“We Are Resurrection!”
Sermon for MCC
New Haven
March 31, 2013
Rev. Brian
Hutchison, M.Div.
Texts:
Odes
of Solomon 17:1-4, 7-9
Gospel
of John: 20:1-18
Happy
Easter MCC!! Alleluia, Christ is risen! (Christ is risen indeed, Alleluia!) I
hope that all of you have had a good Holy Week. Mine was busier than usual
because of the US Supreme Court hearings over California Proposition 8 and the
Defense of Marriage Act were this past week. On Monday, my husband James and I
joined with Rev. Aaron Miller and MCC Hartford in marching from the MCC church
to the federal building where a rally was held. We shouted chants such as
“We’re here, we’re queer, we’re married, get used to it!” and my least
favorite, “Bigotry, go away! No more mister nice gay!” Connecticut Senator
Richard Blumenthal spoke briefly at the rally before running home to observe
Passover with his family. Though it was cold out there, there was a lot of
warmth in the love that was demonstrated.
Then on
Tuesday, the Channel 8 news came here to the church and interviewed me about
same-gender marriage and my thoughts on the hearings. I made sure to note that
Metropolitan Community Churches have been performing same-gender weddings since
1968 when MCC was founded, and MCC New Haven has been performing same-gender
marriages since its founding in 1977. So we have been waiting for decades for
the law to catch up to what we have been affirming in faith a long time. I also
made sure to note that this is not the last issue of the LGBT civil rights
movement. We will continue to fight for equality in employment, housing, and
all other areas of life. We will also continue to fight for the transgender
community and for women’s rights. In the words of the great anthem, “We have
come this far by faith”, but we still have a lot of work to do.
And it is
our faith that calls us to this important work. Today is all about
“resurrection.” We hear from the Gospel according to John that Jesus had died,
was rubbed with all kinds of perfumes and spices, and was laid in a brand new
tomb. The way John tells it, the one who was mocked as “King of the Jews” was
given the burial of a king. We don’t know
if this was factual, but we hold it to be true.
We are told
that before the sun even came up, Mary Magdalene finds the stone rolled away
from the tomb and she thinks Jesus’ corpse has been stolen. She then runs to
tell the disciples. We don’t know if this
was factual, but we hold it to be true.
We then
hear that Peter and the Beloved Disciple (sometimes called John the Beloved) run
to the tomb. The Beloved Disciple gets there first but then can’t go in. He
doesn’t want to see the mangled corpse of the man he loved so dearly. When
Peter catches up, he goes into the tomb and finds the grave clothes where they
had laid Jesus, but no body. Perplexed, they went home. We don’t know if this was factual, but we hold it to be true.
Then the
disciple Mary Magdalene stood outside the tomb and wept. She peeked inside,
still in disbelief that Jesus was gone. Then she had a vision of two angels, in
dazzling white clothes sitting there. This scene reminds me of a poem from Gay
Black Poet Essex Hemphill. It always makes me smile. This poem is called “The
Tomb of Sorrow”: “When I die, my angels, immaculate Black diva drag queens, all
of them sequined and seductive, some of them will come back to haunt you, I
promise, honey chil’.” Hemphill recalls from his Baptist upbringing, “The
funerals that I remember from my childhood were wonderful, spectacular events.
We would give to our dead relatives and friends, and indeed to all the lost
members of our community, the pageantry, the glory, the wrenching evocation of
love and loss that were most often missing from their lives. My great aunt with
her leg severed at the knee, my uncle the stone alcoholic, my grandmother [who
had breast] cancer that took her life became at the moment of their deaths
serene and peaceful, full of joy and hope, the intensely mourned members of a
loving family left in this great, if difficult, world. We would lay them out,
in caskets of ebony and bronze, wail over their bodies, and then remark with
satisfaction that they never looked better. We produced their deaths the way
that Samuel Goldwyn produced Hollywood musicals. Unsightly blemishes were
cleansed from our memories while our loved ones were consigned to God’s bosom,
where they would rest throughout eternity. Our loss was heaven’s gain.”
I think
Hemphill told it well. That’s the way we oftentimes treat death in America. Our
idea of resurrection is most often too close to resuscitation. God didn’t just
give Jesus CPR. Jesus was resurrected,
given a new existence among those whose lives he touched. If resurrection is
merely resuscitation, let’s all worship the defibrillator!
Unfortunately
Hemphill didn’t get the funeral he wanted. No drag queens to speak of, just a
Baptist preacher using his life as a gay man who died of AIDS as an example to
prove his point that the wages of sin equal death. Hemphill’s family of origin
did not give him resurrection. But through telling and retelling his story and
using his words, we do. Essex Hemphill is alive in this room because we affirm
what his life was all about.
In Jewish
tradition, that’s exactly what life after death is. The essence of a person
sleeps in She’ol after a hard life of work. But people are brought to life in
the ways we evoke their names and demonstrate the wisdom they brought to the
world. So at this time, after a month of gathering the names of influential
women, I invite you to say their names aloud in a great litany of female saints. … And for these great women, we give
God thanks!
