Resurrection and Revolution
By Rev. Daniel Smith
April 04, 2010
Easter Sunday
Lessons: John 20: 1-18
In her best selling book, Nickled and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Barabara Ehrenreich writes about her experience trying to make a living from a series of low wage jobs, from waitress to house cleaner, from nursing home aide to Walmart Sales Associate. One Saturday night, she finds herself in a church pondering the evening’s message that she says has something to do with the debt that everyone owes to the crucified Christ. Apparently, the church was looking for some of her hard-earned six bucks per hour. Ehrenreich was no convert. She writes:
It would be nice if someone would read this sad-eyed crowd the Sermon on the Mount, accompanied by a rousing commentary on income inequality and the need for a hike in the minimum wage. But Jesus makes his appearance here only as a corpse; the living man, the wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist, is never once mentioned, nor anything he ever had to say. Christ crucified rules, and it may be that the true business of modern Christianity is to crucify him again and again so that he can never get a word out of his mouth.”(1)
On that fine note, Happy Easter, everyone! Alleluia! Kids, are you with me? Alleluia! I thought at least some of you might like such an edgy opener! I’ll come back to the thrust of these fiery words in just a bit. For starters though, I’m taken by Ehrenreich’s mention of Jesus making his appearance as a corpse. In fact, much of our gospel text, on the surface at least, is precisely about the lack of Jesus’ appearance as a corpse. Mary Magdalene, Peter and the beloved disciple show up on that first Easter morning looking for the dead body, or at least a rational explanation for the empty tomb! Let’s be honest. 2000 years later, how many of us don’t show up on Easter looking for he same thing - if not the presence of a body, then at least some sensible explanation of where it went. Still shocked and grieving from the events of Good Friday, those first witnesses peer into that empty tomb; confused and scared, they make the most reasonable of assumptions. Surely it was a grave robber! Maybe the so-called gardener did it! How can we consider these first witnesses unreliable when their starting point is much the same as ours would be if we were there? More importantly, how did they and how can we roll away the stone of doubt and disbelief and turn to receive the good news that Jesus has indeed risen just as he said?
Upon a more careful reading, John’s artful telling of this great story may offer some clues. In John, we have three witnesses (not counting the angels). Since the boys in this passage don’t say much and instead seem caught up in a rather bizarre footrace to the empty tomb, let’s go straight to Mary Magdelene. How Christ-like of the Risen Christ to appear first to Mary of Magdala. Thanks to any number of poets, preachers and Hollywood producers, she may well strike us as that quintessential “other.” She is a temptress, a prostitute, and a sinner extraordinaire. In the words of one scholar, Mary is almost always depicted as that woman of “loose hair, loose morals and exposed cleavage.”(2) The fact is that the Mary Magdalene of the gospels proves herself to be a star witness. She was one who was present at the foot of the cross, one who tradition tells us was present at the feet of Jesus, using her hair to anoint them with oil. She is one who historians claim went on to become “Apostle to the Apostles,” a prophetic visionary, and a leader in one of the sects of the early Christian movement. Far from being some secondary figure in an otherwise Peter-powered patriarchy, far from being a personification of negative stereotypes, Mary Magdalene should be heralded as the personification of discipleship itself! Now, having said that, let’s get to the heart of the matter. What can we learn from Magdala about how we can turn from our own well-trod ways of doubt and despair to the way of new life made known through the Risen Christ? As it turns out, it’s all in the turning itself!
Did you notice Mary’s embodied sense of agency, the way the story depicts her turning and turning again in response to what God is doing in and all around her! Did you catch that? In stark contrast to the linear movements of her male counterparts who are too busy running in fear, playing with the laundry and getting home in time for brunch, Mary stays, cogitating and agitating in body and soul. She alone remains and remains vulnerable, present, open to conversation and ready to be transformed! She shows us a model of resurrection experienced within the context of our always twisting and turning relationships - to self, God and other.
