The Adventurous Lectionary – Easter Sunday – March 31, 2024
Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
I Corinthians 15:19-26
John 20:1-18 and Mark 16:1-8
Every day, I wake up with the affirmation, “This is the day that God has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it!” I rejoice and give thanks that I am alive, grateful, and open to unheard of possibilities. What new and glorious thing will God do in this unrepeatable day. I am “woke” to wonder and love – to power – I can’t control but can receive and transform to bring healing and beauty to the world. I am awake to resurrection. To the birth of a new day, filled with possibility, adventure, and transformation.
This affirmation from Psalm 118 is the heart of the Easter proclamation, “this is the day that God has made.” Each day is resurrection day! God has made this new day, this wonderful life-giving day, and rejoicing is the only appropriate response. In a time of pandemic, incivility, war, and climate change, Easter proclaims that the shroud of death no longer controls us, the future is open, and we are free to act boldly and lovingly. God is doing a new thing, the divine creativity brings forth new life with every new day, and that creates life where death appeared triumphant. It may seem like a “idle tale” to sceptics, but to those who have experienced resurrection, this “tale” witnesses to life bursting forth in the face of death.
We need a resurrection in a time of protest and planetary uncertainty. We need to embrace and act on the loving power of Easter in a time of incivility and anti-democratic sentiment.
On Easter Sunday, my practice is to read the passages from at least two gospels, this year both Mark and John. In both gospel stories, women are at center stage and, for all intents and purposes, these women are challenged to be the first messengers of the “great commission” to go and tell the world well before this message is given to Jesus’ male disciples. Though the women described in Mark’s Gospel are silent at first, I believe they eventually mustered the courage to tell the incredible story – the tomb is empty, and life begins again.
The gospel accounts present two different perspectives on the resurrection, and they need not be harmonized as we often do with the Christmas stories. In contrast to the approach of many Christians today, the early church was comfortable with diverse witnesses to Jesus’ birth and resurrection. The differing stories are not a stumbling block to faith or veracity, but a reminder that resurrection is ultimately indescribable. Neither Jesus nor his resurrection can be encompassed by our theologies and rituals. Jesus comes to us in the dire situations of our lives an communities and rolls away the stone of hopelessness. Jesus brings new life, resurrection transforms, when we see no pathway forward.
God is not “orthodox,” nor does God demand one path to our knowledge or experience of God’s presence in the world. We see in a mirror dimly, especially when it comes to the nativity and resurrection. Our words and worship point to the moon, to use a Zen Buddhist image, but are not the shining orb that guides our paths through life’s wilderness moments. This is especially true of resurrection which can never be fully understood by the rational mind. We can travel the way of the Cross and Resurrection but never claim to complete the journey.
Mark’s Gospel centers on the women’s witness. Three women come to the tomb. Perhaps, against the social mores of the time, these women traveled with Jesus, supporting his ministry, and perhaps ministering to women in their patriarchal culture. The death of Jesus devastated them. Yet, though their world had collapsed, they like countless mourners before and after them came to give their beloved friend and teacher one last act of love, to anoint and embalm his lifeless body. They feel powerless as they look toward a future without him. They don’t even know if they can give their deceased teacher and savior this one last act of love, as they ask one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us?” But, to their astonishment, the stone has been rolled away, they tomb, and the angelic messenger reminds them of Jesus’ prophetic words and challenges them to live boldly, letting go of death and claiming resurrection life. Stunned, they don’t know what to do next. Resurrection needs to sink in before they can tell Jesus’ male disciples. Still, despite their amazement, there is an empty tomb and an open future.
Jesus’ beloved and countercultural companion Mary Magdalene is a central figure in John’s Gospel as well. She apparently comes alone, discovers an empty tomb and runs to Peter and John with an improbable tale – Jesus’ body has disappeared. She is unnerved by the empty tomb and returns, grief-stricken, believing at first that Jesus’ body has been taken from the tomb, perhaps by the malevolent forces that nailed him to the cross. The grief she felt when her beloved friend died was unendurable and she needs closure. Like millions of bereaved persons, past and present, she needs to see the corpse as devastating as the sight of her beloved friend’s inert body will be to ground her in the reality of death and help her move on, albeit in pain and hopelessness. She pleads with a “gardener” for answers. She wants to pay her respects, anoint his body, and show her love.
