Sermon, Easter Day, April 17, 2022

 

C Easter Day Pilg 2022

Luke 14:8-14; Luke 24:1-12

April 17, 2022

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.

[2]    One of the more curious images of the resurrection is on the front of your bulletin and found in the Great Rotunda at the ancient Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem, also referred to as the  Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  In that historical church, is a beautiful painting of Christ arising from the dead, majestically, but not as this muscle-bound, triumphant, solitary figure as he is so often portrayed in Western art.  No, Christ does not rise alone.  The apocalypse, the revealing, is beginning and there are four other figures there with the Rising Christ.  The gates of Hell are shattered beneath Christ’s feet.  And he is extending one hand tenderly and graciously to grasp the hand of Adam with Eve standing beside.  With the other hand, he tenderly and graciously grasps the hand of John the Baptist, a victim of violence and the first martyr of the New Testament.  Standing behind John is Abel, a victim of violence, the first martyr of Hebrew Scripture of the Old Testament.   Above the painting is the Greek word, anastasis, the word for resurrection that means “up/rising” or “to stand up again.”  This painting is what is referred to within Christian tradition as the Harrowing of Hell, where Christ breaks the bonds of death and violence.  It is a jailbreak.  And Adam and Eve are pictured to say Jesus is taking all of humanity with him—busting out of hell in some of the art as on the front of the bulletin.   And in other depictions, like the one on the back of the bulletin, subduing Hades, the gatekeeper of death to bust past, present, and future humanity out of jail.  If you look closely, you can see the chains, locks, and all that might hold the dead—cast aside.  End the prison system!  Rise up!

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

Sermon: B Easter Day, April 4, 2021, "To live, threatened with resurrection."

 B Easter Day SJUCC  OL 2021

Matthew 14:1-2; John 12:9-11; Mark 16:1-8

April 4, 2021

            There was a time when our home was consumed by zombies.  Seriously.  Our youngest son, Abe, regularly became a fan of the TV series, “The Walking Dead.” And, when Sophia was an 8^th grader, many moons ago, I took her to see the romantic comedy zombie movie, “Warm Bodies.”  You may never ever hear the phrase, “romantic comedy zombie movie” again, so mark the day.  Yes, I was and am a horrific father.  For the viewing of this zombie movie apparently provided the gateway zombie material for our daughter.  Because Abe then hooked Sophia into becoming a fan of the TV series, “The Walking Dead.”  Just not good parenting.  I did something wrong. 

          Our culture is replete with zombie references.  Every two to three months, I hear of some new zombie media in the form of a movie, meme, game, or app.  In the year 2003, the number of annual zombie movies jumped from 13 to 24 and increased to an annual high of 55, close to 450 zombie movies in just the past 15 years.  Part of Abe’s track career was to participate in a race rife with zombies.  Several years ago, one of my colleagues at the University of Illinois, reported a real electronic emergency message that was tweeted out across the university “Illini-Alert System.”  It read, “Hazardous materials released at Institute for Genomic Biology. Escape area if safe to do so. Otherwise seek shelter.”  Wow, what do you when you live on campus and see that electronic message come across your computer?  I believe it was the university newspaper that referred to this electronic message as “The Tweet That Begins the Zombie Apocalypse.”^[1] Escape area if safe to do so.  Otherwise seek shelter. Zombies and notice of the coming zombie apocalypse seem to be everywhere. 

          In the event that the zombie apocalypse does occur, Abe was  straight with us.  When he gets word that the apocalypse is heading our direction, Abe is not retreating home to be safe and save his family.  Oh no.  Instead, our beloved son told us in high school, that he would be swiftly sprinting to the home of a family that would supply superior survival skills compared to the limited skill set of his father.  You can feel the love.

Well, to be frank, what was I going to do when the zombies approached?  Preach a longer sermon to lull the brain-eaters into a greater stupor?  Generally, that has worked for my congregations.  Maybe?  Again, such is the limited skill set I offer in the face of the zombie apocalypse.

          Let’s make it clear what zombies are.  Zombies are the dead, resurrected from the grave, without real brains or heart . . . without thought or compassion  . . . mindless, soulless entities, which merely consume and consume and consume.  And Neil DeGrasse Tyson, famed populizer of science, has to be the buzzkill.  Tyson tells us that the zombie apocalypse and zombies themselves are scientifically impossible. 

