Epiphany Day, January 6, 2019, "The Gospels As Science Fiction"

C Epiphany Day BFC 2019

Matthew 2:1-12

January 6, 2019

From African-American science fiction writer, Octavia Butler, “all

that you touch, you change. all that you change, changes you.”  Let us pray.  May the imperfect words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen. 

African-American author and organizer, Adrienne Maree Brown has written:

all organizing is science fiction.

we are creating a world we have never seen. we are whispering it to each other cuddled in the dark, and we are screaming it at people who are so scared of it that they dress themselves in war regalia to turn and face us.[1]

In effect, this is what the gospels are.  They are a form of science fiction mystery which calls us to an imagining with God, an imagining of a different future--without violence and war, without hunger, poverty, and oppression.  It borrows the language and vision, the science fiction of prophets who spoke from the time after the Exile,

The Living God shall judge between many peoples,
    and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away;
they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
    and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
    neither shall they learn war any more;
⁴ but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees,
    and no one shall make them afraid;[2]

As Brown writes, “it’s neither utopian nor dystopian, it’s more like life.”[3]  It is the science fiction imagined by those prophets who wrote after the Exile, envisioning a time when people might grow food that they might eat themselves, build homes they might inhabit themselves—when all that they could remember of the Exile was growing food for others to eat, building homes for others to inhabit.[4]  From these writers, the gospel writers borrowed heavily. 

My critique against modern day Gospel interpretations, even more so Christmas stories, is that they are sentimental and vanilla, the Bible a little rule book that misses the vision, humor, and mystery found in its holy pages.  Identities, signs, and symbols are references to the deep memory of the Jewish people so that they might remember who they are and what God calls them to be in a different place. 

The author of the gospel of Matthew frames the identity and titles of Jesus in very clear ways.  One of those titles for Jesus is the second Moses, hoping to use the authority of Moses to evangelize Matthew’s Jewish community so that they too might see authority in Jesus.   Two examples.  Jesus escapes the slaughter of babies in Bethlehem at the hand of the local client king, Herod the Great, as Moses escaped the killing of male children in Egypt at the hand of Pharaoh.  While Jesus gives his famed sermon with the new commandments on the plain in the Gospel of Luke, the Gospel of Matthew has Jesus speak the beatitudes from the mount.   The mount is the place where Moses also shares the new rules for living in the wilderness, The Ten Commandments, way back in Exodus.  According to the author of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is the second Moses.

The other title is evident in the first two chapters of Matthew, including the passage we have before us today.  In chapter 1, King David is the axis point in listing the ancestors of the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One.  There are fourteen generations from Father Abraham to King David.  There are fourteen generations from King David to the Babylonian Exile.  There are fourteen generations from the Babylonian Exile to the Messiah, a title usually reserved in Jewish mythology for a king, prophet, or liberator.  The poetic style of Jesus’ genealogy says in effect, “As King David, so now the Messiah.”

Within the Scripture passage for today, is prose that is not only meant to antagonize the Romans but, in particular, Herod the Great, King Herod, colloquially known as the King of the Jews, serving at the whim and will of the Roman Empire and its Caesar.  And here come the Magi in their traditional role, as people who pose a threat to ruling powers.[5]  You may have heard it before, but it bears repeating.  We have regularly assumed three magi made the journey because there are three gifts.  But the story does not tell us how many.  Imagine at least 12 magi, in their traditional role, taking a little side trip to Jerusalem just to stick it in and twist it by innocently asking Herod, “Where will we find the King of the Jews?”  In the movie version of this scene, I imagine Herod, who believes King of the Jews is a title reserved only for him, excusing himself and finding a private room where he punches his royal purple walls for about a half hour before he returns.

The question by the Magi is a form of Biblical humor, sarcasm aimed at the upper-crust and powerful.   In our modern world, it might be a number of radical Muslim clerics arriving in Washington, D.C., asking where they might find “the leader of the free world.”  Making it clear that they don’t think it’s the president, they move on to Haiti to follow the star they have seen.  It’s a snub, a diss, to move from the seat of Rome’s political and religious power in Jerusalem to a place on the margins. 

