I have finished preparing the last Easter sermon I will preach at St Ambrose.  It surprised me. This was a week of self-protective detachment for me.  I’ve been systematically working on a to-do list that cycles through tasks for my leave-taking from this ministry, preparations to get our house listed in mid-May, gathering all the documentation for the purchase of the Finquita, and a major project for my ECF job.  Today, I went into a corner of some of the cabinetry in the garage that I’ve ignored probably for 8 or 9 years and had one heck of a cleaning job to do.  One of the rats that we eventually got rid of obviously made a nest there many years ago.  It was not fun cleaning that corner, though strangely reassuring.

This evening, my girl came to me and for the first time wanted to know about her biological father.  We know nothing about him and I tried to explain that to her in the simplest clearest terms I could find.  When it became clear I had no answers, she came over, sat on my lap, put her head on my shoulder and wept.

Somehow, the determination to clean out that corner of my garage, the weight and sorrow of my daughter on my lap, these were Holy Week brought into a single day of intense breaking open.  And so my final sermon on resurrection is printed.  The reality of what I am letting go of and trying to say yes to, all at once, undeniable.  The tomb is empty.