The Promise That Still Lives

You may have been following the news this week related to events in Tennessee.  Following the deadly shooting in Nashville, many groups have raised their voices to demand action related to the ever-present gun violence in our communities and particularly in our schools.

Three representatives from TN participated in local rallies related to gun control.  In the days that followed, the House voted to expel two of those reps. Rep. Gloria Johnson, a white woman, was not expelled, but Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson (both Black men) were expelled.

Minutes before Rep. Pearson was to be expelled, he addressed the House and the people who were gathered. It was not lost on him that all of the events taking place were framed by the Good Friday/Easter backdrop.  He addressed the crowd using “Saturday” (meaning Easter Saturday) as a metaphor for all of those situations which seem lost, hopeless or impossible. And he said:

It was a sad day on Saturday. All hope seemed to be lost. Representatives were thrown out of the State House. Democracy seemed to be at its end…I don’t know how long this Saturday in Tennessee will last…But we have good news, folks. We’ve got good news that Sunday always comes. Resurrection is a promise. And it is a prophecy. It is a prophecy that came out of the cotton fields. It is a prophecy that came out of the lynching tree. It is a prophecy that still lives in each one of us…And I still have hope because I know we are still here…and we will never quit…”

Resurrection always comes. It is a promise. And it still lives.

That is what we celebrate today.

In our gospel, Mary of Magdala is going to the tomb of Jesus to perfume the body. She had to delay this ritual due to the Sabbath, and instead goes very early the next morning.  It was likely a very dangerous action that she was taking – venturing out alone as a woman and particularly to the tomb of a state-executed criminal.  But she goes none-the-less, undaunted by fear and driven by her love.

I think about so many of us who try to do this in our lives.  We put ourselves out there for others somehow. No one else might ever see it or know about it, but we try to do it because it is the right thing to do. While we are aware of the cost (or potential cost), we do it anyway out of a love that we can’t always explain.

And then in the midst of this tragedy, resurrection!

It doesn’t make sense. What we thought was the end is not the end. Somehow something else happened that we could not have predicted. God played a wild card.

Rebecca Solnit is an author and student of history whose words have sustained me over the years. She says that,

If you take the long view, you’ll see how startlingly, how unexpectedly but regularly things change. Not by magic, but by the incremental effect of countless acts of courage, love, and commitment, the small drops that wear away stones and carve new landscapes, and sometimes by torrents of popular will that change the world suddenly. To say that is not to say that it will all come out fine in the end regardless. I’m just telling you that everything is in motion, and sometimes we are ourselves that movement…You don’t stop walking because there is no way forward. Of course there is no way. You walk the path into being, you make the way, and if you do it well, others can follow the route. You look backward to grasp the long history you’re moving forward from, the paths others have made, the road you came in on. You look forward to possibility. That’s what we mean by hope, and you look past it into the impossible and that doesn’t stop you either. But mostly you just walk, right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot.”[1]

Jesus paved the way for us. His “countless acts of courage, love and commitment” coupled with God’s grace and power ushered this path into being. Indeed, he looked backward into history and followed the paths that others had made and he, too, trusted in a promise and possibility.

Mary of Magdala was also on that path as a disciple, and she ran to tell the disciples the good news.  She is often called the “apostle to the apostles” because she broke the story and then she invited them into the hope.

And we need not look too far to see that resurrection is all around. It is the way of nature. It is the ritual of spring. It is the way of all that sleeps and arises. It is the way creation trusts in unseen but deeply known processes.

On Easter Sunday, we celebrate the power of God to make a way out of no way, to look past the impossible. As Solnit reminds us, this is not to say that it will “all come out fine in the end.” But it is to say that disappointment, setbacks, discouragement, loss and grief are not the end of any story. Even death is not the end.

Rep. Justin Pearson’s remarks are really quite an appropriate Easter Sunday sermon.  Even as he is in a “Saturday” moment and does not know how long it will last, he names resurrection as a promise and a prophecy.

And so using his words and the words of Rebecca Solnit, I pray

Happy Easter, everyone!

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[1] https://mondediplo.com/openpage/too-soon-to-tell