          If Neil DeGrasse Tyson is right, and people physically rising from the dead is scientifically impossible, and science and faith are not to be at odds, what do we do with one of our most radical faith affirmations?  Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed! During this Easter season, this liturgical season of resurrection, what do we do with the one we call the Risen One? Again, is it just a case of science and religion not mixing?  What do we have left of faith when we do use our non-consumed brains?

          For ancient peoples, people in First Century Rome, this idea of whether something really, literally happened might seem quizzical.  Ancient communities told stories and parables not for their historical veracity but for their meaning and authority for their people, their group, or their nation.  Like a good movie or poem, whether the events actually occurred is sometimes not as important as whether the movie or poem speaks with authority and truth.  As John Dominic Crossan has said, “My point . . . is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.”[2]  So many of the Biblical stories are meant to be understood symbolically, poetically.  What is the poetic meaning of resurrection?  What does it mean to be resurrected in First Century Rome?

          What does it mean to proclaim Christ’s resurrection, even more so now when we know that individuals and groups, other than Christians, made claim to resurrection in the First Century?  As we learned from the gospel lesson today, Christ is not even the first resurrection made reference to in the gospels.

          Resurrection appears first in the Gospel of Matthew when King Herod hears about Jesus.  Herod fears that the man he had imprisoned, most certainly tortured, and then executed, John the Baptist, has come back from the dead to threaten him with resurrection in the person of Jesus.  Herod does not consider the resurrection of John the Baptist good news.  So too when Lazarus is resurrected in the gospel of John.  The religious authorities see the resurrection of Lazarus as a threat to their authority and power.

          Indeed, while w sing “alleluias” and praise to the Risen Christ all through this liturgical season of Easter, the first reaction to resurrection was one of threat, terror, and amazement.  Herod is threatened.  At the end of Matthew’s gospel, as witnesses to the Resurrection of Christ, the women at the tomb run back to the rest of the disciples, “terrified and amazed.” 

          In contrast to what I had been taught about resurrection growing up in the Christian Church, resurrections were commonly known in the First Century.  And the most widely known resurrection in First Century Rome was that of Julius Caesar.  Before his death, Julius Caesar adopted his nephew, Octavian, as son and heir to the throne.  On Friday, March 17, in the year 44 BCE, Julius Caesar received his state funeral and was resurrected as god by the will of the people.[3]  With Julius proclaimed as divine, Octavian took for himself the title son of god—that title minted on the Roman currency.  Fourteen years after the resurrection of Julius Caesar, in 30 BCE, Octavian Caesar, after years of Roman civil war, defeated Marc Antony and Cleopatra VII and ushered in the Pax Romana, the Roman Peace.    In bringing the Roman civil war to an end through military triumph, Octavian also took the title prince of peace.  Octavian kept that peace through the violence of military might and economic domination.  He called himself, “Augustus”, the one to be worshipped. 

          Maybe your Christmas celebrations were like mine in that every year my dad would sit down with his brother and sisters and a collection of cousins, dust off the family Bible, and begin our Christmas with the words from Luke, chapter 2, “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus . . . .”  Caesar Augustus provides a frame for the Christmas story.

Hear in all those titles Octavian took for himself the broadest religious and political consolidation possible.  Luke, Chapter 3, begins the story of John the Baptist with the words, “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberias Caesar . . . .”  Client kings like Herod, and later his sons, ruled at the pleasure of Caesar Augustus and Tiberius Caesar.  This is the matrix, the context, for the gospels and the resurrection of Christ, the rule and reign of Caesar.  Behind all of the Caesars’ religious and political power, we are to hear Roman authority anchored in the resurrection of Julius Caesar.  That resurrection conveyed a mythological symbol of eternal power.  Julius Caesar’s resurrection functioned as a warning to Rome’s subject peoples.  God favors us.  You cannot kill us.  Even when we are not around, we will haunt your days.

At the order of Caesar, Roman armies haunted the occupied populace by purposely devastating the countryside, burning villages, pillaging towns, and slaughtering and enslaving peoples.  Resistance to Roman violence and rule was met with an ever greater vengeance.[4]  They sucked the oxygen out of the local populace and set the air on fire with violence.[5]

          Any resurrections apart from Julius Caesar would be seen as an attempt to dis-establish that imperial authority and as a threat to the status quo.  That is what Herod feared in the resurrection of John the Baptist.  Herod, educated in Rome, was also a Jew, and resurrection in Jewish circles had come to mean God’s validation of a righteous Jew.  John’s resurrection would confirm that some divine force, apart from the divine Caesar, was moving in the world to disturb, confront, resist, and provoke. 

