Easter Day, "Resurrection is a this-worldly experience"

B Easter Day BFC 2018

Mark 16:1-8

April 1, 2018

          I think one of the great sins of modern-day Christianity is that it has become an other-worldly religion.  Christianity has become about heaven and hell, judgment and the after-life.  I think the result of this emphasis is that we really don’t need to care about the soil or the atmosphere, even though Biblical faith tells us that we are made out of the deep black and brown of the earth and the wind and breath of the atmosphere.   Instead, we end up with a sky god who seems wholly unconcerned with a relationship to the air, water, and land.  When Biblical faith tells us that the literal translation of the word salvation is “a broad and spacious place for community life and conduct,” we know how central land is to our faith story. The land is the part of the promise, the substance of God’s covenant, the very context for all of our relationships.

          When the Biblical God is made into nothing more than a sky god, then the material bases of life become unimportant.  The imperial narrative tells us to pay attention to the otherworldly battle that is going on to understand why they or we have the authority over life and death, food and land, air and water.  Our gods won.  “So we win,” empire says, “and there is only so much to go around.  Soooooo . . . sorry.” 

Through Pax Romana, Deutschland über alles, and manifest destiny, all of the land that stretches into the horizon is declared the individual property of empire.  We therefore reserve the right to dominate, occupy, colonize, confiscate, and liquidate land first; and bodies second.  The violence of empire becomes like a legion of demons—poisoning the land; spirits--housed in our own bodies.  

We get the message loud and clear.  Empire homogenizes to commodify and divides to conquer.   It tells us that the goodness of God is scarce so you had better get yourself some over and against your neighbor.  First the land and then bodies.  The message is so thick that sometimes we allow the imperial demons to take hold and we experience or do to our own bodies what we hear to be the imperial gospel—dominating, abusing, cutting, starving, drugging, sedating, objectifying—until we can no longer hear God’s voice whisper to us, “No.  Child of God.  Beautiful.  Rich.  Free.  Balance.  Strong.  Kind.”

The resurrection is the disruption to the imperial program.  The tomb is empty.  It’s just empty.  The tomb is empty—a fact that creates great fear for the women because to disturb a tomb, by edict of Caesar, was considered dishonorable, a capital offense punishable by death.[1]  So there is this amazement and this trauma upon trauma, this fear that they could be next.  Is it Rome or God that is ever-present?  In their minds, maybe in the midst of their tremendous grief, even though their friend and teacher tried to convince them otherwise, they just don’t know now.  

Is God or empire ever-present for our soul, heart, mind, and strength?   

There is no great appearance story in the Gospel of Mark--no Mary mistaking him for the gardener; or him walking on the road to Emmaus with disciples; no appearing in the Upper Room to have Thomas put his hands in his side or cooking fish while the disciples cast their nets looking for a haul.  The Scripture passage starts with the Marys headed to the tomb, not even knowing how they will get the stone rolled away.  Rome used crucifixion, like other empires used lynching[2], to not only liquidate the person but to also create so much trauma in the horrific death that they would liquidate his memory as well.  Cut off the head.  Kill the body.  And the memory of Jesus fades.

          But there is some literary wordplay being used in this story.  The word for “tomb” comes from the Greek word for “memory” and the word for “entrance” means “gateway” or “door.”[3]  So as the women wonder who will roll away a stone that is the gateway to memory, the Marys are surprised to find that the stone has already been rolled back.  And so, the door to memory of their beloved teacher and friend has been made possible.  Now they are given permission to re-member Jesus and his whole program, his whole enterprise--over and over again.    

          Notice in this resurrection story that there is no story of Jesus ascending to the sky or some metaphysical experience of Jesus as some other life form.  The person in white who greets the two Marys is not even a divine being.  It is a young man.  And he tells them what the resurrection means.  It means that God affirms the whole project, the whole program.  “Jesus is hoofing it back to the homeland, Galilee” the young man tells them, where Jesus has a connection to the rich black and brown soil, where bread and fish are shared, where demons are thrown out of bodies and off the land, and where the ravages of empire on bodies in sickness and death are healed.   It is not about some otherworldly experience.  Resurrection tells the two Marys that in the gateway to their memories, go and relive the mission and ministry of Jesus back in Galilee—the land that is in every bone and sinew, in every synapse and blood vessel.   Through the resurrection power of God, the mission and ministry in Galilee has a connotation that life is shared, in and out are blurred, and diversity is to be celebrated.  Christ has already started the movement before you—disrupted the imperial occupation and colonization in body to go back to the land and begin the nonviolent confrontation of empire--exorcising demons, creating a mutuality between healing and hospitality, and sharing bread and grape across the table. 

