has inspired children all over the world to fold millions of cranes? There’s something transformative about an act of creating beauty, especially when it is repeated over and over again. Even when we don’t know what to hope for, the practice of acting anyway awakens us to hope deeper than we thought possible. A heart-breaking story becomes a heart-transforming story of the power of one child to inspire millions to work for peace.
Preaching an Easter sermon while surrounded by paper cranes gives me fresh insight into the story we tell today. We celebrate Easter as an event that happened on a particular day—Jesus rose and death was defeated. Easter is also a way of life for every day of the week—a practice of acting in hope that actually brings hope to fruition. For the good news of Easter to matter, the women at the tomb had to choose amazement over terror. God’s love is more powerful than hatred and death when we choose to practice love in our everyday lives. Easter is about hope that cannot be defeated; it is about hope as a life-practice.
I was struck these last few weeks by what origami can teach us about practicing hope. I learned to make the birds from Rick’s you-tube videos. Every few folds he patiently stopped to hold the paper up so I could see it from different angles. Occasionally he’d make it fly, so I could envision what was emerging. At first, the folding felt random and unnatural, and I struggled to get the proportions right. With each one I made, the process made more sense and my perception improved.
Eventually I no longer needed the video. I still needed to pay attention to what I was doing. When I tried to fold while watching TV, I realized I was missing the point. The point is not making lots of birds; the point is practicing the intention and care each bird deserved. When I made a mistake, I discovered I could unfold and start over. The mistaken fold lines did not detract from the beauty of the bird. My joy at the birds I created was multiplied by knowing other people were also bringing their attention and intention to the project.
This glorious display of origami birds in our sanctuary is a vivid reminder of what it means to practice Easter hope. The bright colors and varied patterns point us to the many different practices of hope that bring the good news of Easter to fruition. Some of us write letters to elected officials as a practice of hope. Some call friends. Some crochet prayer shawls. Some show up to support events held by neighboring communities. Some pick up trash. Some bake birds-nest cookies. Together, our practices of hope create beauty and bring compassion and justice to our world.
Just as we need Rick’s hands in a you-tube video to learn to fold paper, so we need help to learn to practice hope. We need guidance and support as we develop meaningful practices. Thank God, we are blessed with a community of wise and patient teachers of hope.
Origami demands intention and attention to detail. That doesn’t mean origami birds are perfect—just made with care. Our Easter practices of hope likewise call for intention, care and attention to detail. They call for grace to recognize when we have made mistakes and perseverance as we do our best to repair harm and try again.
Our altar scape is a communal work of creativity: each of us individually learning and practicing, folding and unfolding and refolding, as part of a larger movement. And so it is with our Easter practices of hope. We may practice them on our own or in small groups; the full beauty of our efforts is revealed when we bring them together in community.
It has been fun, during this Lenten season, to fold paper birds as a practice that points to hope. It has been a powerful expression of community in a pandemic time, separate yet together in our project, creating individual birds that form this glorious flock. Now we move into the Easter season, even as we move into a complicated in-between time in our society—when news of another surge alternates with rising vaccination numbers, when fear and amazement can seize us at the same time. I invite you, in this time, to claim your own Easter practice of hope, a practice that helps you honor fear and embrace amazement. Today we proclaim that love is more powerful than fear and hate, suffering and even death. Tomorrow we are called to practice living that message: to bring the power of love to fulfillment through our actions.
This Easter season I invite you to focus on small acts, practiced with consistency and intention. Small acts of compassion and justice, when practiced over and over again, transform our lives and our relationships. Small practices of hope, when multiplied in community, bring the Easter message to fulfillment.
What acts of hope can you practice in this season? Dare to trust that, as you practice, you will be changed. Dare to trust that, as you practice, you become part of something much larger than yourself—the kin-dom of God’s love, more powerful than hate or fear, suffering or death.
Look now at this glorious display of birds—an expression of our collective intention and care. Look again in a few minutes, when we turn on our video cameras for communion, at the glorious display of community on our Zooms—an expression of our collective choice to embrace amazement over terror, our collective intention to practice hope in our everyday lives. Christ is risen! Hope is alive! Thanks be to God! Alleluia! Amen.