Note: This sermon was preached at Trinity Episcopal Church, Natchitoches, La. To listen to a digital recording of the sermon, visit the church's website.
When it comes to resurrection scenarios, Matthew (28:1-10 NRSV) seems to have taken a page out of the book of epic filmmaker Cecile B. DeMille.
You might recall that in Mark’s resurrection story, the stone is already out of the way when the women arrive. A young man in white seated quietly inside the tomb tells them Jesus is not there. The scene ends in dumbstruck silence with the women running away, afraid to tell anyone what they had seen.
But Matthew is all high drama. An angel in blazing white descends from heaven before their very eyes, single-handedly rolls a mighty stone out of the way… and triumphantly sits on it. The men—not the women—the men on guard duty swoon at the sight.
Then the angel makes his magnificent proclamation, the women turn to go—according to Matthew, in fear and great joy, and suddenly Jesus himself stands before them. And the women fall at his feet and worship him.
Can it escape our notice that just yesterday, at high noon, an earthquake punctuated the last breath of Jesus the Christ.. on a cross.. in a place of death called Golgotha?
Can it escape our notice that just a few weeks ago, an earthquake rocked Japan, then sent a giant tsunami wave of destruction crashing into the same shores, killing thousands and leaving utter devastation in its wake?
Can it escape our notice that just over a year ago, an earthquake leveled the capital city of Haiti, killing thousands and leaving millions homeless?
We are all too familiar with earthquakes, and the human tragedy they cause. So what in heaven’s name is one doing, here, right in the middle of our resurrection story?
Nora Gallagher is a novelist who has also written several books about her own spiritual journey. One of them is called Practicing Resurrection. It is an account of how the loss of a beloved brother throws her life into a tailspin, and of her return from walking straight down a wrong vocational path, dragging a failing marriage.
Gallagher’s struggle back requires her to re-examine everything: her call, her work, her marriage. It leads her finally to an exploration of nothing less than life after death. She finds that “experiences of resurrection are not believing six impossible things before breakfast.” Rather, she proposes, “Maybe resurrection, like everything else, needs to be practiced.”
We have all been there, in one way or another. Human existence is a series of earthquakes, large and small. Some are beyond our control. I have never experienced an earthquake of the natural kind, but I imagine that little can be more terrifying than to feel the very earth move under our feet. It is the ultimate loss of control.
Other earthquakes are of our very own making. We march resolutely into dead ends and struggle to find a way back out again.
And as Matthew illustrates by putting an earthquake smack dab in the middle of the resurrection story, joyful events can also create upheaval in our lives. A baby is born, and mom and dad must create a new marriage out of the ashes of the honeymoon, a marriage in which gazing into each others’ eyes is replaced by advanced skill in “keeping an eye on” 16 different things at once, from the shrinking pile of disposable diapers to the toddler about to stick its finger in the puppy’s eye.
We don’t have to be control freaks to long for some control, some ability to maintain our balance as we face big challenges and small ones of daily life. But we have so very little. Fr. Richard Rohr defines human suffering precisely in these terms. “When are humans suffering?” he asks. “When they have no control.”
It often seems to me that it is precisely when we think we finally have it together, that we are finally on top of our game, that life hands us the most deadly, life-destroying blows. And we suffer.
Someone we love dies. A spouse or lover leaves us. A friend betrays us. We are downsized by our employer. Our company fails. An economic downturn takes most of our nest egg. Our politics turn nasty. Our children and grandchildren are sent half way around the world to fight a war that we are just not sure is worth the sacrifice of young, beautiful lives.
We aren’t in control, and much of the time it looks like God isn’t either.
But God chose to become human, to suffer and die on a cross in order to rise again in power over death. How do we understand that? As a one-time event? An economic transaction in which Jesus "paid a price” to God--or, was it to the devil?--so that we can live happily ever after, some day in some glorious future?
That kind of thinking certainly creeps into our religion through the words of hymns, sermons, meditation guides, and so forth. But it is wrong-headed. It diminishes the meaning of resurrection by making it a mechanical transaction trapped in history, and our lives something to be “gotten through” for some period of time while we await the coming of Glory.
As Fr. Richard observes, it makes our religion a mere “evacuation plan for the next world.”
The fundamental story of our faith is that something always must die before something new, bigger, better can be born. And the thing that must die is our own beloved ego.
Earthquakes are destructive, but the human ego even more so. It is the human ego that leads us to destroy others in myriad ways, physically and emotionally, individually and as nations. The human ego destroys others with its need to be right, to save face, to feel secure, to judge, to divide the world into black vs. white, good and evil, us vs. them. The human ego is destructive in its need to take sides and to believe that God is on ours.
In Matthew’s resurrection story, the women fall down and worship Jesus. But in fact Jesus never once asked us to worship him. What he asks is that we follow him. And to follow Jesus the Christ, rather than merely believe in him or worship him, although those are good things, we must practice dying so that we can practice resurrection. Might this be what Paul means when he says we must consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ?
