A Courageous Easter to All

a word on the joylessness of resurrection sunday

“Jesus called them one by one; Peter, Andrew, James and John, Next, came Philip, Thomas too; Matthew and Bartholomew.

James the one they called the less, Simon, also Thaddeus, the twelfth disciple Judas made, Jesus was by him betrayed. Yes, Jesus called them;

Yes, Jesus called them; Yes, Jesus called them; He called them one by one.”

And it went straight to voicemail. As the Bible tells us, the boys did not pick up; there was no, “Disciples’ residence. This is Andrew speaking.” At least not on resurrection morning. They were at home, but not because they were getting ready for the fam to come over for Easter lunch. They were not setting the table and putting the roast and potatoes in the oven. They were not running late to the tomb because they were putting on their Sunday best. They were hiding out - they had shut themselves up in a house and were on lock down. No one in. No one out.

It was the women who answered the call that morning, who made their way to the tomb two thousand years ago. Despite the fact that the gospel writers all agree that women were there, they are in tip top patriarchal form and thus all over the place when it comes to how many women and which women were there. We read Luke’s version, who at first simply refers to the gang of women as “they” - “But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared,” opting to list them out only late - “it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women,” who were there, as if there were so many of them that there was no possible way to record every name. However, John says it was just Mary Magdalene who came to the tomb and says that the stone had been rolled away. But Mark claims it was, “Mary Magdalene and Mary the Mother of James and Salome.” And yet Matthew insists it was, “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary.”

As Rev. Dr. Wilda Gafney notes: “People will remember the names of the disciples, who were neither at the cross nor at the tomb, but the women who were at both [the cross and the tomb], [have been] collapsed into a cloud of Marys . . .”

We may not know exactly which women were there that morning, but we do know why they came - to tend to the body of their teacher and friend, Jesus of Nazareth, with the spices and ointments they had prepared before the sabbath. This was risky business, showing up at the tomb. Jesus had been crucified, after all - crucified by the Empire, a kind of state-sponsored killing considered to be one of the most brutal and shameful ways to die, “reserved for slaves, disgraced soldiers, foreigners, and - in particular - political activists.”

The women came anyway, knowing that to be associated with someone put to death in this way might mean the same fate. Rome was not interested in an uprising, not interested in Jesus becoming a martyr. But the women went anyway because their love for Jesus was bigger than their fear for themselves. So they loaded up their supplies and set out to head back to the tomb when there was barely enough light by which for them to see.

They expected a body.

As tradition tells us, it was missing.

But we forget that there was something else missing that Easter morning - besides the body, that is. The other thing that was missing, unaccounted for, totally absent on that first Easter morning was joy. Happiness. Delight.

At no point do the women express even a teaspoon of gladness that there was no body, that Jesus had, according to the angels, risen. Luke gives no indication that, as the news sunk in, they slowly began to smile, that they started feeling tingling excitement, or even basic relief. The text says they were perplexed and terrified.

This is also true of the no-show disciples. When the women returned from the tomb to tell the eleven and the rest, no one jumped for joy, there was no high-fiving, no triumphant shouting. Only disbelief. They dismissed the women’s words as an idle tale, or as theologian Jeff Chu says, the translation might be better rendered, “these words seemed to the disciples as, “the mutterings of the delirious.”

Perplexity, terror, and disbelief. Not exactly the Easter vibe we’ve come to know and expect.

But on the other hand, it certainly sounds more like the Easter we are experiencing today - that is, if we are telling the truth.

And the truth is, even though we have show up with bright, shiny faces, all in our places, perplexity, terror, and disbelief are in the room.

We face, as David Brooks described it, “a multi front assault to make the earth a playground for ruthless men . . . [for] Trumpism is about ego, appetite and acquisitiveness and is driven by a primal aversion to the higher elements of the human spirit — learning, compassion, scientific wonder, the pursuit of justice.” We are in an era when empathy and love are maligned as weaknesses, as if they are bugs not features of humanity. Programs and services that ease suffering are being decimated. Scientific institutions dedicated to curing diseases are under attack. News organizations that advance public understanding are being vilified, and universities that expand and deepen our understanding of the world are being targeted.

We are holding our breath to see what will become of the rule of law. “The president of the United States,” explained Ezra Klein, “is disappearing people to a Salvadoran prison for terrorists . . . A prison built for disappearance. A prison where there is no education or remediation or recreation, because it is a prison that does not intend to release its inhabitants back out into the world. It is a prison where the only way out, in the words of El Salvador’s so-called justice minister, is a coffin.” This is where they sent Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the father raising three children, who has been living in under protected status for years. They circus we have watched this last week between our president and the Salvadorian president has been monstrous, and perhaps most terrifying is that there seems to be a group of people who are actually enjoying it, taking delight in the infliction of so much pain, suffering, and fear.