          Activist and professor, Loretta Ross, has said, “When people think many different thoughts and move in the same direction, that’s a movement.  When they think the same thoughts and move in the same direction, that’s a cult.”[4]  From its very beginning, Christianity was intended to be a disruptive movement, the resistance, over and against the violence of empire.  And the early Christian movement was not known for its sameness in belief, ortho-doxy, but for its sameness in practice and direction, ortho-praxis.  As Christianity became an imperial narrative, however, ortho-doxy (right belief) became primary--faith homogenized to lose all of its color, commodified to lose all of its courage. 

          We currently live in a time where we are told that there is scarce justice, scarce attention, and scarce liberation.  We believe we are inevitably pitted against each other such that we worry that what is the worst thing in our lives won’t get the attention it deserves.  “How come your worst thing gets attention and my worst thing didn’t?”  That scarcity is an imperial lie.  In God’s land, in the place the resurrected Christ is going to in Galilee, the common quilt stitched together through the hard work in our diverse lives, there is abundant justice, abundant attention, and abundant liberation.[5]

          Throughout this whole season of Lent, I have asked us to develop attention liberation leading to transformative justice.  I have done that believing we are forever diverted and distracted, seduced to try and win the Game of Thrones that leaves the whole world tattered in chaos and ruin.  We have to stop trying to succeed at the imperial project, pretending we can win it if we just play the right numbers, bet on the right horse, straighten out our lives and look a little more presentable.  Resurrection is not winning.  Resurrection is God saying that even crucified bodies, traumatized peoples, are called to rise up and join themselves to the shared program and plan in Galilee.  God’s empire does not win because God does not play that game. 

The jailbreak has already happened.  We may be scared, terrified, amazed, but, over and over again, Christ is being resurrected to do the work of the gospel.  Come to the empty tomb to enter into re-membrance of who he was in Galilee.  Re-member yourselves, re-member your community, re-member the good earth, people of dark rich soil and holy wind, and then follow.  For, sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins, Christ is risen.  He is risen indeed.  Amen. 

---

[1] Bruce J. Malina, Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis:  Augsburg Fortress, 2003), p. 383.

[2] That would be our empire.  James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Maryknoll, NY:  Orbis Books, 2011).  Contrary to popular belief, lynching was a popular white social activity. 

[3] James Rowe, “Mark 16:1-8,” Lectionary Greek, April 3, 2012, http://lectionarygreek.blogspot.com/2012/04/mark-161-8.html.

[4] Rachell Ravelli, “‘Call In, Call Out’ talk examines current human rights movement,” The Massachusetts Daily Collegian, March 10, 2016.  https://dailycollegian.com/2016/03/call-in-call-out-talk-examines-current-human-rights-movement/.

[5] Really paraphrasing one of my oracles, “Interview with Adrienne Maree Brown:  The World Is a Miraculous Mess and It’s Going to Be All Right,” Yes!  March 17, 2018.  http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/the-world-is-a-miraculous-mess-and-its-going-to-be-alright-20180327.

Sermon for Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Sunday, January 15, 2017, "I'm going that way."

A Epiphany 2 BFC 2016

 John 1:29-42

January 15, 2016

          Tomorrow the children and youth of our public schools will have a day off from school.  Will they know why?  What will we tell them about what the day is about?  What shall we tell them about the ministry and message of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.?  Who was he?  What did he preach?  Was he a Christian?  Was he, as many accused him of when he was alive, a godless communist?  Why is he celebrated now?  There are many, who loved him and his teaching, who believe that Dr. King has been so domesticated that he and his teaching are barely recognizable.  What will we tell our children?  

I’m not sure why I stayed in Christianity.  Maybe because my parents attended church regularly.  Or because my pastor was like a second father for me.  Intellectually, though, I did not get a faith where Jesus died to take away my personal, private sins.  And the idea that once I had accepted Christ into my life I would sin no more or that there were four spiritual laws that did not present themselves as spiritual laws in the Bible I read added to my belief that I would just never get it.  I did not have the adolescent self-esteem to believe that the Christianity adults and other peers were teaching me might be intellectually empty.

          The book Strength to Love, a collection of writings by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was my way back to Christianity.  The hard and difficult sayings of Christianity that seemed to be at the centerpiece of Christ’s life were not only explained but being lived.  Words about the “poor” that I had always heard as, “Well, what he means by the poor is . . . “  were actually about the economically poor.  Instead of fabricating another heavenly and spiritual world that had little relevance to flesh and blood reality, Dr. King seemed to be living out the gospel, dare I say it, much more literally. 