Mary’s first move is a turn inwards, a turn to her very self and to the authenticity of her own experience. Bent over and bent inward in grief and confusion, she speaks her mystery and truth in visceral lamentation and in intimate exchange with two angels, “they have taken away my Lord and I do not know…I do not know where they have laid him.” A turn towards the self! Next, in verse 14, we learn that “she turned around,” turning away from the tomb and from emptiness itself to experience a face-to-face encounter with one whom at first appears a stranger. Still “blinded by grief,” she mistakes the Risen Christ for a gardener. Only when Jesus says her name does she “turn again” and recognize the Risen Christ in this stranger. Verse 16: “Jesus says to her ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him ‘my rabbi’ - my teacher. J.B. Phillips offers an even more pointed translation: “She turned right round to him.”(3) Here, in this turning, she knows that her redeemer lives, that hope is not lost, that God’s love for her endures and is stronger even than death. Here, she listens to that abiding love speaking to her still, calling her name, calling her out of that and every future tomb in which she might find herself lost. Here, in the words of Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams,
Mary lives [again] because Jesus lives [again]! … Deep calls unto deep: not simply the buried Jesus calling the buried self into a share tomb, but the inexhaustible depth of God’s…love calling to the depth of hope and potentiality and freedom in the self. If we answer that call, we find our story given back to us, our name and our memory, that story then turns the corner into life and promise, and most important, ‘calling’ in the fuller sense. We are given a task to do, given a gift to give. Mary is bidden not to touch or hold or cling to the recovered Lord, “but to go to Jesus’ brethren and speak to them.”(4)
The Archbishop brings us to the last turn in this text, Mary’s turn toward the world to proclaim God’s unconditional forgiveness and undying love. Indeed, “the resurrection leads to commissioning – the word of hope is given to be passed on.”(5) What’s more, the pattern continues into the very next verse when Christ appears to those still terrified brothers hiding behind locked doors. His simple gift and greeting in verse 19 is this: “Peace be with you.” He says it again in verse 21. “Peace be with you. Just as God sent me so I now send you.” And so we too are called by our encounter with this resurrection story, to turn in, to turn around, to turn out and announce this good news of God’s death over powering love to the world.
The Resurrection is not merely God’s answer to our human grief and weeping. Jesus came and rose to turn us in and to turn us out that God may turn around the powers that keep our worldly kingdoms at war. Think about it: throughout the gospels Jesus’ message does not change! “Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand.” Repent, in Hebrew, teshuvah, means turn. Jesus’ message put another way: “Turn in towards yourself in mercy! Turn around towards loved ones, strangers and enemies, sharing the peace I have showed you! Turn out to the world in love and the Kingdom is yours! This resurrection story of God’s unconquerably loving initiative and Mary’s turning in response is the entire gospel in miniature!
Now, let’s turn back to where we started. To look at “modern Christianity” today as Ehrenreich has, we have to recognize that the church writ large has taken more than its share of wrong turns along the way. One could rightfully wonder if out of it’s own un-self-aware fear, shame and doubt, that the institutional church has turned not toward but against its collective self, not toward but against others. In response to threats to its power, identity, institutional memory and maintenance, the “church” has far too often distorted and disfigured that first Easter proclamation effectively leaving Jesus as little more than a muted corpse. For centuries, the debt of too much bad Saturday night theology has fallen unconscionably on the shoulders of the poor, women, slaves, gays, Jews and Muslims. Rather than exalting women who were the very first to bear witness to resurrection, the “church” in its practice continues to demean them and blame them for the very existence of sin itself. Rather than celebrating the rich history of Jesus’ own Judaism and appreciating Judaism as the foundation for all of Christianity, the “church” continues to blame the Jews for Jesus’ death if not through blatant anti-semitism then through its ignorance and complacency in dealing with anti-semitic threads that are part of the very fabric of the gospels themselves. Rather than preaching the Sermon on Mount and blessing the poor, the “church” instead has grown famous for exploiting the poor through a televangelized prosperity gospel and by a lack of witness against our culture of selfishness and greed. This is not the church of Jesus Christ! This is not the church that you and I have come to love! And we all better believe that God still has the power to resurrect Jesus in all places, in all of our churches, wherever we have left Jesus as a muted corpse!