The literal meaning of the Greek word for resurrection, “anastasis” means to stand up again.  The deceased would become dust, and God would literally stand the dead up in the grave, re-create them, and dis-establish any phony claims to power over and against the legitimate power the Living God sought to establish in justice, righteousness, and steadfast love.   

Resurrections for sovereigns and Caesars affirmed power and the strength and violence of empire.  Resurrections for peasants and prophets challenged the status quo and asked deep questions about whether God could be found in the violence wrought by Rome’s military might and economic domination.  Be careful then, in affirming the resurrection of Jesus Christ, because Christ may return to disturb, resist, and provoke our way in the world rather than confirm and establish.

          Let me give you an example of how this understanding of resurrection, as a displacement of imperial power, plays out in the modern world.  In the 1950s, Guatemala was a fledgling democracy when our CIA and the U.S.-based United Fruit Company conspired to overthrow the Guatemalan government and install a client king.  What followed the overthrow of democracy was a brutal civil war that lasted well into the 1980s.  In the 1980s, through military coup, General Efrain Rios Montt took the presidential office by force.  By Montt’s order, the Guatemalan military killed or disappeared thousands of people across the country, and sent hundreds of thousands more into exile, many of them poor, indigenous Mayan peasants. 

Looking to the north for support, General Efrain Rios Montt, our client king, referred to those murdered and exiled as subversives, communists, or terrorists.  Into this brutality and pain, Julia Esquivel, a Guatemalan poet wrote a beautiful poem to confront, disturb, and provoke.   Esquivel did so by helping us to imagine what the world might look like if those Guatemalan peasants returned to us resurrected.  In that poem, are the echoes of the resurrection of John the Baptist, Lazarus, and Jesus, and how these resurrections were meant to terrify and threaten the religious and political rulers of their time.  Here is part of that beautiful poem:

 

…There is something here within us
Which doesn’t let us sleep, which doesn’t let us rest,
Which doesn’t stop pounding deep inside,
It is the silent, warm weeping of Indian women without their husbands,
It is the sad gaze of the children
Fixed there beyond memory,
In the very pupil of our eyes
Which during sleep, though closed, keep watch
With each contraction of the heart
In every wakening…

 

What keeps us from sleeping,
Is that they have threatened us with resurrection!

es que nos han amenazado de Resurrección!
Because at each nightfall,
Though exhausted from the endless inventory
Of killings since 1954,
Yet we continue to love life,
And do not accept their death!

 

They have threatened us with resurrection!

Nos han amenazado de Resurrección, 

…Because in this marathon of Hope,
there are always others to relieve us
in bearing the courage necessary
to arrive at the goal which lies beyond death…

 

Accompany us then on this vigil
And you will know what it is to dream!
You will then know how marvelous it is
To live threatened with resurrection!

vivir amenazado de Resurrección!
To dream awake,
To keep watch asleep
To live while dying
And to already know oneself resurrected![6]

When so many of our gospel resurrection stories begin with weeping of women, or followers walking the long road to Emmaus with sad gazes, or disciples locked in some upper room in fear, what does it mean to dream?  Our gospel stories are like Indian women who weep without their husbands, or the sad gaze of children, or peasants living in fear since 1954 from a long line of crucifixions.  How do we run this marathon of hope, have the courage necessary to dare dream beyond systems and structures which intend violence and death? 

We are quickly returning to a time when zombie institutions and zombie banks seek to make us into zombies ourselves by eating our brains so that we lose not only our heads but our hearts to just consume, consume, consume.  Let’s be honest about what zombies are. 

John the Baptist is still disappeared into some prison or black site by either Caesar or some client king, tortured or water boarded, whatever term works for you, and too often executed.  The death of Lazarus, the unmasker of the imperial lies and revealer of real resurrection power, is still being plotted by the religious authorities. 

          Sisters and brothers, resurrections always begin with fear, terror, and amazement.  The question is, “Whose resurrection threatens us more, Caesar’s or Christ’s?”  Are we threatened more by the resurrection of empire maintained by the violence of military might and economic domination, the Pax Romana,  or are we threatened more by the resurrection of one who unseats empire through a call to non-violent confrontation, distributive justice, mutual healing, and compassion for the lost, least, and last, the peace of Christ, the Pax Christi?  In what is our hope placed? 

In what is our hope placed—in the power and might of empire or in the weeping of Indian women and the sad gaze of children?  Where does the Christian Church place its hope?  For, in the end, resurrection may have more to do with the continuing communities of faith than it ever had to do with Jesus alone. 

