Once upon a time during Holy Week, I
was sitting in a meeting with our parish leaders, trying to figure out how to
solve pressing church problems like fixing the broken lights in the sanctuary ceiling
and convincing somebody to serve lemonade on Easter, when a bunch of kids from
the Preschool rushed into the office, all talking at once. “Rev. Anne, Rev.
Anne,” they cried, “the ‘Alleluia Box’ blew up and all of the Alleluia’s are gone!”
“What?” I
exclaimed, with a bit of impatience, as Vestry members all looked down at their
watches. I knew that I am in control of that Alleluia box game; I am the one
who locks up the word “alleluia” during Lent and frees it on Easter. It is a
fun game, but I knew that the box wouldn’t really blow up. Goodness, kids’
imaginations! But the kids were all in
an uproar, so excited, all talking at once.
“It’s true, we saw it, we saw it!”
they cried, when I didn’t react. “It’s just like you told us,” offered one
little girl patiently, the way you have to talk to clueless grownups. “You said
last week in chapel that the box would open and that all the alleluias would
come out. Well, they must have come out and then flown away, because they’re
all gone!”
“OK,” I said,
trying to humor the kids. “You better go back to your classroom. Your teacher
is probably worried about you. We have to finish this meeting, but I’ll check
on it later. You see, it’s not Easter yet. Jesus isn’t alive yet. So the
alleluias must still be in the box. It’s OK.”
The kids
trooped away dutifully, with only a faint trace of disappointment on their still
glowing faces. They knew what they had seen. They remembered the Easter story
that I told them in chapel. The Vestry and I turned back to our meeting. Only
one vestry member got up from the table. “I’m just going to go see what the
kids are talking about,” he said, and dashed off.
That’s how
Luke tells the story of the Resurrection in today’s Gospel, isn’t it? A group
of women, with the business of preparing a body for burial, are surprised to find
an empty tomb and are told by angelic witnesses that Christ is risen. They run
to the rest of the disciples, full of wonder and excitement, and their
testimony is dismissed as a gullible flight of fancy. After all, in the first
century, women had about as much credibility as witnesses as preschoolers do
today.
Just like
Jesus’ disciples, we have the Story. We read it in Scripture; we recite it
every week in the Creed: Christ is risen. God is victorious. Death is
vanquished. Sin is forgiven. From that first Easter on, we live in a new
creation. We are a new creation. We
might say that we believe this story. We might try to believe it. But then we mostly go on about our lives as if
none of it were true. We spend our days in meetings worrying about broken
lights and lemonade. We spend our nights worrying about death or loss or
failure. We live as if gathering enough security and enough possessions is
going to make everything all right. Even at Easter, we get caught up in brunch
menus and reservations, in decorating the church, in getting the kids or
grandkids cleaned up for the photo ops. “Christ is risen!” we proclaim, yet it
often feels like a game that we are playing, a game like locking up and freeing
the alleluias. All of our preparation is for death, like the women taking spices
to the tomb to anoint Jesus for burial. We don’t really expect an explosion of
life, do we? We don’t expect that alleluia box to blow up. We don’t expect to
see Christ. We don’t expect the world to change overnight. We’re pretty good at
showing up at the tomb, but, like the women, even though we know what Jesus has
told us, we forget to remember; we come expecting not life, but death. I was
struck just this week by two examples in my own life.
There was a
video floating around Facebook that charmed me during Lent. It was an ad,
actually, for the work of the Anti-Defamation League. Called, “Imagine a World
Without Hate,” it portrays people picking up newspapers dated into the future.
The camera zooms in on the front page headlines of those papers, which say things
like: “Martin Luther King, Jr. Champions Immigration Reform,” accompanied by a
photo of the Civil Rights leader with grey hair. “Anne Frank Wins Nobel Prize
for Twelfth Novel,” reads another headline. “Matthew Shepard Leads Anti-Bullying
Coalition,” reads another. “Yitzhak Rabin Brings Two Decades of Israeli-Palestinian
Peace.” After showing what could have been, if all of the hope and promise
present in these leaders had not been wiped out by violence, the video ends
with the phrase, “If we all stood up to bigotry, we could change history.”[1]
I was moved by
this video, really moved. It made me think. What if all of these people had
lived, rather than being assassinated or murdered? How would the world be
changed for the better? What wonderful things would they have done for the
world? But then, as Easter approached, I started thinking about Jesus. Wait, I
thought, Jesus wanted to end oppression and injustice. Jesus healed the sick
and confronted the powers and principalities. But we of course don’t ask, “What
if Jesus had not been crucified? What amazing good would he have done if he had
not died on the Cross?”
I’m
embarrassed to admit that it took me awhile to figure out the difference. I’m
embarrassed to admit that I had forgotten what the Resurrection really means.
There is a difference in trying to live lives that imitate Jesus and follow his
teaching and in trying to live in a creation that has already been made new.
It’s not “Jesus stood up to bigotry, so we should, too.” It’s not wishing for
what wonders “could have been, if only we had behaved.” It’s not girding up our
loins and facing death with courage. Living as an Easter Christian involves
trusting that the real victory at the end of Jesus’ story colors all of
existence, that the glimpse of abundant life seen in the teaching of Martin
Luther King, Jr. is an unveiling of a corner of the new creation that already
exists in the risen Christ, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of the hatred
that killed Anne Frank and Matthew Shepard have already been defeated, if only
we would quit reaching down into the old darkness and pulling them out of the
pit. Sure, we need to stand up to bigotry, but not with the illusion that we
can defeat it by ourselves. We love like Jesus loved because love has already
won the fight.
A seminary classmate of mine who is
now rector of Calvary Church in Memphis alerted his congregation on Friday to a
KKK rally that was going to happen across the street from their downtown parish
right before their Holy Saturday Easter Vigil service. His advice was to meet
the “death” across the street with “holy, intentional silence.” “Let Saturday's
rally be the last breath of a group who[se] influence has vanished, gasped in
the silence of an empty street,” he wrote.[2]
Christ is risen. Bigotry can no longer win. Christ’s victory shines backwards
into a KKK rally that is doomed to failure, bound only for extinction, no
matter how loud the Klan shouts, no matter how many gather there. The tomb is
empty. The only life is in the Light of Christ across the street at Calvary. The
alleluia box is empty, and I am not in control.
Later this
week I went to visit the dying family member of a parishioner. I went into the hospice
care unit with my prayer book and my holy oil, looking for death. I found an
elderly lady whose body had just about almost shut down. It was riddled with
cancer, almost visibly decomposing. I was there to prepare the family for
death, to prepare the suffering grandmother for dying. I knew that in a few
days it would be Easter. I knew that Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the
life, and the one who believes in me will never die.” I knew the Good News. But
I was still preparing for death. What I found, however, was life. This dying
woman was wrapped in a cloak of peace. “I’m not in pain,” she said, smiling the
same patient, kind smile as the preschoolers in my office. “I’m not afraid.”
But it was when I looked into her eyes that I understood. This grandmother’s
pale blue eyes twinkled with life, with joyful life. You could light a thousand
Easter fires from the strong life in those eyes. It was as if there were little
angels in her eyes glittering and saying to me, “There is no death here. Christ
is risen. Go and tell the others. It doesn’t matter what this looks like. It doesn’t
matter if you are ready for life or not. It doesn’t matter if my body will soon
be buried. The alleluia box has blown wide open and the alleluias are flying
around out in the world. Go and find them! Don’t forget to remember the story!
Christ is risen! The Lord is risen, indeed. Alleluia!
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