To let go of our prideful clinging to being right, being in control, being safe and secure… feels like dying. But if we can do that, and if we can follow Christ through the suffering and through the ashes of our hurts and losses and failures, the earthquakes of our lives become the very path to living our faith and sharing God’s love with a hurting world, which is to say, the very path to practicing resurrection.
AMEN.
Note: The occasion of this meditation was an interfaith worship service hosted by Northern & Central Louisiana Interfaith.
In the Hebrew Scripture just read (Jeremiah 29:4-7 NRSV), the prophet Jeremiah speaks words of comfort to the elders, priests, and people of Israel who had been exiled to Babylon. He also instructs them, in the name of the Lord God, to pray for Babylon.
Throughout history, the Jewish people have lived in many lands and cities under many different rulers and governments, and since the time of Jeremiah, have prayed for them.
One of the many ways Christianity is rooted in Judaism is that Christians of many denominations also pray for rulers and governments in the countries and communities where they live. It’s always nice to find connections among our faith traditions.
But notice that in instructing the Jews to pray for the city, God had a grander agenda than starting a tradition. Indeed, the situation for the Israelites was actually quite ironic. Jeremiah tells the Israelites to pray for the very enemies who had destroyed their home city, Jerusalem, captured them and carried them off against their will to Babylonia.
Why? Was God teaching how to “be nice” to captors or that we should accept abuses of power that oppress us? No. The motive and lesson clearly conveyed by Jeremiah is self-interest. Listen to it again: "But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare" (Jeremiah 29:7 NRSV).
Northern & Central Louisiana Interfaith seeks the welfare of Monroe, West Monroe, Ouachita Parish and all of our neighborhoods and communities because we understand self interest. We understand that our welfare as individuals and families is tied up, not only with that of our close relatives and church families, but also with the welfare of our cities and parish, state and region.
One of our founding leaders, Rabbi David Kline, understood and communicated Jeremiah’s point particularly well. A few years ago, we were asking the Monroe City Council to do something about a drainage canal that ran right through the playground of Madison James Foster School. “You must fix this,” Rabbi Kline said, “because the safety of our children depends on it.” And everybody in the room knew that not one of Rabbi Kline’s children or grandchildren had ever set foot in that school. And the ditch got closed!
The lesson God is teaching us through Jeremiah is twofold. First is self interest, the notion that what is good for the whole will be good for the individuals and families that make up the whole. So seek the good of the whole and everyone will prosper.
The second lesson that comes to us in this passage is that seeking the welfare of the city involves more than just sitting around complaining about how bad things are and complaining about the Babylonians who oppress us. Rather, God says through Jeremiah, you must do things that matter. You must take action. You must get involved and contribute to the welfare of the city.
Build homes, Jeremiah says. Plant gardens, grow your families by encouraging your children to marry and have children. Invest in the city in which you find yourself and create a prosperous community for yourself and your grandchildren.
Northern & Central Louisiana Interfaith came into being approximately 15 years ago with a similar vision. With the agitation of our first organizer, Perry Perkins, a handful of local clergy began to meet and to talk about the state of this city and region, and about what needed to change for the city to prosper and along with it their congregations.
These pastors gathered together more pastors and many people from their congregations, and those people brought friends and neighbors. Turns out a lot of people understood that their own welfare and the welfare of their families is all tied up with the welfare of the city.
They understood that the prosperity of diverse neighborhoods is linked, and that one neighborhood cannot fully prosper if another across the river or across the railroad tracks is better habitat for snakes and rats than it is for children.
They understood that educating themselves and their own children meant less and had less value when public schools in the community perform poorly. They understood that all of our children need to finish high school, and to come out of high school prepared for either college or the workplace.
On the other side of that equation, they understood that businesses and employers of all kinds need qualified workers from among the local population in order to grow and contribute to the prosperity of the city.
And so Interfaith was born, and the notion that ordinary people can pool their smarts and their energy and their money and build power and get things done in their communities… spread from Monroe to Shreveport… and to Alexandria… and to the Delta.
Not only that, but we have sister organizations in other parts of the state: Together Baton Rouge in our capital city, and one in New Orleans that indeed calls itself "Jeremiah."
The message of Jeremiah is that God works through the voices and actions of people of faith everywhere. Ordinary people of faith everywhere who understand that to prosper themselves, they must seek the prosperity of the city.
Thus Interfaith created the political will and the funding to start NOVA, an employer-driven workforce intermediary that recruits under-employed people and helps them get the skills they need to move into jobs that actually exist, and that pay a living wage and have benefits and a career path.
At the end of just two years, NOVA graduates have not only transformed their own families, but they are also contributing $2 million dollars annually to the economy of Ouachita Parish.
Interfaith continues to work also in the areas of education and of neighborhood renewal. We meet on a regular basis with Superintendent Harris, seeking ways to support her efforts and those of the Monroe City School Board to put children first in all decision making. We have supported Mount Nebo in its quest to revitalize this neighborhood, and we continue to work in the neighborhood around New Light Baptist Church.
We are contemporary Israelites seeking the welfare of our city, for therein lies the welfare of all of us. We are ordinary people gathered here this evening to celebrate a vision—our shared vision—and not only to celebrate, but to build the power we need to get the job done in our communities and our state.
AMEN.