The Magi come from the East, the place of the Roman Empire’s mortal enemy, the Parthian Empire.  Imagine not only 12 magi arriving in Jerusalem but maybe 50 to 100 of them with all of their royal servants and accoutrements.  For the Biblical passage says that when the magi tell Herod of the star they have seen Herod and all of Jerusalem is frightened.  That is the other role played by the Magi.  They were the king makers.  The Magi looked for portents, signs in the natural world, which would tell of the passing of an old order in favor of something new.  

The first-century Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, tells of a star or comet which was like a sword that appeared as the Romans besieged the city of Jerusalem close to 70 years later.  That star or comet was taken as a sign by the Jews defending Jerusalem that God was fighting on their behalf and gave them hope when Roman legions had them surrounded and outnumbered.[6]  These signs or portents were part of Jewish mythology that hoped for liberation from alien rule.[7]   Biblical scholars date the writing of the Gospel of Matthew five to ten years after the Romans destroyed the city of Jerusalem. 

As the seat of Roman-controlled Jewish power, everyone in Jerusalem knew that a star sighted by the Magi could only mean that change and transformation were about to occur, a new king was on the rise.  Three times in Matthew, Chapter 2, it says that these “king makers” prostrate themselves before the infant child, a form of worship and reverence for a ruler or an emperor.  Not once did these same magi do so for King Herod.[8]  They have made their choice.  The Magi proclaim who is the king of kings.

The gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh evoke the words of Psalm 72 where nations and kings shall make a pilgrimage to Zion to lay these gifts at the feet of the king who is full of justice for the economically poor and crushes the oppressor.  Three times in Chapter 2, Herod’s death is mentioned, as a way of suggesting that when God’s narrative and the narrative of imperial power come into conflict, imperial power is not ultimate.  The imperial system, a system exposed as ruthless and murderous, opposes the presence and power of God, and at each turn the imperial system is thwarted in trying to kill the new king.  The Magi are uncooperative.  Angels and dreams further the will of God.  Though the Holy Family must quickly leave for exile in Egypt, the imperial system is not the ultimate.  Rome has its limits.  While Caesar claims the god, Jupiter’s presence, for Rome, throughout the Gospel of Matthew claims are made for Jesus’s presence among the community of the disciples even after the Empire crucifies him and he dies.[9]

The title of king is not taken lightly by the Romans.  Those who claimed the title without ordination by Rome were routinely executed.  Josephus chronicles that others who took the title were Simon, who was beheaded, Athronges who was captured, Menachem was killed, and another Simon, who led one of the longest and most successful revolts against the empire, was executed in Rome’s capital city as a dramatic presentation of Rome’s superiority and intolerance for any challenges to its superiority.[10]

Religion and politics were inseparable in First Century Rome, made even clearer by the Christmas stories that Luke and Matthew put before us.  The Magi were political and religious figures in the Eastern Empire over and against the Western Empire where an indigenous Jewish population longed for liberation and an end to the very real economic, political, and social violence they experienced every day of their lives.  Jesus of Nazareth became a symbol of hope and resistance because of the very real and gritty ways he offered ways of living that helped Galileean communities to be sustainable and resilient at a time when they were fracturing due to the intense stress, pressure, poverty, and violence they experienced interfacing with Rome and its Caesar.

Here is the warning, the temptation we all have in a culture that wants to make Christmas only about a sentimentality that finds the perfect Christmas tree, sings “Silent Night” with candles ablaze, and walks out of the church on Christmas Eve to see larger-than-life snowflakes falling from the sky.  If we only believe in . . . Santa, the magic of Christmas, even in Jesus, all of the pain fades.  Maybe.