          In reading Strength to Love, I also had a better understanding of why Jesus had been killed.  Marcus Borg once said that if you had heard back in the 1960s that Dr. King had been killed, you would not have assumed he died in some hunting accident.  And after reading Strength to Love, at the end of my high school years, I understood why King had been killed.  King was in Memphis marching in solidarity with the sanitation workers, had recently spoken out against the Viet Nam War, and forever challenged white folk to imagine a table with black folk gathered round.   

          Dr. King made many folks spiritually uncomfortable, “comfort” being a strong value in many churches. 

Found in his pocket after the assassination in Memphis was a list of “10 Commandments” he planned to use in a speech to a large anti-war rally in New York on April 27, 1968.  Perhaps the most important for our time:  “Thou shalt not believe in a military victory.  Thou shalt not believe that the generals know best.  Thou shalt not believe the world supports the United States.  Thou shalt not kill.”[1]

Dr. King recognized that love of God walked hand in hand with love of neighbor and love of neighbor required looking at not only personal morality, but the systems and structures, the powers and the principalities.  Abe’s favorite quote, that helps him make sense of his faith is, “True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar.  It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.” 

That restructuring needed to happen regardless of who was elected President of the world’s sole super-power on November 8^th.  But the results of the election have set off a whole conversation on how we should resist authoritarianism.  Rose Marie Berger, in the most recent issue of Sojourners magazine, wrote of four different responses she has observed.  The first is the ostrich.  We bury our head in the sand.  For white, male, straight folk, we can just tune out the rhetoric because we know the cabinet appointees will safeguard our interests.    The second option is the spaniel.  We fluff up our coat and appear clean and eager on the doorstep of the new master.  We want to show our readiness for a new unity and hope that our behavior might make the new master go easy on us.  The third option is the cockroach.  When the light comes on, we scatter from the street with our sign saying, “Not my President” and hope the dark, obscure corners hide us.  Finally, Berger writes, there is one more option.  This is the mosquito.  “If you think you are too small to make a difference,” says the Dali Lama, “try sleeping with the mosquito.”  There is a reason to drain the swamp.  Mosquitoes everywhere take small bites out of an agenda through sanctuary faith communities, “deport me first” campaigns, active bystander trainings, citizen oversight communities to prevent police abuse.  Mosquitos seem to have this knowledge about how to get what is needed by showing up in numbers.[2] 

With that kind of marching, speaking, and table setting, King seemed to “get” what the cross meant to Christianity.  For a high school kid about ready to leave Christianity, Jesus made sense because of Dr. King, and Dr. King was infused with even more meaning because of Jesus.

In our continuing New Testament scripture about the baptism of Jesus, John the Baptist points at Jesus and says, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”  Such strong historical allusions would be understood by the Jewish people.  “Lamb of God” refers to the lamb that is slain by the Hebrews, a reminder of the violence as its blood is put on the doorposts of the Hebrews so that the angel of death would pass over Hebrew homes.  The angel of death takes all the first born of the Egyptian sons—a reversal of Pharaoh’s declaration to kill all the Hebrew male children.  At every turn, God sought to soften the heart of Pharaoh through non-violence.  It was not to be.  President Kennedy said, oft quoted by Dr. King, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”  The angel of death comes to liberate the Hebrew people; while death-giving to all that prevents their liberation.

So Jesus is the “Lamb of God” who takes away the sin, defined by ancient story as political and economic slavery and oppression.  Jesus and his relationship with his community point the way to liberation and unmask and lay open all the violence and death brought by its systems and structures. 

The story of the Lamb of God and the cross remind us that, as Father Joseph Brown, priest and professor at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, has said, symbols remind us that hate has a face that needs to be remembered.[3]  Symbolism and story were important during the time of Jesus.  John the Baptist remembers for the Jewish people that we cannot have a polite discussion about the Lamb of God.  That story is about slavery and oppression--suffering and death. 

In our day, symbolism and imagery are important.  We must remember images from Auschwitz and Dachau and are faithfully reminded of them by our Jewish sisters and brothers.  But remembrance in our country, particularly when it comes to race, has always been difficult.  Father Brown puts it this way: “America has always had a virus that is anti-historical.”[4] 

That could not be any more true as fragile, straight white folk again and again talk about their victimization as if granting people equal rights, or equal protection under the law, or equal opportunity somehow grants special privilege or access never afforded to them.  (in whiny voice)   “It’s not fair that we might have to make room for people to get the same rights, protection, and opportunity that we have had had.  So stop whining.  Stop being a snowflake.  Put on your big boy panties.  The election is over.  Quit asking for integrity and justice.”

