2015.04.05 Resurrection is What Exactly?

Some Christians get hooked on both the literalness and the singularity of Resurrection. They call it THE Resurrection, as if it belonged to Jesus Christ alone, and as if it were a one-shot deal, taking place at one time and in one place. 

Resurrection is an absolutely terrific theological idea. It's a God thing, though not unique to Christianity, nor particularly historical at all. The meaning is simple: God brings life out of death of any kind. It’s a spiritual phenomenon, a mystery of course, but so what? You can choose to hope in resurrection, or not. You can choose to believe in God, or not. So far there ain’t no proof.

Although.......I will say that, from biblical times and all through history, there has been a ceaseless flow of witnesses to resurrection power. 

I choose to put faith in this mysterious energy I call God, and because I do, I tend to look for resurrective happenings everywhere at any time. I figure that’s my spiritual vocation.

Just today I got an Easter card on line. It featured a beautiful song, sung by the Salisbury Cathedral Choir. The song lyrics come from an A.E. Hausman poem, “The Lent Lily.” Tradition has it that the daffodil’s yellow trumpet opens on Ash Wednesday and dies on Easter day.  The last stanzas of “The Lent Lily” go like this:
   
    And since till girls go maying
    you find the primrose still,
    And you find the windflower playing
    With every wind at will
    But not the daffodil.

    Bring baskets now, and sally
    Upon the spring’s array
    And bear from hill and valley
    The daffodil away
    That dies on Easter Day

 


I already knew daffodils did not last very long. A week ago my husband brought some home for our indoor easter garden. They sat bright and beautiful in a vase, trumpeting the good news of spring.  Slowly and surely, they wilted— much faster than the tulips. On Easter day they went to compost.

Resurrection is a daffodil, brief and fleeting and life-giving—like Easter. The only way to keep the brilliant hope of resurrection alive is to watch for it to come in small fragile doses and let it lodge in your heart as hope—springing eternal of course. 

I observed one such resurrective happening at our parish where adults and children were rehearsing for the Easter liturgies. Everyone was stressed, just trying to follow all the complicated instructions about who followed whom and what was read when.

It was time to practice the readings. A young boy, ten or so, was practicing his reading for the Easter Vigil liturgy. He is an earnest soul, smart and full of life, plus drop dead handsome. As he read from the Bible he stood on a pew kneeler in order to reach the high pulpit. He wanted to see and be seen.  He read perfectly, until he came to one place and stopped cold.

“There’s a mistake here,” he said, pointing to the text, which was a reading from the Old Testament prophet, Ezekiel, about God’s promise to give us all new hearts and new spirits and to enjoin us, once again, to follow God’s ordinances and statutes.

 “See here,” the boy pointed.  “There’s an extra T in this word. It’s supposed to be statue.”

No one laughed.  This day the boy learned a new word and those few of us present felt resurrected.


P.S.  People have sent me poems, YouTube renderings, and simple opinionations about resurrection. I conclude that resurrection is still a hot topic, one we care about enough to deny, affirm, or discern over and over. That is good. Theology evolves like history and here is what I, and I’m not alone in this thought, feel sure happened after Jesus died: his Jewish brothers and sisters, fans and followers were radically disillusioned by their own theology. It was insufficient. 

They could not let it rest given the teachings of Jesus about his idea of God as love and their own experience of this kind of love in their lives. They shared memories, stories and perceptions. Together they discerned a new theological direction, a new idea about their one God: that crucifixion and other violent acts are not divinely engineered or inspired as they had thought; and further, that divinely inspired acts are resurrective not destructive — always. 

Christians are not in agreement about this, but I suspect that a new theology is emerging, one that will allow God to be “love alone all loves excelling” as the hymn line says. And perhaps humanity will finally accept that we are beloved of God, and that we too will be resurrected, daily and after our biological death. In meantime, it is our calling to notice and create, where we can, resurrective acts, and to live embodied lives of compassion, peace and justice toward all living things. 

2015.03.29 Stories That Bear Repeating

“I will tell you something about stories. They aren’t just entertainment. Don’t be fooled. They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death. You don’t have anything if you don’t have the stories.”

Leslie Marmon Silko (b. 1948), poet and Laguna Pueblo writer whom literary critics have called part of the first wave of a Native American Renaissance, said this. It is wise. She means ALL stories.

 

This Sunday, Palm Sunday, Christians tell our whole story in word and song. It's a repeat. We stream into the sanctuary waving palms and singing anthems, reenacting an ancient biblical story of tragedy and triumph. Mostly we only notice the triumph part.

But I'll tell you that what made my day was a tiny typo in the printed instructions, meant to organize the unruly processional mob:  "The organist will begin the fanfare for 'All Gory, Laud and Honor' as we are singing the refrain."

Gory glory? The mix-up made me laugh, sing louder than ever, and rejoice at the way truth can sneak into an old familiar story and make it new. I'm sure this is one way our great God almighty hits home runs from the sidelines.      

Christian churches today reenact an ancient drama in the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth. According to New Testament story, Jesus and his followers streamed into Jerusalem and entered the Temple precincts through a gate called the Golden Gate, also known as The Beautiful Gate.

 

This powerful story is known as the triumphal entry. It probably never happened exactly as the Bible tells it, because the Bible is prone to exaggeration. Don’t we all exaggerate when we have a fabulous amazing story to tell? Still, we can be sure, historically, that Jesus went to Jerusalem to carry his gospel message and entered through one of the city gates. 

This story marks the beginning of Holy Week, the days leading up to Jesus’ confrontation with religious and secular authorities, his trial, conviction, and execution by crucifixion, a punishment meted out by Roman law for common criminals and those whose actions presented a treasonous threat to the Roman emperor. It’s a triumphant story, and a risky one—more gore than glory.

Our foundational story is part historical fact, part proclamation, part prophecy, part memoir, and, for Christians, it is gospel/good news. From it we derive the pattern of a Christian life: being bearers of the unconditional love of God for all people. We wave palms about, sing loudly and listen again to the story. The better it is told the more spellbinding it becomes. We listen and wonder once more: What will God do? Has God indeed abandoned one of his most articulate servants? Will this gospel of Love survive or die on the cross? What will I do?

Why do we keep telling the same old story? We know it or how it ends. We never know it fully, and we do not know how it ends. It's the kind of story that thrives on typos, and the like, to ease the impact of its real spiritual power: one day we may be called upon to witness to the Love of God in unpopular ways. You may one day be called upon to wave a symbolic palm, or a Maple leaf, your favorite scarf, or banner, or sandwich board! Some day you may have to follow.

My husband and I are re-watching the popular TV series, “The West Wing.” There's a lot in it we missed. One of the scenarios showed the beginnings of a presidential run by a Democratic candidate with a new vision, riding high on a political wave of triumph.  As he spoke, listeners dozed off to the tones of the same old rhetoric. Suddenly, the candidate veered from the teleprompter to address angry dairy farmers in order to explain his vote in Congress against a bill which favored a boost in milk prices.

Here's the "typo":  the candidate admitted that, yes, he’d thrown the dairy farmers and their lobby under the bus. Why? Because there was such a high percentage of children starving, and it was more important to make sure milk was affordable than it was to get elected. Whoa! Not supposed to happen.

Some walked away angry but some followed, waving palms of hope, entering new territory to rewrite the old story once again.

I was struck by this image by artist Catherine Steinberg. It looked as if it could be Mary, the mother of Jesus, all festooned in palms as she followed the triumphant little band into Jerusalem, hoping against hope that her son wouldn't do anything foolish—again?