But for some in the world, that pain is all too real.  And a sentimental and vanilla Christmas does not rhyme with their family’s tremendous debt, the fear of one more medical bill, people caught struggling with trauma and addiction, and the worry for some that they will be stopped without proper papers.  Or, now in our own country, what happens if Herod or Caesar come for my family and my children?  What am I to do?  The Gospel of Matthew makes it clear that even Jesus’s arrival does not prevent the slaughter of children, poverty and disease, and deep, deep pain in the world.  What Jesus brings is the idea that God wants a decidedly different world and that God is inviting us in to be collaborators on the project. 

Spiritual guide, Matthew Fox, has written, “Sentimentalism is feelings without care for justice.  Nazi concentration camp hierarchy would torture prisoners during the day and return home at night and weep listening to Beethoven.”[11]

“The tamed piety of the conventional church wants an innocent baby who comes gently into our secure lives and keeps everything benign and friendly.  It may be conventional and it may be tame but it is not biblical and it is not Christian.”[12]  I thank the Living God that I pastor an unconventional church filled with wildly unconventional, courageous, creative, and goofy people.  Ok, so maybe the goofy is just about me.  But you get the idea.  Advent was about both hope and hurt; pain and risk, as well as excitement and joy.  All were part of the adventure.

“Both the hope and the risk of Advent get summed up on Epiphany. The word means ‘manifestation,’ or ‘appearance’ or ‘revelatory moment.’ Theologically speaking, epiphanies signal something new, but—at least for a lot of folk—something uncomfortable as well. Biblical convictions always impinge on political realities. The something new breaking out is good news for some and bad news for others.

“Epiphanies are often disruptive. For new learning to occur, old lessons have to be unlearned. For new public policies to take effect, old policies have to be dismantled. A lot of people have invested heavily in those old policies. Herod certainly understood this.

“Is there any epiphany moment for us, right here, [right in this community of faith]? Is there something new thing to be learned; and if so, what old things must be unlearned?”[13]

On this last day of Christmas, Epiphany Day, I want to invite us all over again to be Christ’s church, a symbol of hope and resistance over and against Herods and Caesars in each age.  How might we join with, be good allies with an indigenous population that seeks liberation from the everyday warfare aimed at its people?  What would we look like if we began to put that in place over the next 5 to 10 years?  In this day, the Magi come looking for the people who walk the path of a new king, people who seek to be collaborators on the project God has set before communities of sustainability and resilience.  Billings has never been the center of the universe, but neither were Bethlehem and Nazareth.  People of good courage, let us begin, with imagination and vision to walk the road.  Begin to plan out the mystery of the course of this year, what that yet may be. Like the Magi, what are we willing to walk a long time for?  Let

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[1] Adrienne Maree Brown, “afrofuturism and #blackspring (new school, #afroturismtns),” adrienne maree brown, May 2, 2015,

[2] Micah 4:3-4a

[3] Ibid.

[4] Isaiah 65:21.  Reminiscent of the Homegrown Prosperity initiative from Northern Plains, “We are building diverse and resilient local economies that work for all of us.”  That involves three initiatives:  1) Rebuilding local food systems; 2) Reclaiming coal country; 3) Powering up the clean energy economy.  That mission statement and those initiatives sound very much like the post-Exilic verse from Isaiah.

[5] Warren Carter, Matthew and Empire:  Initial Explorations (Harrisburg, PA:  Trinity Press International, 2001), pp. 66-67.

[6] Richard A. Horsley, The Liberation of Christmas:  The Infancy Narratives in Social Context (New York:  The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1989), p. 59.  using Flavius Josephus, War, 6.289.

[7] Horsley, The Liberation, p. 59.

[8] Carter, Matthew and Empire, p. 66.

[9] Ibid, p. 67.

[10] Ibid, p. 161.

[11] Matthew Fox, The Pope’s War:  Why Ratzinger’s Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved  (New York:  Sterling Ethos, 2011), p. 39.

