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Foundry United Rev. |
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“The Shock of Resurrection” Easter Sunday, March 23,
2008 |
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Matthew 28: 1-10
Rev. |
There
is one phrase in the Easter story as told in the Gospel of Matthew that has compelled
my attention this year. Mary Magdalene and another woman named Mary went to
visit Jesus’ tomb Sunday morning. An angel appeared and told them Jesus had
been raised. The angel told them to go tell Jesus’ disciples that he had been
resurrected. Then it
says that Mary and Mary “left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy.” Here’s
the phrase – with fear and great joy. Resurrection
always comes as a surprise, but surprise is too tame a word…it comes as a
shock. Resurrection is not something we do; it is something God does to us.
But how we choose to respond to the surprise and shock of resurrection makes
Easter. Easter
has two parts, both of which are necessary for it to be Easter. The first
part is the resurrection of Jesus. There is no Easter without Jesus’
resurrection. But the
second part is what Jesus’ followers do after his resurrection. There is no
Easter without the disciples’ response. What
happens to Jesus’ followers is as important as what happens to Jesus. If
Easter is only Jesus’ resurrection then all we have here is some sort of bizarre
fluke of nature. It is the response of Jesus’ disciples that turns the world
upside down. So the response
of Jesus’ followers, represented here by the two women Mary and Mary, is a
critical part of Easter. Here’s what Matthew’s Gospel says happened: Mary and
Mary left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy. This is the response
within Mary and Mary: fear and great joy. Fear
and joy are conflicting emotions. They are confusing emotions to experience
at the same time, jumbled up together inside us. Why fear and great joy? Let’s
begin with fear. Why fear? Why were Mary and Mary afraid? Because
it always scares us when the rules change…and what more shocking change in
the rules could there be than a dead person alive again? What rule is more
dependable than that the dead stay dead? When Roman soldiers crucify someone
he stays crucified. The executed stay
executed. The dead stay dead. This is rule number one, after which – some say
– rule number two is taxes. Rules
provide us with security and safety. Just tell me what the rules of the game
are, we say. When the rules begin to change, we become anxious and afraid
because we can’t be sure if up is still up and down is still down. Resurrection
changes the rules, and rules are our security blankets and reassuring habits.
Without rules the world becomes an undependable place. That’s why fear. So, why
great joy? Why did Mary and Mary experience great joy? Because
when the rules change, it is also exciting, heady. It opens the possibility of
liberation and new life.
If the
dead don’t have to stay dead, all sorts of things are possible. If the
crucified don’t have to stay crucified, then Mary and Mary don’t have to live
in the tomb of patriarchy anymore. Great joy! If the
crucified don’t need to stay crucified, Gentiles don’t have to go on being
treated like dogs anymore. Great joy! If the
crucified don’t need to stay crucified, there no longer needs to be Jew or
Greek, slave or free, male or female. Great joy! If the
crucified don’t need to stay crucified, we can be freed from our racial
cocoons, our isolated and segregated lives, our closets, our abusive
relationships, and our addictions. Great joy!
Inside
of Mary and Mary are two competing emotions – fear and great joy. This is
always our initial response to resurrection. I want
to talk for a few minutes about race in I was
feeling depressed about the racial tension in Then
suddenly this weekend I moved from fear to joy. I realized that the tension
we are experiencing is because the rules are changing. What we are
experiencing is the shock of resurrection which always causes within us fear
and great joy all mixed up together. I was
the pastor of a primarily African-American congregation for several years in
the 1980’s. When I say primarily African-American I mean all but two people
in the congregation were African-American. One of the two who was not
African-American was married to me. It was
the most fearful and joyous experience of my life. Every day we had to choose
between fear and joy. I knew it
was a sacrifice for a congregation of African-Americans of the generation who
had grown up before and during the civil rights movement to have a white
pastor. For
African-Americans, church in those days was where you could go to say what you
really thought and what you really felt without white people looking over
your shoulder disapprovingly. Church was something – sometimes the only thing
– that belonged to you, that you got to run. Church was where you could let
your guard down.
Suddenly
now you’ve got a white pastor. He is in some ways an intruder; yet, you’ve
got to treat him well because there is no higher value among a people who
know what it is like to be put out than hospitality.
