Resurrected and resurrecting one… you who call us each by name… speak to us now. Touch our mouths and all our hearts that the words about to be spoken and the words about to be heard be your word and not simply our own.
Rebecca:
During this year’s Lent, we have been praying with the idea of Solidarity of the Incarnation. We’ve looked at it from a couple of different angles. The first is the way in which God has hallowed our flesh by taking on human form. God has sought intimacy with us by loving, resisting Empire, and healing… in short, by living an earthly life. Solidarity of the Incarnation.
And this solidarity of the Incarnation offers us an invitation to hallow “this here flesh” that is ours. It invites us to love our bodies, our gender identities, our sexualities, our disabilities, our scars and our desires. We are called to love y/our flesh and love it hard.
And then the Holy Week story invites us to see that the solidarity of the Incarnation becomes the solidarity of the cross. The cross is a sign, as womanist theologian Delores Williams says, of God’s solidarity with the world’s crucified. Jesus’ life of healing and action to resist the Roman Empire that leads him to be executed as a political prisoner is an act of solidarity with all that Empire seeks to crucify.
Finally, the Easter story invites us to see that the solidarity of the Incarnation which becomes the solidarity of the cross, then becomes the solidarity of the Resurrection. The same God who hallows human flesh and journeys into the places of deepest violence and suffering to accompany us at our most difficult and trying times, is the same God who announces that no violence or death, no suffering or oppression is ever the last word. Instead, it is life, it is love, it is joy and justice that are eternal.
In life… in death… in life after death, God is radically with and for all of creation.
It was 6:15 on Friday evening, September 1, 2023 and we had just turned onto Highway 55 outside of Hastings. We were caravanning with Teresa and Jim, Maggie’s brother and sister-in-law and Teresa started honking and swerved to miss an oncoming car that was driving diagonally into our lane. We were going 55 miles an hour and Maggie remembers me saying, “there isn’t anywhere for me to go, we’re going to get hit.”
I was conscious through the forty-five minutes it took to cut off the back of my seat, the door, and the roof of the car to get me out. And I distinctly remember two things: wondering if I was dying, and the hands that held me.
As I’ve reflected on that life-changing forty-five minutes and the two and a half years of healing thus far, I return again and again to the deep sense of calm I felt the whole time. It was as if the answer to my wondering about dying was the hands that held me, and treated me, and began my healing journey.
I now know that it was Dean and Julia’s hands. It was Dean who literally had my back with both of his large, strong hands after they cut the back of my seat off. He held me for most of those forty-five minutes, speaking calmly and explaining what was happening. And it was Julia who was able to reach over, calmly describing what she was doing, and place a tourniquet on my right leg which saved my life.
In their hands, I knew in my body God’s presence… in life, in death, in life after death.
My favorite part of our scripture this morning is the interaction between Jesus and Mary. Jesus sees Mary’s deep, deep grief and asks her why she is weeping. This isn’t a judgement about the fact that she grieves. Instead, it is a question of deep compassion: do you want to tell me what is breaking your heart? Can I listen and bear witness to your sorrow? And after he helps carry her sorrow, he reveals himself to her:
Mary… And by speaking her name, she knows it is her beloved… Rabbouni
When has God asked about your deepest sorrow and then called your name to reveal their always-ness with you?
When has God-embodied-as-a-Dean-or-Julia held you in your most vulnerable times?
Where has resurrection met you?
Mary… Rabbouni…
And in that moment, Jesus embodies the truth of God’s always-ness with us: in life, in death, in life-after-death.
Michael:
Well folks we finally got here on the ground of Easter, another Pagan festival adopted by colonizing Christians. Knowing that it comes from Springtime celebrations of the goddess Eostre and that all the eggs and bunnies are taken from pagan celebrations around the Spring Equinox celebrating the rising of the sun in the East as symbols of new birth, new possibilities and new life. You gotta hand it to those early Christians. Adapt the best of those rituals of others and make them your own.
What predates these co-opted rituals is the authentic stories of embodied change that Rebecca just talked about. These stories are not meant to be triumphant but move us through our grief to a deeper longing for love. These are the stories that remind us to be humble.
At the center of this story is Mary Magdalene. She is the one that does not fear grief. She enters it. While Simon Peter, James and John run away when they see the stone rolled away, Mary lingers. Mary ponders in her heart why her teacher and friend had to die. After all, she was the one who once was being stoned and she lived. I have always wondered why the church adopted other religious observances instead of leaning into the story right there in this scripture story.
Mary Magdalene may have been more revered than shunned if we weren’t so afraid of grief. If we weren’t so afraid of suffering and death. If we weren’t so afraid. Listen again to the power of this story,
The disciples run to the tomb
Jesus is gone
The disciples returned home
Mary stayed and looked into the tomb
Two angels were there and said, “Mary, why are you weeping?”
Then Jesus appears and repeats the question, “Mary why are you weeping?”
Mary then recognizes Jesus with “Rabbouni”
Jesus asks Mary to return to the disciples to tell them that he is ascending
Mary tells the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”.
The is Easter faith. Feeling the crucifixion in a real and embodied way. Stay in the moment. Notice those around you and remember the teaching. Jesus is not going to be around forever, in this form or the last one. Our Easter task is to be resurrection people. Our task is to walk through grief on the way to hope and understanding. Why are you weeping? What is making you weep? Is it the young mother who was trying to self-deport at the Whipple Building on Thursday being turned away because her papers were not in order? Is it the ongoing fear and intimidation being handed out by ICE agents? Is it the fact that we live in a world where young men feel that this is the only and best opportunity they have? Is it dropping billions of dollars of weapons in Iran when people are still suffering with a lack of food, housing, healthcare and education? What makes you weep? Is it because you carry your wounds alone?
We need people to care about us. Being resurrection people is to care deeply, weep openly, love inclusively. Being resurrection people is to be free.
One of the things that Rebecca and I share are these experiences of nearing death and being held through it all in peace and understanding. For me, surviving a diagnosis of metastatic colon cancer and being told I had maybe two years to live was an invitation to deepen into gratitude and stay in the grief. I was held by my amazing family through every step of the surgeries and treatment. I was held by my faith and friends and the spiritual juju that came at me from all directions. I continue to be held. I know that I will not live forever. I know that we are not meant to. I feel like a part of me died in that process. Other parts transformed and keep transforming. Weeping opens all of it and sets me free. Grief is necessary on the way to resurrection. Our sacred wounds are our greatest teachers.
Rebecca’s car accident and the holding of Dean and Julia.
My metastatic cancer and the openness to love.
Mary’s weeping at the tomb of her beloved teacher.
This is what Easter is before all the shouts of Hallelujah.
May we all heed the sacred story invitation to live and weep like Mary Magdalene. Stay in the tomb long enough to see the angels and witness the Risen Christ. Every day and in every one.
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