Sisters and brothers, the good news that is ours to receive this day is that the God in whom all things are possible is always making the first move towards us, always turning to us in power, calling us by name, sending us out in love. As the church of Jesus Christ, it is ours to turn in response, to turn in and around and out, and to walk in the ways of Jesus so near as God shall give us grace. It’s ours to turn to our neighbors near and far, and to our gravest of enemies, even to “those other Christians” with an embrace of peace and justice! Like Mary, it’s ours to be embodied agents not merely of the resurrection but of a revolution that began on that first Easter when God said, ‘No more turning against. No more scapegoating. No more shaming and blaming of others. No more violence. No more crucifixions! These ‘powers that be’ will not win! My love is stronger. My love more powerful and more lasting. My love is eternal!’ And so our redeemer lives.
When was the last time you felt yourself drawn to turn against yourself, against your partner, against your child or your parent, against some person you know you are supposed to love but can’t? Its at exactly these turning points, and they happen daily, that we need to power of God’s love to roll away the stones of our anger, cynicism and despair and to breathe the peace of the living Christ into us. This is where we need to listen to our God given names until we turn right round and turn towards mercy, healing and love.
Here at First Church through these forty days of Lent, we have been “walking the way,” not just as a theme but as a daily practice. We have walked and turned inward in prayer and study as Jesus did to find grace and courage and consolation in the midst of own searching struggles. We have turned back, studied and claimed the ways of Jesus’ own Judaism, the way of Torah, the way of Moses. Last Sunday, when we heard from our candidate for a new Minister of Spiritual Formation, one person in our congregational meeting, bless her, turned to her neighbors here and asked if the candidate had training in feminist theology! Two Wednesdays ago, over 400 Christians, Muslims and Jews turned out at Old South Church to secure a commitment from the Treasurer of the Commonwealth to divest hundreds of millions of state funds from Bank of America if they do not agree to change their usurious and egregious interest rates and fees that are turned decidedly against debt-ridden poor and middle class America! And every Sunday, here in worship, we turn to one other as we did this morning and robustly greet each other with the peace of the Risen Christ.
Sisters and brothers, Jesus is no muted corpse. I too “have seen the Lord,” right here in this household of faith. Through God’s gift of the Holy Spirit, he is still speaking and he is nowhere near done! His words, his actions and his body lives on in the life of the beloved community, and in any place where we people are formed and challenged to turn in love towards self, towards strangers and enemies, and towards the wider world! The resurrection should be for us nothing less than a revolution – a revolution in our souls, cranking the r.p.m.’s, causing our hearts to skip, causing the sun to bounce, creating a new heaven and a new earth that turns us from old ways of victimhood and violence to this new way of love and forgiveness of enemies made know through the Risen Christ. With Mary Magdalene, let’s say we are not willing to settle for a corpse! Let’s say we want and need and have been given a resurrection that leads to revolution! We want and need and have been given a resurrection community through which the words of God in Christ can speak peace and hope to our warring world.
With the “spirit of joy” that calls us, with the “spirit of the highest, of love, of dance and laughter, of the spinning sun,” indeed we too have arrived at this new day, this new dawn of creation!(6) Can you feel it turning inside of you? In a moment, we will invite you literally turn to the right to exit your pews, to turned towards this feast of love. Maybe you’ll feel it then! Turn to the right, walk, stroll even shimmy and roll on up to this table of grace where all are welcome, even the ones who have betrayed us. Turn and receive the gifts of the peaceable kin-dom of God. With Mary, be an embodied agent of this resurrected life! And as the Shakers of old would sing about all simple gifts, turn and turn again. Come forth and bow and bend. Be not ashamed! To turn, turn, will be our delight, and by turning and turning we will come ‘round right! First Church, turn it in! Turn around! Turn it out and turn it up! And may we all say Alleluia! Christ is Risen! Christ is risen, indeed! Amen!
1) Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickled and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2001) p. 68-69.
2) Frances Taylor Gench, Encounter with Jesus (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007) p. 128.
3) J.B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English (New York: Macmillan, 1958), p. 225.
4) Rowan Williams, Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1982) p. 41.
5) Ibid., p. 41.
6) Quotes are from the English translation of Spiritus Laetitia, a piece written in three movement by First Church Staff Composer, Patty Van Ness, for the First Church choir and for this Easter service. Arrived, here, is a reference to a stunning photo, entitled “Arrival”, that depicts the sun rising over the ocean. It was taken by First Church member Gaylen Morgan.