[12] Ken Sehested quoting Kyle Childress, “Wiseguys and one scared king,” Prayer and politiks, January 1, 2012.  http://www.prayerandpolitiks.org/articles-essays-sermons/2019/01/04/wiseguys-and-one-scared-king.3418910.

[13] Ken Sehested, “Wiseguys and one scared king,” Prayer and politiks, January 1, 2012.  http://www.prayerandpolitiks.org/articles-essays-sermons/2019/01/04/wiseguys-and-one-scared-king.3418910. 

Sixth Sunday of Easter, "Resurrection is about vindication of a righteous life"

B Easter 6 OL BFC 2018 (Resurrection)

Psalm 90; Luke 24:31; Matthew 28:19-20; John 21:13

May 6, 2018

I began this sermon series by talking about what happens when only the good die young, particularly among a community of people.  What happens when those who are most faithful are murdered?  One of the other big faith questions is, “How do we explain the existence of evil in the light of a good God—and not only the existence of evil, how do we explain evil triumphant?”  What does that say about God’s power and justice? 

I included verses from Psalm 90 in our Responsive Affirmation for today because I believe this psalm reflects a turn that is beginning to happen in Jewish thought and theology.  The people are in the midst of oppression and persecution.  They believe that the Almighty God runs the world.  But what is this?  Is it God’s wrath that leads to our persecution and oppression?  Why do we suffer so much as a people?  Our days on the earth are short.  Why is God kindled against us?  How long, O God, how long?  How long do we suffer in this persecution and oppression?  When will your wrath be done with us?

Then . . . the turn to a God who may not be responsible for the people out of control but through a different value.  “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love.”  Let our good days be as many as our evil days.  If we are working on behalf of you, O God, prosper the work of our hands. 

There is this question hanging in the air—unspoken but, I believe, felt deeply in Psalm 90.  Is God fair?  Is God just?  And Psalm 90 seems to be hanging on the tip of that question.  Would God indeed make our days evil even if we continue to work on behalf of God?

I have tried to include the full turn made by Jesus as a Jewish prophet in the “Prayer of Approach” for today.  “Is the world the way that it is because you will it to be so, Just One?”  I believe Jesus answers an emphatic, “No!”  And Jesus then asks for our labor and collaboration to complete the transformation of the world, to do as God wills. 

Is God fair?  Is God just?  Would God indeed make our days evil even if we continue to work on behalf of God?

As the Jewish people experience empire after empire, the resulting persecution and oppression, resurrection becomes the answer to those questions.  God raises people, even a nation, stands them up in their graves to vindicate and validate the work of their hands.

Remember that Rome crucified faithful Jews as a way of saying that Rome decided what was morally right and wrong, whom the gods favor and whom the gods see as barbaric.  If state violence was used against you, knowing that the gods had brought Rome its military victories and imperial wealth, the gods had effectively passed judgment against you.  No matter what the State did to you, it is YOU who are the lawless, the barbarian.  Your life held no value.  We have effectively liquidated you and hope we liquidated your memory.  Your life was wicked, wrong, and immoral.  The gods have spoken.  

Resurrection is a way of responding to say, “No!  This is not the end.  What you thought was true, the official press release, the conviction and execution of what you considered a criminal.” The Living God has the final word and where Rome interpreted evil, God sees good, an authoritative life. 

Let me illustrate with an example.  Way back in 1999, a movie with one of the best surprise twists was the talk of the town.  “The Sixth Sense” was all about a six- year-old boy, Cole Sear, who has an extra perception or ability, to see dead people, and the dead people don’t seem to know that they are dead.  Cole, as a little boy, is quite naturally terrified by the resurrected, thinking they are evil and meant to bring him harm, and they are made even more terrifying because these dead seem to be so ardent about communicating with Cole while they manifest to him the way that they died--one has an axe still lodged in his skull, a bike rider still has the blood trickling down his forehead from his accident, and a young girl repeatedly vomits in his presence. 