Never was our anti-historical virus been so evident as the reports of swastikas appearing recently on places like the Rims.  But nooses appearing throughout our country about eight years ago, sweeping through our country like a virus--nooses in Farmingdale and Roosevelt, nooses hung from a schoolyard tree in Jena, Louisiana, nooses left for a black member of the U.S. Coast Guard, nooses at New London, Connecticut, a noose left on the door of a university professor’s door in New York City.[5]  Do we get that such symbols go even beyond swastikas—effectively symbols of public execution? 

Dr. James Cone, professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York, believes we in the United States need to remember the imagery of the lynching tree to interpret the cross and the cross to interpret the lynching tree.  Both are images of slavery and oppression, suffering, and death.  The lynching tree reminds us that the cross is not to be romanticized into some ethereal realm with no real life meaning.  We do not get past the lynching tree by avoiding conflict and difficult conversations.  Stony the road we trod.  The cross reminds us that violence and death do not have the final word.  Love and compassion are not defeated.[6]   We shall overcome.

Cone asks us, “Historically and today, do we identify with the people who lynched and lynch or do we identify with the people who were lynched and are being lynched?”  If we cannot identify with the lynched, then can we possibly identify with one who dies on a cross?  Cone also observed that the cross was the most dominant symbol in the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Cone said, “And the more difficult it became-- and it did become difficult-- the more difficult it became, the more he [King] knew he was going to be killed, the more he turned to the cross.”[7]

Though Strength to Love was how I made sense of Christianity to stay within the church, faith did not become any easier.  Like many Christians, sometimes I appear to be more uncomfortable with the cross rather than turning toward it.[8]  If anything, my faith and belief went from believing the impossible things to what my beliefs compelled me to do and did my faith have the courage to do as God called.  I’m pretty much a wuss that uses my preaching to buck my up my faith and to speak my courage into existence.  So I’ll put it out there knowing that I probably embarrass myself by doing very little to practice what I preach.  I’ll hope for God’s grace to keep walking, hoping that the faith and spirituality of Dr. King might not only make sense intellectually but, eventually, in every last red blood cell in my body.

Two years before his death, Dr. King went to one of the worst neighborhoods in Chicago and told people of his faith and spirituality, “I choose to identify with the underprivileged … I choose to identify with the poor … I choose to give my life for the hungry … for those who have been left out of the sunlight of opportunity … I choose to live for and with those for whom life is one long, desolate corridor with no exit sign. This is the way I'm going. If it means suffering a little, I'm going that way. If it means sacrifice, I'm going that way. And if it means dying for them, I'm going that way, because I heard a voice saying, do something for others.”[9] 

The gospels and the cross make a lot more sense in the light of Dr. King, his life, and his teaching.  But that doesn’t make the way any easier.  Full of love and compassion, grace and mercy, God is going that way.  And we are invited.  So tomorrow, if you had to tell the children and the grandchildren of this church the meaning of Dr. King, what would you say?  How will we celebrate?  And are we going that way?

If we are, I would counsel as Rose Marie Berger does.  Be a mosquito.  Find each other.  Swarm. Swarm.   Amen.

---

[1] Gar Alperovitz, “Beyond the Dreamer,” Sojourners, January 2014, p. 24.   All Ten Commandments were stated by Correta Scott King and can be found here:  Coretta Scott King, “Ten Commandments on Viet Nam,” Central Park, New York, April 27, 1968, American Rhetoric Online Speech Bank, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/corettascottkingvietnamcommandments.htm.

[2] Rose Marie Berger, “The Mosquito Manifesto,” Sojourners, February 2017, p. 47.

[3] Fr. Joseph Brown, S.J., “Before the State of Illinois Governor’s Commission on Discrimination and Hate Crimes,” Town Meeting Proceedings, City of Carbondale City Council Chambers, October 12, 1999, p. 95.

[4] Brown, “Before the State,” p. 99.

[5] “Interview with Dr. James Cone,” Bill Moyers Journal, November 23, 2007.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] King criticized Christians like me in his letter from the Birmingham jail, “I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’  Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

[9] Vincent Harding, “Dangerous Spirituality,” Sojourners January/February 1999.