A Change Is Gonna Come (in fact it’s already here…)

Readings: ACTS 10:34A, 37-43; COL 3:1-4 or I COR 5:6B-8; JN 20:1-9

(Note: To start, I want to express deep gratitude to everyone who has been a part of this blog.   We have had some amazing guest bloggers (Rev. Celie, Rev. Myra, Lauren Frye, Kristen Walker, Mark Potter, Amy Durkee, and Rev. Dr. Marvin McMickle).  Their contributions added so much richness to these reflections.

I also want to thank all of you who have been along. Whether you followed for 1 day or for all 40, we appreciate that you have joined us on the journey.  You have turned a blog into a spiritual community that has sustained all of us during Lent.

Finally thanks to the Spiritus staff who help keep the website up and running, take care of glitches with the blog, provide pastoral leadership and profound reflections for us and to all those who make this possible.  I especially want to thank Davis Craig and Ruth Cowing for a lot of behind the scenes work on the blog and with tech stuff.  It is much appreciated.

And now on to the readings.)

Today really celebrates an amazing event.  It is a day when we recognize that death is not the final word.  

The gospel gives us the classic empty tomb reading from John.  I do not say “resurrection” because, thus far in the story, no one really knows what happened to Jesus.  They just know that he’s not in the tomb.

In this reading, and in many other circles, Mary Magdala is considered the “apostle to the apostles” because she is the one who ventured forth in the dark to the tomb (at great personal risk) and then brought the news back to the apostles.  None of Jesus’ other close friends had her courage.  In many ways, this story undermines so much of the patriarchy found in church circles because it places women in the most important roles (there’s even more testimony in Luke’s gospel about the importance of women in the company of Jesus and in early church leadership).

Once the apostles hear from Mary about what happened, John and Peter run to the tomb to check things out.  Yet they still do not understand the fullness of what is happening.

For me there are some very profound lessons in this Easter event that I keep returning to each season.

First, what happened to Jesus is a mystery.  All we know from the historical record is that Jesus was gone from the tomb and then was experienced anew by the people closest to him.  They recognized him even after death, and he was in a bodily form – but different.

In the resurrection accounts, Jesus is recognizable – suggesting that there is something about us that is unique – even after death. And (and this is a big and!) his body still bears the marks of the harm that came his way.  Resurrection does not mean that everything disappears.  It just means that it does not have the power it once had to hurt or limit us.  We are free from it.

Second, resurrection is not an individual phenomenon.  It’s a communal reality and has communal implications.  My friend Sally Partner sent along a wonderful piece that appeared in the NY Times yesterday entitled Opinion | What Good Friday and Easter Mean for Black Americans – The New York Times written by Esau McCaulley. McCaulley says that,

“Jesus’ resurrection has implications not just for his body, but for all bodies subject to death. Christians believe that what God did for Jesus, [God] will do for us. The resurrection of Jesus is the forerunner of the resurrection of our bodies and restoration of the earth.”  McCaulley goes on to say that these bodies that we live in now – with all of their particularities – will be valued (even if they are not now valued by the world).  Black bodies, disabled bodies, queer and trans bodies, oppressed bodies – ALL bodies will be valued one day.  No exceptions.  We’re are not “saved” from our specifics so much as they finally become valued.

I also think that we probably need to think more broadly about the resurrection.  We’re so used to speaking of it in the singular, but resurrection happens all the time.  While we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection today, everything “dies” and becomes something else.  Spring shows us this every year.  We also know that matter is neither created nor destroyed, so we, ultimately, know that death leads to another life.  In our lives and relationships we all keep experiencing little deaths and little resurrections.  It’s a deep paradigm that we live into time and time again – not just at Easter.

And so the Easter reality is not just something happening to Jesus.  It is something we all participate in, and we are asked to be active participants. This is where so much of my hope resides.

The Easter reality sends the clear and unequivocal signal that death of any kind is not the final word.  In the final analysis, there will be no more separation or sorrow.  And while we may not get to fully see or experience the fullness of that victory – death and the forces of death will be overcome. Period.  No matter how bleak things seem.  No matter how chaotic.  No matter how hopeless.  Love wins.

This is why, when asked, McCaulley can respond (as a Black man in America), “I am often asked what gives me hope to go on, given the evil I see in the world. I find encouragement in…the vision of all those Black bodies who trusted in God called back to life, free to laugh, dance and sing. Not in a disembodied spiritual state in some heavenly afterlife but in this world remade by the power of God.

This is the hope that had Black Christians throwing their bodies at wave after wave of anti-Black racism so that their children, even if only for a moment, might rest awhile on the shore. For them, belief in God’s power over death fueled their resistance. It may be a fool’s hope, but I believe that their struggle was not in vain.”

Easter gives purpose to whatever struggle we are in.  It says that we can throw ourselves into resistance of the powers and principalities of this world because, in the end, the struggle will not be in vain.  God will play God’s wild card.

As Sam Cooke so beautifully sung, “A change is gonna’ come,” and is already in our midst.  On this day it may be easier to see than in the everyday circumstances of our lives, but it is there none-the-less.  And so we struggle, endure, persist, resist, celebrate, laugh, cry, dance and rejoice in communion with him and with each other. 

Happy Easter!