          One of the more curious images of the resurrection is found at the ancient Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem, also referred to as the

Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  In that historical church, is a beautiful painting of Christ arising from the dead, majestically, but not as this muscle-bound, triumphant, solitary figure as he is so often portrayed in Western art.  No, Christ does not rise alone.  The apocalypse, the revealing, is beginning and there are four other figures there with the Rising Christ.  The gates of Hell are shattered beneath Christ’s feet and he is extending his hand tenderly and graciously to grasp the hand of Adam and Eve with one hand.  With the other hand, he tenderly and graciously grasps the hand of John the Baptist, a victim of violence and the first martyr of the New Testament.  Standing behind him John is Abel, a victim of violence, the first martyr of Hebrew Scripture of the Old Testament.   Above the painting is the Greek word, anastasis, the word for resurrection that means “to stand up again.”  This painting is what is referred to within Christian tradition as the Harrowing of Hell, where Christ breaks the bonds of death and violence.  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.[7]  In this incredible painting, which I share on your screens, Christ is the mother of all liberation and peace for all of humankind, all of creation.

          Caesar, the mother of all violence manifested on Maundy Thursday, will forever try to convince you of his resurrection, and, in terror, get you to recoil in fear to do nothing but consume and consume and consume.   Be of good courage, sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins.  We are not raised to be zombies.  I hope you are more threatened by the silent, warm weeping of Indian women and the sad gaze of children, and what they might say to you if we do not join them.  For in their resurrection is an invitation to know what it is to dream, to keep watch while asleep, to live while dying, and to already know ourselves to be resurrected. 

The zombie apocalypse is coming.  Wake the kids.  Phone the neighbors.  We now begin the liturgical season of resurrection.  Be of good courage, sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins, to stand up again and again and again in non-violent confrontation, distributive justice, mutual healing, and compassion for the lost, least, and last.  “Do not be afraid,” the angels are forever telling us.  “Peace I leave with you,” the Risen Christ says.  For I say to you, in certain hope that the world might be transformed, “Christ is risen!”  And, to buck up my courage, in mutuality, you say back to me, “He is risen indeed!” 

          “Christ is risen!” 

          “He is risen indeed!”  Alleluia.  Amen. 

[1] Alexis Madrigal, “The Tweet That Begins the Zombie Apocalypse.”  The Atlantic, May 29, 2012.  http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/05/the-tweet-that-begins-the-zombie-apocalypse/257742/

[2] John Dominic Crossan and Richard G. Watts, Who Is Jesus? Answers to Your Questions About the Historical Jesus, Louisville, KY:  Westminster John Knox Press, 1996,  p. 79

[3] http://divusjulius.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/liberalia2010/. 

[4] Richard Horsley, Jesus and the Politics of Roman Palestine (Columbia, SC:  University of South Carolina Press, 2014), pp. 54, 57.

[5] Bill Roggio from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies describes the effects of the “Mother of All Bombs” dropped on Achin province on Maundy Thursday. https://www.democracynow.org/2017/4/14/us_drops_its_biggest_non_nuclear.

[6] Julia Esquivel, Threatened with Resurrection; Prayers and Poems from an Exiled Guatemalan Ann Woehrle, trans. (Elgin, Illinois: Brethren Press, 1994), p. 97 ff.

[7] 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

 

Third Sunday of Easter, "Downcast on the road," April 26, 2020

A Easter 3 BFC 2020[1]

Luke 24:13-30

April 26, 2020

Cleopas had told Valeria he knew of a small backroad to get to the

rebel stronghold of Emmaus.  Cleopas said there was a halfway house along the way.  They could hide out there for the night.  But the more they walked, the more animated Cleopas became about the events over the last few days.  Unusually so.  She had seen him act this way before.  This was the way he acted when he knew he was wrong.  He would just go on rambling trying to cover up the fact that he had made a mistake.  Should she call him on it so they didn’t end up far down a strange road when night fell?  It was hard to tell.  They were both tired and hungry, both looking over their shoulders wondering when a Roman centurion might see them, hear the fear in their voices, and take them back to Jerusalem.  Roman soldiers didn’t need a reason.  Rome thought all Jews as prone to sedition, a barbarous and rebellious lot.   

           Rome and its colonizing law and order was not kind to the Jewish people.  It got inside their heads and made the Jewish community believe they were as Rome saw them.  For a moment, the prophet had helped them to see as Creator saw them.  For a moment.

