Children’s
Sermon:
Practice
liturgical shouting with them, louder and louder, “Christ is risen.” They respond:
“He is
risen indeed!” What is the liturgical
season? What is the color? White is for 1) Light, many Christians
worshiping in the catacombs to avoid violence against them. 2) Purity—to will
one thing.
Pivotal
questions: Who was the most widely known
resurrection at the time of Jesus?
Julius Caesar. Resurrection said
who had power in your life. Was it
Caesar who regularly crucified Jews or Jesus?
What was Jesus all about? (Don’t
answer, ask them to think about who Jesus was and is, what as he all
about. Incorporate their answers in
prayer)
How are we
going to make it the world? (Use strong
voice/get connected-touch feet) Prayer.
I think I was called to ordained
ministry because God knew . . . if we place Mulberry out in the congregation,
he will become a problem. Roger Jern and
I were known as “the gigglers” in the children’s choir because we would
alternately try to make one another laugh by making weird faces at each
other. First one to crack up, lost. I was the only one of thirteen confirmands
that told my pastor I wasn’t sure I believed all of this Christian stuff. Maybe it would be a good idea that I not get
confirmed? One of my wise and learned
sister actually commented on a Facebook meme last week that read, “Everyone
needs a friend they probably shouldn’t be allowed to sit next to at a serious
function.”
“Yes,” she wrote, “that
would be the very Rev. Michael Mulberry.”
Can you feel the familial love?
Actually, the reason I
should not be out in the pew, is because I think I would fall asleep listening to
my own sermons. Yes, you’re all off the
hook.
Even though I was an
historic trouble-maker and slacker in the church, spending my whole life in the
church also makes me a church nerd. I
grew up attune to the messages being shared.
I got the main point. The main
point was Jesus. Right? He was the guy who was special, exceptional,
the one and only. Heck, our church had
one of those paintings of Jesus that no matter where you stood in the room,
Jesus’s eyes followed you. It gave me
the eeby geebies. But the message was
clear. Jesus, the perfect and
exceptional one, was watching you—giggle boy, trouble maker, meeting
wise-cracker, sermon snoozer.
It is one of my two pastor
jokes. The new pastor arrives to do the
children sermon. The children eagerly
gather around them. They begin with a
description. “I would like to start off
with some questions. Let’s start with
something easy. This has a bushy
tail. It scampers along the ground and
climbs trees. It collects nuts. What is it?”
Jamie, one of the small boys, rolls his eyes as he raises his hand. “Jaimie?”
“Well, it sounds like a
squirrel, but I know the answer has gotta be Jesus.”
There is something wrong
with that picture. Because as I have
shared many times, while the historical Christian Church pointed to Jesus as
the be-all, end-all, Jesus pointed to the community being woven together during
his public ministry and said, “That, right there—full of prostitutes, tax
collectors, uppity women, smelly shepherds and fisher folk, that, not me, that
is the Empire of God.”
I was taught that Jesus’s
torture and death were somehow romantically unique. All of that suffering made him special and
showed how much he loved me. Only Jesus
could suffer so many lashes, such a horrendous death, so much humiliation. All of this, made him special. But then I learned over a million Jews had
been crucifed around the time of Jesus.
Such that, his suffering and death was not so much unique, but showed
that he shared the fate of so many people.
Jews in the First Century
could look at what Jesus went through and say, “Yes, like so many of us. Like so many of my family and friends. Just like us.” Because under Roman law, Jesus and so many
Jews in the First Century, were rightly crucified—the full punishment and
violence of Roman law and order enforced against them.
I was also taught that
Jesus’s resurrection was unique. Nobody
else was resurrected byt Jesus. And in
Western Christianity, there Jesus is, rising magnificently and gloriously
alone, by himself. All signs point to
him.
But, as I said, Jesus
pointed elsewhere. He points to the
joyous celebration of a wedding feast.