It was frightening
for me, too. I was always nervous I would say or do something offensive. There
are all sorts of things white people do that are offensive and we have no
idea. I was careful and guarded, and members of the congregation were careful
and cautious around me. We
eventually figured out how to be church together. But every day we had to
choose between fear and joy. One
turning point was when three men in the congregation invited me to go with
them to a men’s prayer breakfast at a neighboring church. We had a fine
breakfast. As was often the case in those days, I was the only white person
in the room. Then it was time for the speaker. The
speaker spoke on the superiority of the black race over the white race. He
quoted scientific studies that proved, he claimed, that the brains of black
people are, on average, larger and more developed than the brains of white
people. It was a mirror image of the foolish pseudo-science white people had
used for centuries to supposedly prove they were superior to black people. A
mirror image. I could
tell that the three men who had invited me to the breakfast were mortified,
just absolutely mortified. They sat as stiff as if they were corpses. One of
the men had driven us there. After breakfast and the speech, we got in his
car. The ride back began in a very uncomfortable silence. Nobody knew what to
say. Finally I decided I had to say something to break the ice. So this is
what I said: “He’s not all wrong, you know? Every black person I have known,”
I said, “has had a more developed brain than my white brother-in-law.” Every
day we had to choose between fear and joy. The rules were changing and every
day we had to choose between fear and joy. We made
it – that congregation and I. It was scary but we learned we weren’t so
fragile that we would shatter if we heard or experienced something
uncomfortable. It wouldn’t be the end of the world. We could take risks with
each other. And eventually there were actually times when we almost forgot
the shades of our skin. Great joy. Then another
time I was the pastor of an integrated church. We had a white member of that
congregation, Steve (a pseudonym). He didn’t have a malicious bone in his
body, but he would unconsciously say these uncomfortable, slightly racist
things. Something
unprecedented happened in that congregation. I don’t know what caused it. Two
of the African-American men in the church took Steve to lunch and gently
talked to him. After lunch he came to my office agitated. He was upset and
sort of angry and sort of embarrassed and feeling very, very defensive. After
he’d talked for a while, this is what I told him. I said, “Steve, you have
just been paid one of the biggest compliments I know.” I told him that it is
very rare for African-Americans in our society to tell we who are white when
we are doing something that feels racist to them. It is a dreadfully
difficult thing to talk about, and we white people almost always become defensive
and angry. We rarely listen. It usually isn’t worth it. “Those
guys must really care about you,” I told Steve. “They must really, really
believe in you.” The
rules were changing for Steve and he had to choose between fear and joy. It
was a resurrection for Steve. The
rules are changing in Be very
clear – I am not talking about who we vote for, that’s not the point. I am talking about how we listen to each
other in this situation of fear and joy. When I
was pastoring the African-American congregation, I developed a new spiritual
practice. If anyone took the risk of suggesting to me that something I said
or did had within it any tinge of racism, I adopted the practice that I would
not react, I would not allow myself to become defensive, I would not try to
justify myself. I would ask questions to make sure I understood and I would
think about it for 24 hours. After 24 hours I might decide that what the
person had said was wrong, but if an African-American was willing to take the
enormous risk of pointing out something they saw in me, I was going to give
it serious consideration. I have
since tried to apply this same principle to gender, sexual orientation and
the differently-abled. I don’t always
pull it off, but I try. I may decide after 24 hours that you are wrong, but I
want to always try to consider it carefully. When
the Jeremiah Wright sound bites appeared this week, I wish white Americans
could have said, “Tell us more, Dr. Wright. Explain to us what you are trying
to tell us. Let’s see the videos of the entire sermon. We want to understand
your perspective. We are going to try to not be defensive. We may end up
disagreeing with you, but we are going to take some time to try to understand
what you have to say.” What a wonderful thing that would have been for white But
instead we became afraid. We can choose between fear and great joy, because
in But I
say this only as an illustration of a larger truth. When
the rules change, we get scared. If the crucified don’t stay crucified, what
rules can we trust? That’s why Mary and Mary were afraid. But mixed up with
the fear is joy, liberation and new life. The
scariest thing we do in life is to rise from the tombs of our own
internalized oppression and sense of inferiority and alienation. But mixed
with the fear is great joy. The joy of resurrection. Joy. Joy. Joy. The joy
is always under the places where there is the greatest fear. What a
joy it must have been for Mary and Mary, women in a patriarchal world, to be
able to go to the male disciples and say, “Oh boys, guess who Jesus has
chosen to be the witnesses of his resurrection?” Joy. Joy. Joy. What a
joy it is when you realize you don’t have to be in charge anymore just
because of your gender. What a joy it is when you come out of the closet.
What a joy it is when you look in the mirror and see that black really is remarkably
attractive. What a joy when you power your wheel chair through the front
door. What a joy when you discover that, with the help of God and friends, you
can stay sober. What a joy when you stop being married to the man who abuses
you. What a joy when you see your grandchildren playing with their friends,
and they are every shade of humanity. What a joy when you speak your
God-given truth. What a joy when you stop believing you’re stupid and enroll
in graduate school. Joy. Joy. Joy. We
don’t have to stay crucified. Joy. Joy. Joy. Fear first, and then great joy. Jane
got me an iPod for Christmas. I think she has come to regret it. My
sister-in-law got me a gift certificate at iTunes for Christmas, so I have
bought some music…some hymns, some Bob Marley, which are like hymns. I have also
bought some songs, usually in the middle of the night on nights when I can’t
sleep, that the next day, I’ve said, “What was I thinking?” Toward
the beginning of Lent this year, just after we got back from So all
this Lent the words have gotten stuck in my head, and all Lent I’ve been
hearing them in my head: They tried to make me go to rehab, I say-ed, "No,
no, no" What a
strange song to get stuck in my head during Lent, I thought. But then it
occurred to me. What is Lent, but a 40-day rehab? Lent is
about giving up more than chocolate. It is about giving up our tombs…our
racial cocoons, our gender stereotypes, our self-sufficiency, our closets, our
subservience, our anger, our addictions, our insecurities. Fear
and joy are also bondage and freedom. We choose between bondage and freedom. It is frightening
to come out of our tombs, naked and defenseless. Resurrection fear. But mixed
with the fear is great joy. Resurrection joy. Joy. Joy. Joy. www.foundryumc.org |
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