It is in this encounter with One Unknown that her life is transformed. Do you remember when protesters chanted “Say her name,” as a way of acknowledging the life and death of a real, concrete person Breonna Taylor. Jesus “says her name.” The Risen Jesus calls her name, “Mary,” and her life is transformed. She comes back to life and though she can’t fathom the resurrection, and has no theology to understand it, she believes and worships. Resurrection is grounded in the constancy of God’s future impinging on the present; yet it is something more, it is the radical leap beyond what we could ever imagine. There is a Deeper Magic, as C.S. Lewis says of the death and resurrection of Aslan his Christ figure, but this Magic Reality, embedded in the depths of creation is hidden from us until New Life bursts forth where death seemed victorious.
Mary wants to hug the Risen One, but Jesus cautions her, “Don’t hold onto me.” Is Jesus’ body somehow quantum in nature, lifted to higher frequency, and now too energetic for human touch? Is he not fully reconstituted? Or is there something more at work here? Could it be that Jesus is saying to Mary – and to us – “don’t hold onto static images of me, don’t localize me in space or time, or confine me to a particular spiritual body or institution”? Resurrection defies our attempts to control it through institutional, intellectual, or ritual power.
We too may want to hold on to static images of Jesus. But, when Jesus calls our name we trade in all our inert doctrines, static ecclesiologies, and abstract theological maxims for a living encounter with the One who “walks with me and talks with me and tells me I am his own.”
Jesus’ resurrection is not “orthodox” nor does it fit into any dogmatic statement. It is, like the Holy Spirit, a power that goes where it wills, unconfined by human conceptualities or authority systems. From now on, Jesus can’t be localized in Galilee or Jerusalem, he will be everywhere. From now on, Jesus can’t even be localized to the tradition that bears his name. He will bring wholeness to all creation and persons of all cultures.
In that spirit, Peter (as described in Acts) proclaims a global gospel and affirms that God shows no partiality among nations and cultures, and dare we say, churches. The resurrection is for all, salvation is for all. There are no resurrection-free zones or times. Nor can any institution claim to be the proprietor of resurrection power. Resurrection is bigger than Christianity. Resurrection is as real now as it was in the first century. It still brings new life to lost and vulnerable, and alienated and grieving, humankind. You can’t build a wall to contain resurrection. It is incorrigible in its universality.
Resurrection is the ultimate antidote to death in all its faces, from bigotry and xenophobia to physical annihilation. Resurrection plays no favorites. Although I am no biblical literalist, for a moment I will play the literalist game, asking those who restrict resurrection to a favored believers, what is it about “for as all died in Adam, all will be made alive in Christ” that you don’t understand? “All” means “all” not part or predestined or believers, but “all.” At the very least, resurrection touches us all, providing a pathway from death to life for everyone, even those who are afar off due to doubt, behavior, or religious tradition. As Paul says elsewhere, God will be “all in all.”
Today, we can open to resurrection power. Though beyond our control and untrammeled by our belief systems, we can awaken to resurrection in all the dead zones of life, trusting that God will revive us all, and trusting that we are to be agents of resurrection, bringing forth life in death-full situations in our time. We can “practice resurrection,” as Wendell Berry says, we can be countercultural, and speak for life in contrast to the high-control culture of death that confronts us.
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Rev. Bruce Epperly Ph.D. has served as a professor, seminary administrator, university chaplain, and congregational pastor at Georgetown University, Wesley Theological Seminary, Lancaster Theological Seminary, and South Congregational Church United Church of Christ on Cape Cod. “Retired,” he continues to teach in the Doctoral of Ministry program at Wesley Theological Seminary, give seminars, write, and rejoice in grandparenting and marriage with Rev. Dr. Kate Epperly. An ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), he is the author of over eighty books, “The Elephant is Running: Process and Open and Relational Theology and Religious Pluralism,” “Jesus: Mystic, Healer, and Prophet,” “Walking with Francis of Assisi: From Privilege to Activism,” “Simplicity, Spirituality, and Service: The Eternal Wisdom of Francis, Clare, and Bonaventure,” and “Taking a Walk with Whitehead: Meditations with Process-Relational Theology.” His books on faith and politics include, “Talking Politics with Jesus: A Process Perspective on the Sermon on the Mount,” “One World: The Lord’s Prayer from a Process Perspective,” and “Process Theology and Politics. His most recent texts are a trilogy: “Process Theology and Healing,” “Process Theology and Mysticism,” and “Process Theology and Prophetic Faith.” He may be reached at drbruceepperly@gmail.com.
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