In that teaching is an echo of the Scriptural text from Isaiah he uses
to announce his public ministry in the synagogue. “The
Spirit of the Living One is upon me, because God has anointed me to preach good
news to the poor, release of the political prisoners, recovery of sight to
those who cannot see, and to proclaim that this is the year we get it done.” This is not an intellectual exercise but an
active proclaiming like Caesar commanded with expectation, “So let it be said,
so let it be done.”[1]
At this wedding feast, a
revolutionary reversal is taking place.
Those most shamed are to be moved up near the parents’ table. Those with the most honor sit in the back
with the greasy DJ the couple has hired.
Then Jesus goes on to talk about those poor, those without sight, those
unable to walk . . . those are the ones you should invite to the joyous
feast. Once again, Jesus seems to be
invoking his mission statement from way back in the synagogue to say, “This
ain’t about me. This is about all of you
and how you organize your world.”
The wedding feast is not
about Jesus. The wedding feast is a
place of communal joy that enacts God’s decree to begin the revolution of
unarmed truth and unconditional love. So
let it be said, so let it be done.
In the beautiful painting
and iconography of resurrection art, two distinct traditions emerged. As I shared, in Western Christianity, Jesus
rises magnificently and gloriously alone.
All hail Jesus. All praise to
Jesus.
But in the Eastern Orthodox
tradition, relying on even more ancient art, another story was told. You can see two examples of that Eastern
Orthodox tradition on the front and back of your bulletin.
Within Biblical Judaism, resurrection was always corporate, communal, and universal. At its origins, the concept of resurrection--as distinct from ascension--involved the whole human race.
God raises Christ to stand again and again to liberate, not in
isolation, as Julius Caesar’s resurrection did, but to bring all of humankind
into resurrection with him and to end the reign of violence in the world.[3] My prayer is that we will engage this
tradition and critique it so that Christ not only brings all of humanity with
him but also brings all of creation with him.
In these incredible works of art,
Christ is the mother of all liberation and the resurrection brings all of
humankind with him, hopefully all of creation.
And Abel and John the Baptist are pictured in the resurrection scene to
say that resurrection is about the ending of all violence, particularly the
kind of escalatory violence that has us forever trying to justify why Roman law
must be enforced.
The second painting is from the Voronet Monastery in Romania, believed to be built in the 15th Century. Again, in the East, Jesus grasps the hand of Adam and Eve to rise with him, a metaphor for the whole human race going with him.
In another one of the paintings from the Eastern tradition, not included
on your bulletin, Christ is even seen grasping solely the hand of Eve! The point is, the Eastern tradition of
resurrection is about the past, present, and future rising of all humanity,
rising with Christ.
As you can hear, the giggling, confirmation-avoiding, wise-cracking,
sleeping during sermons Mike Mulberry believes the Eastern renditions of the
resurrection to be more true than what I learned from my own Western
tradition. When I say Christ is risen, I
hope you know that he is an extending a hand to you so that you may rise with him—even
when the world wants to give you a seat in the back of the bus, see you as less
than human, unwilling to see the glorious divinity within you.
So this is what I wish for all of this on this Easter Day—that maybe you
arrived here thinking it was going to be all about Jesus again. And to recognize that when you are shamed or
humiliated, cast low or told you are not enough, that Jesus points at you and
moves you up to the table next to the wedding party. Ugh, the greasy DJ has been moved up too! Then, let the jailbreak begin! That you might tell others who have been
chained or jailed in death, those experiencing a violence they might even think
they deserve, that Christ is rising and that Christ’s hand is extended to
them.
I pray, hoping against hope that
you do not trust the resurrection of Caesar, who rises alone in violence. But that you have given your loyalty to the
communal resurrection of Christ. I say
to you, sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins, that Christ is risen! And you respond back to me . . . (he is risen
indeed). Christ is risen! (he is risen indeed). And he holds his hand out to you. To you.
So let it be said. So let it be
done. Amen.
[1] John Dominic Crossan and
Sarah Sexton Crossan, “Rising up with Christ,” The Christian Century,
January 19, 2018, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/critical-essay/rising-christ.
[2] Ibid.
[3] John Dominic
Crossan, “The Communal Resurrection of Jesus,” HuffPost Religion,
May 11, 2011. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-dominic-crossan/the-communal-resurrection-jesus_b_847507.html
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