           At times Valeria and Cleopas would both break into tears again.   They believed in this movement and now it was over.  They had staked their lives on this prophet marching into Jerusalem, creating a renewal for Israel when all around them they saw poverty, hopelessness, disease, and despair.  That was the norm.  Roman violence was like the hum in the background—reminding everyone to accept their fate, don’t question the Shadow of Death found around every street corner, etched into every piece of architecture dedicated to Caesar, and known in every legion of Roman troops that might be making their way on a rural road.  More than Valeria, Cleopas seemed to be sick at heart, hopeful as he described the communities of care the prophet had helped them to carve, despondent as he realized that they should have never made the movement more public by going to Jerusalem. 

           All of a sudden Valeria realized there was another presence walking alongside of them, like someone had snuck up on them.  She was about ready to go into full sprint when she just caught sight of the stranger.  The Romans had done a number on him.  His face was bludgeoned and it looked like he had been bleeding.   Cleopas just kept on talking in his bewildered back and forth between hope and despair.   The man came even with them and asked, “Sounds like you two have had a rough couple of days.  What happened?  Why are your hearts on the ground?”

           Cleopas went right into telling the stranger everything that happened.   Valeria looked at him in disbelief.  The guy was clearly a Jew but they knew little else about him. What if he was a Judean who might hand them over to the city authorities?  She elbowed Cleopas, trying to get him to hold his tongue, but he engaged the stranger in conversation.  “Whaaaat?  How can you possibly not know the events that occurred in Jerusalem this past week?  Are you the only one who doesn’t know?”  The stranger seemed to take Cleopas’s snide reaction in stride.  “What things?” he asked. 

“There was a great teacher and prophet that our religious leaders collaborated with the Romans to have assassinated.”  Cleopas went into vivid detail about everything Jesus did and said, how he got us to see the beauty in the world through ravens and lilies, how we stopped sniping at each other and lifted each other up to care for our sick, forgive debt to keep our farms intact, distribute what little we had so all of us began to thrive, and how he challenged the Shadow of Death found all around us.

“See,” Cleopas said, now verging on tears again, “we thought he was the one who might free our people from the domination and violence of Rome.  He had done it in Galilee.  We thought the next logical step was to go public with it in Jerusalem.  We were wrong. They killed him.  It’s been three days since this happened.  Now some of the crazy women who were part of our group went to his tomb, couldn’t find his body, and shocked us when theysaid they had seen a vision of angels.”  Valeria glared at Cleopas.  Only because the women saw it first, would anyone call them crazy.  She knew it was his way.  He was a little better than most men but he still assumed the same story told by women made it “crazy” . . .  and told by men made the story “amazing.”

“Men followed out to confirm what the women had said.  They couldn’t find the body.  This is all disheartening, and crazy, and scary and now we’re just trying to make sure they don’t hoist us up on a cross next.  He was a prophet for our people.  Now he is gone.”

           “This all sounds very familiar,” the stranger said. 

           Valeria interjected, “What?  I mean . . . how does any of this sound familiar to anybody?” Cleopas elbowed her back, reminding her that only in our Galileean communities had it become popular for women to be part of the conversation. 

           But the stranger seemed to take it in stride.  “I know this can be hard to understand.  Rome puts out its messages every day and we have come to accept them as the truth because they just put them on repeat.  What is your story though?  What is our story?”  Valeria and Cleopas looked at each other, dumbfounded, and then back at the man. 

           “Tell me what happens when the prophets challenge the Shadow of Death in each age?  Tell me what happens to them?  Beginning with Moses?  Does it go well with them?”

           “Well, yes,” Cleopas said, “they are the ones who are memorialized and given glory in our holy Scriptures.  That’s how it should be!”

           “Do you just lack the courage to see these things plainly?” the stranger said.

           “What?” Valeria said, “I mean, Cleopas is right.  That’s how it happens in the stories.”

           “That’s not how it happened.” the stranger went on, “In each age, prophets are ridiculed, thrown in jail, exiled, accused of treason, or executed.  They stir the pot, interrupt business as usual, speak truth to power, make trouble, question authority, organize a different vision, and refuse to settle.  Prophets are an inconvenient conscience.  Their glory comes later when the people come together to decide that it is not the Shadow of Death that carries the day.  Our people come together to say that God was and is in the prophet.  Why should your Galileean teacher and prophet be any different?  Was what he did true?  Did he bring the people together?  Did he seek their healing?  Did he give you eyes for seeing beyond the Shadow of Death that the Romans tell you every day?  Does that end with his death?”