With the help of a child psychologist, Cole, begins to communicate with these dead people.  The young girl vomiting wants Cole to know that her little sister is slowly being poisoned, as was done to her, by their mother putting radiator fluid into her soup.  Cole must courageously engage the dead girl, who cannot stop throwing up, retrieve a video she made of her mother doing the poisoning, and give the video to the still grieving father at her own wake.  Cole must save the dead girl’s sister from the same fate.  Cole learns that although resurrection can indeed be terrifying, once he befriends those resurrected, he is able to help the universe return to its just, moral axis.  These resurrections are a moral vindication of their lives.

Throughout the movie, Lynn Sear, Cole’s mother, a single mother, has been fighting like heck to save Cole.  She is frazzled by all of life.  And struggles to keep all that she juggles up in the air—the bills, her home, her two jobs, and her dear, dear son.  Lynn Sear loves her son, Cole—desperately.   But how do you believe that your son sees dead people come back to life?  No matter how much you want to believe your six-year-old, how do you believe that?  Though Cole tells her he sees dead people and talks to them, Lynn Sear adamantly refuses to allow her son to think of himself as a freak.  She loooooooves this boy.

One of the most tender moments in the movie is when Cole and his mother are stuck in traffic, Cole sitting in the passenger seat beside his mother.  Cole has come to terms with his gift and now turns to reveal to his mother what his dead and resurrected grandmother has told him. 

“She wanted me to tell you . . .”

His mother, not sure about Cole’s gift, and not wanting to come to terms with his gift through her own mother thinks now he has gone too far in bringing up someone so close to home . . . “Cole, please stop.”

Cole forges ahead.  “She wanted me to tell you she saw you dance. She said, when you were little, you and her had a fight, right before your dance recital. You thought she didn't come see you dance. She did. She hid in the back so you wouldn't see. She said you were like an angel. She said you came to the place where they buried her.”  Cole vindicates his grandmother and her life from a time when his mother believed that her mother, in moral judgment, was not there for her.   Cole continues to vindicate the care and love of his grandmother. 

You asked her a question?  She said the answer is, “Every day.”  What did you ask? 

The truth of the resurrection and her mother’s love dawns on Lynn Sear.  Cole has given his mother an incredible gift.  He has vindicated the love of a mother for her daughter and God, or the world, is set right.  God is just.  In her tears, Lynn Sear states the question, “Do . . . do I make you proud?”   And the answer from her resurrected mother is, “Every day.”

Show the clip:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qqVQcZxpqA. 

This is the true meaning of resurrection.  Resurrection is meant to vindicate, validate, and give authority to life and relationship already lived.  The life and relationship already lived provide the total context for the resurrection.  The gospel writers say as much in their stories.  In the gospel of Mark, the young man tells the three women that the disciples are to go back to Galilee and find the risen Christ there.  Start the enterprise all over again.  In the gospel of Matthew, the disciples are to go back to the place where Jesus began the Sermon on the Mount and teach what Jesus taught.   There, on that mount, Jesus began teaching with the Beatitudes.  In Luke, the Risen Christ is not recognized by disciples and apostles even as he walks and talks with them.  He is only recognized when he shares bread with them.  In John, the Risen Christ appears to the disciples and they are terrified, not unlike the six-year-old Cole Sear.  Jesus manifests to them the way that he died by showing them the nail prints and the wound in his side.  In John, Christ’s appearance was a reminder to the community that he would continue to be present with them.

This is what is so disheartening about the way the resurrection of Jesus is taught in our day and age.  Nary a thought, belief, or commitment is given to the way Jesus lived, taught, shared, or was present.  Violence is done, crusades are undertaken, and wars are waged by those who proclaim themselves to be Jesus’s most ardent believers.  And yet, during his life, facing tremendous violence, oppression, and persecution against his people, Jesus preached and lived a way of creative and confrontational non-violence.  Today, poverty and being economically poor is considered a signpost of our sin by those proclaim themselves to be the best of Jesus believers.  Yet, Jesus regularly taught and healed in such a way as to bless the poor and blame the system that created poverty, sickness, and death. 