And in what can only described as grotesque, the leader of this movement, Donald Trump, had the audacity to proclaim last Sunday: “Through the pain and sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross we saw God’s boundless Love and Devotion to all Humanity and, in that moment of His Resurrection, History was forever changed with the Promise of Everlasting Life. As we approach this Joyous Easter Sunday, I want to wish Christians everywhere a Happy and very Blessed Holiday.”

As my friend and colleague, Rev. Phil Snider observed:

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single post that encapsulates the nihilism of modern evangelicalism more than this one.

It single-handedly crucifies Jesus all over again, killing the human figure who constantly spoke out against the violence and injustice of empire. Jesus — like so many today — was a victim of unjust violence at the hands of the state, and his cross bears witness as a symbol down through the ages of all those who’ve experienced unjust suffering at the hands of the state. Evangelicals have long interpreted the cross and resurrection as a transaction that allows believers (the right believers, of course) to go to heaven when they die — precisely because they want to silence what the human Jesus actually taught, because his teachings are so threatening to everything they stand for. So they make Christianity out to be only about life after death, not life before death, not least because Jesus’s cross indicts those who inflict pain and suffering on the most vulnerable, which is precisely what this administration is in the business of doing . . .

Anytime somebody tells you that Christianity is only about the next world, and not this one too, you can be pretty sure that they’re trying to deflect attention from the very real injustices in this world. And when someone claims to valorize Jesus while simultaneously disregarding everything Jesus actually taught, it’s blasphemy of the highest order. To invoke Dr. King, ‘it’s a dry as dust religion.’

Let’s be abundantly clear: the whole idea behind Christ’s resurrection in the first place is that God lifts up those who’ve experienced unjust suffering, and says that the powers of empire and violence do not have the last word, no matter how hard they try to make you think they do.”

But it is not just the political climate that has us perplexed, terrified, and in disbelief this morning. So many of us are walking around with tender hearts, broken even, by the grief of every day life. For some, this is the first Easter without a beloved. There will be an empty chair when it is time to gather around the table to offer thanks - a gap where there should be wholeness. Some of us carry the grief of disappointment, that things have not quite gone the way we had hoped or intended - whether it be about a job, a relationship, health, or . . . the list goes on.

This was also very much how the women and the disciples were feeling that first Easter morning. Their friend, teacher, confidant - gone, taken from them. And in addition, they felt the deep disappointment that things had not gone the way they had hoped or intended.

We act as if the first Easter morning included a cantata with a full orchestra, but that’s not what the text tells us. We may wish this morning had more joy in it, that we weren’t worried, afraid, and in disbelief. But that’s not how it was for anyone on the first day of the week at early dawn, two thousand years ago.

And thank God for that, because we need to hear again the story of the women who carefully made their way to the tomb, committed to showing up together so that they might embody the Love that Jesus had taught. It’s tempting to follow the example of the disciples, who gave into hopelessness and isolated themselves, to think that it’s over and done, that Empire has won, but as we know from the story, to do so is how we miss out on miracles.

We need to hear again this story to be reminded that Empire always thinks it can crush Mercy, suffocate Hope, and bury Love, but has never been able to finish the job. The Empire thought it could close the Jesus file. The authorities were convinced they could bully, force, and intimidate his friends into silence and submission. But the Jesus-people kept meeting, kept breaking bread and sharing the cup, kept widening the circle of God’s love, kept providing food and shelter, kept welcoming the stranger, and kept offering radical hospitality to every single other.

And it was not because everything was bright and shiny. Far from it. We need to hear again the story of the people who were perplexed, terrified, and in disbelief, who were the same people who steeled their resolve to keep showing up for each other, to keep building community. It was through their dogged insistence on grace, justice, and mercy. It was because of relentless commitment to embodying God’s love in the world.

Make no mistake: the resurrection held because the same people who were perplexed, afraid, and in disbelief were the same people who remembered that Jesus had given them their assignment - to love one another - and they were faithful to the work.

This is what it means to be people of the resurrection - to believe that God lifts up those who’ve experienced unjust suffering, and insist that the powers of empire and violence do not have the last word, no matter how hard they try to convince us.

May we take our perplexity, fear, and disbelief, and let it remind us that we come from people who do not abandon each other; that we come from people who kept caring, kept tending, kept loving one another in spite of everything.

Instead of wishing ourselves a happy, joyful Easter, let it be one of resolve, of persistence, of courage - for remember, Jesus is calling us to carry on the work of the resurrection.

Let’s do pick up.