           “No, no it doesn’t,” Valeria said, beginning to warm to the stranger’s challenge.  Cleopas looked more suspicious.

           So the stranger went on, “Look, I get it.  It is hard to understand because Rome’s repetition makes us believe that is the only truth out there.  The prophets tell us to defend the poor, but we lionize the rich. The prophets tell us that horses and chariots cannot save us, but we are transfixed by the apparent omnipotence of Rome’s shiny weapons, chariots, and war horses. The prophets tell us to forgo idolatry, but we compulsively fetishize the work of our own hands, Above all, the prophets warn us that the way to liberation in a world locked down by the spiral of violence, the way to redemption in a world of enslaving addictions, the way to true transformation in a world of deadened conscience and numbing conformity is the way of nonviolent, sacrificial, creative love.  Creator’s Word forever challenges empires and their pharaohs, kings, and Caesars to change and, for reason, that Word is forever opposed and met with violence.  This is inevitable—not because Creator wants it but because this is what the Shadow of Death does to those who speak hard truths.  They don’t want to change.

           “That’s our story, right?  It sounds like that’s what your Galileean prophet was all about.  He stood hand in hand with the poor, the sick, the dying, the outcast, and the sinner—like most prophets do.  How does the Shadow of Death and Domination treat them?

“Moses spoke the truth about all that and Pharaoh chased him with chariots and the people whined about his leadership style.  Miriam speaks up and the people turn on her.  Jeremiah had his words ripped up by the king and he was thrown into prison.  Elijah wins against the Baal prophets and the powers of that age threatened to kill him.  Even Esther risks her own life to speak truth to the Sovereign. Tell me, during their lifetime, what prophet gets all this glory?”

           The stranger looked both of us in the eye and said, “The Shadow of Death has been around for time immemorial.  Sounds like the question for you is not whether the movement dies with the prophet.  Sounds like the question for you is whether the movement dies with you?” 

Valeria reached for Cleopas’s hand, grabbed it, and squeezed.  They both turned from the stranger to look at each other.  Tears started to fall from Cleopas.  Valeria reached up with her right thumb to brush them away and smile. 

           Cleopas cleared his throat and turned back to the stranger.  “Thank you.  You have helped me to pick my heart up off the ground.  I think I was even harming my dear friend, Valeria, with my desolation.”  Valeria leaned into Cleopas and smiled.  She thought she could see the stranger smile as well but his face was so disfigured that it was hard to tell. 

           “These were hard things,” Valeria said.  “You spoke them well.  Thank you.”

           He nodded. 

           The halfway house was just ahead as night fell and the road forked just before it.  The stranger appeared to be going on, taking the fork on the road.  Valeria and Cleopas convinced the stranger to come with them. 

           “It is our way,” Valeria said, “the way of our people.  You certainly know this.  Abraham and Sarah grant hospitality to the Divine.  Lot and his family grant hospitality to angels.  Who knows what you may be?  It is getting dark.  Abide in the protection that God gives us.”  She smiled and extended her arm.  Cleopas shook his head in agreement.  Valeria was sure she saw the crease of a smile from the stranger. 

           As the night fell and the day began, the stranger reached into the small bag he carried with him and pulled out bread.  Cleopas and Valeria

had left Jerusalem with such haste that they had given no thought to food.  But the amount he had seemed only to be right for him and they both worried that if they stared too long he would feel obligated.  Instead, he said, “This is my way.  It is the way of my people in Galilee.”  The stranger then said a prayer over it, broke it in half, and gave half to each of them. In that moment, in the sharing of bread, both Valeria and Cleopas knew who he was.  He vanished from their sight as they knew they had been in the presence of the prophet. 

           “My heart burned within me, Cleopas, when he told us our people’s stories.”

           “Yes,” Cleopas said.  “He is alive.  The Shadow of Death may be immemorial.  But the movement will not die with us.  We must go to Jerusalem.”

           With a new day beginning and the sun setting, Valeria and Cleopas began the long walk back to Jerusalem.  To tell the others.  Tell our stories.  Grant hospitality.  Distribute bread.   Valeria held the hand of her good friend as they began.  And their hearts were warm and full.  Amen.

            

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[1] Based on an article from Ched Myers, “Easter Faith and Empire: Recovering the Prophetic Tradition on the Emmaus Road,” Challenging the Christian Right for the Heart of the Gospel, edited by Peter Laarman (Boston:  Beacon Press, 2006), pp. 51-67.