We live in a time when wealth and power cover a world of sins and indicate God’s favor.

In a world that often demonizes Jesus’s life, teaching, sharing, and presence, we should be terrified of Jesus’s resurrection.  If we have experiences of that resurrection, those experiences may be God calling us, asking us for a transformation of values. The Roman Empire made sure their presence was felt throughout all of Galilee.  The Empire or Kingdom of God taught by Jesus had decidedly different values. 

New Testament scholar, Bernard Brandon Scott writes,

Rome crucified Jesus, and Jesus’ group still continued to experience the empire of God.  To explain this, the turned to their tradition—to the stories of their ancestors.  “He has been raised up,” “he has been seen for,” “he has been exalted to the right hand of God.”  All of these formulaic confessions are ways of saying that Rome’s apparent victory was futile and that the empire of God is here.[1]

Resurrection affirms the life lived and affirms that God is actively working to make the world right again and the empire of God, the empire of God is where that work to set the world right is taking place..  The innocent may perish but they do not stay dead.  God is just.  For Jesus’s followers, Jesus’s resurrection was the beginning of the transformation of the earth in keeping with the way not only of Jesus but the community that developed around him.  Resurrection was a definitive rebuke, a “no” to Rome’s belief that the gods had spoken, and Jesus and his followers were morally corrupt, worthy of state torture, violence, and death.  Throughout history, state power, governments, have tried to tell us who is immoral and moral through imprisonment, violence, torture, and death.  If that violence, torture, and death does carry the day, how would we possibly know God to be just?

In the end, our holy Scriptures tell us this is about a difference in values.  Rome declares that their wealth and power is indicative of their moral superiority, that the gods favor them.  The community that declares a Mediterranean Jewish peasant resurrected does so out of a fundamental belief that God is just, non-violent, and has a heart for the poor. 

I believe this is the very narrative playing out in the Christian Church and in our country.  But there are more recent examples that resurrections are afoot.

It was the killing of a friend, Father Rutillio Grande in 1977, a champion for the rural poor, that led El Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero to begin pleading for justice, for which he was imprisoned, to write Jimmy Carter to end the shipment of U.S. arms and end support for the El Salvadoran military, to ask soldiers and police to halt the killing of civilians seeing them, he said,  “as your sisters and brothers.”  It was Romero who said, “If they kill me, I will rise again in the Salvadoran people.”  The El Salvadoran government and military believed they had the last word, believed that they had silenced the voice of Oscar Romero.  Did they?

It is Dr. Martin Luther King saying from the State capitol steps in Montgomery, Alabama, “I know you are asking today, ‘How long will it take?’  I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long.  Because truth pressed to earth will rise again.”[2]  It is the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina whose children were disappeared during the State reign of terror from 1976 to 1983 and show up to say that the universe is moral, and you cannot make us believe that our children deserved such a fate.  We will meet your force with a soul force.  Every week, like spiritual practice, we will march.  Beginning in 1977, they have marched every week, over 2100 marches, many now using wheelchairs. 

“The raising up of Jesus implies a story—the death of the martyr, God’s vindication of the martyr, the ultimate vindication of God’s justice.”[3] In every age, we are asked to decide if wealth and power cover a multitude of sins?  Are winning, numbers, and Wall Street indicative of righteousness?  Or is Jesus resurrected.  Is he vindicated?  Is God just?  I so want to believe that my life proclaims the latter. Resurrection is vindication of those who struggle for justice, love the poor, and confront the powers and principalities non-violently.  Is Christ risen?  Is God just?  In every age, what is our answer?  Rome crucified Jesus to liquidate the memory of his life, teaching, and ministry?  Did they?  Amen.

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[1] Bernard Brandon Scott, The Trouble with Resurrection:  From Paul to the Fourth Gospel (Salem, OR:  Polebridge Press, 2010), p. 223.

[2] http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/prestapes/c4.html

[3] Scott, p. 230

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. 

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[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.