Mary
Magdalene is one of these influential women. She is truly the disciple of the
resurrection. She is the first to encounter the risen Christ, though she
doesn’t recognize him at first. She thinks he is the gardener who has perhaps
taken away Jesus’ body. But the moment he says her name, “Mary!” she yells
“Teacher!” I’m sure she wanted to embrace him and not let go. Contrary to
popular belief, Jesus doesn’t tell her not to touch him as if there is some superstition
about touching a resurrected body. He rather tells her, “Do not hold on to me.”
At the most
difficult but necessary moment, Jesus teaches an important lesson about
attachment. Jesus tells Mary that she cannot hold onto his body because he cannot stay in body. No one can prove what
factually happened to Jesus’ flesh. Some biblical scholars claim that visions
of the risen Christ were just mirages that came from grief and that his body
was probably treated like other criminals: thrown to the animals. Some Indian
Christians guard a tomb in India where the body of Jesus is said to have been
buried. Their legend says that Jesus spent a long and happy life teaching there
in India after escaping Jerusalem. The Koran says that Jesus did not die but
somehow got off of the cross and lived, but stayed in hiding. The crazy history
channel has even gone as far to say that aliens could have come and beamed
Jesus up to a flying saucer (I really want to know who owns that channel now).
But
regardless of all these theories of what is factual,
what we know to be true is that
Christ is risen. I know that Christ is risen when I hear someone tell me that
she is cancer-free. I believe in resurrection when a young man tells me that
his HIV is finally undetectable after years of trying different treatments. I
feel the essence of resurrection when I hear the witness of a person who has
recovered from addiction. I cry with resurrection joy when I hear that a
bullied teen has chosen life over death because of someone who reached out with
a word of hope.
MCC, we are
a resurrection people! If we stop at the grave like the Gospel of Mark did
(Mark really did not write about the resurrection. What is in your Bible was
added later.), where does that leave us? Remember what people told Jesus before
they opened Lazarus’ tomb: in the Old English, “But Lord, he stinketh!” Do you
want to stinketh or do you want to have new life? As rational of a decision as
it sounds, we too often choose to go back in the tomb. We too often go back to
the exes who treated us poorly. We too often let family members tell us we are
sinful and we put up with it. We too often let discrimination slide. We too
often beat ourselves up thinking that we are somehow paying for sin when all we
are really doing is bringing pain to God’s heart.
Saints, get
out of the tomb! You and I have no place there. The tomb is the place of
self-loathing. The tomb is the place where voices of doubt and fear and shame
rule. The tomb is the closet. Come out! Jesus told Lazarus to come out and he
did. God told Jesus to come out… and he did! So if you’re in the tomb, get out and
take a bath in the living waters of life!
Life is
short and it is waiting for us. Jesus taught that we are to have life and have
it more abundantly. A Course in Miracles
teaches us this: “This week we celebrate life, not death… Offer each other the
gift of lilies, not the crown of thorns; the gift of love and not the “gift” of
fear. You stand beside each other, thorns in one hand and lilies in the other,
uncertain which to give. Join now with me and throw away the thorns, offering
the lilies to replace them. This Easter, I would have the gift of your
forgiveness offered by you to me and returned by me to you” (ACIM 20:2).
Friends,
Jesus taught in the Gospels and the risen Christ teaches us today that in order
to embrace the fullness of life, we must let go. We can’t fool ourselves into
thinking we can live in these bodies forever with treatments and Botox and
facelifts. Even Joan Rivers and Cher know they can’t live forever. We must let
go of resentment over anything that has occurred in the past. We must also let
go of attachment to what this community has been over its 35 years. As the
musical RENT says, “Forget regret or life is yours to miss.”
We have so
much to live into with our community. But in order to do so, we must model
ourselves after the disciples. While practically everyone in Jerusalem was
talking about Jesus as a failed messiah, the Christ-followers changed the
discourse. They denied the talk that
went around. Instead of agreeing with what was being said, they responded with
“But Christ is risen!” … “Jesus gave up.” “But Christ is risen!” … “Jesus
abandoned us.” “But Christ is risen!” … “You Jesus people are delusional.” “But
Christ is risen!”
The
Christ-followers, empowered by the holy Spirit, denied negative, pessimistic
talk and affirmed the truth of what they knew in faith. So when you hear
anything negative about MCC, say in return, “MCC is risen!” I don’t care what
you have observed in the past or what your predictions of the future are. If we
believe together that God is giving new life to this community, then we will
rise like a phoenix from the ashes.
Poet Kahlil
Gibran wrote, “You shall be free indeed when your days are NOT without a care
nor your nights without a want and a grief, But rather when these things girdle
your life and let you rise above them naked and unbound.”[1]
In other words, the road is not going to be easy, but that doesn’t mean
resurrection is not possible. To the contrary, resurrection happens in the midst of difficulty, in the midst of trouble. For there to be a
resurrection, there must first be a death. Here at MCC we have mourned the
death of many things. We have had time to mourn. But in the words of the author
of Ecclesiastes, “There is a time to mourn and a time to dance.” Saints, this
is our time to dance! As I have heard it said, “Hard times require furious dancing.”
This day,
we do not dwell on the crucifixion. If you ever saw The Passion of the Christ… I’m sorry. There is enough gore and
death and suffering in this world that we can view with the click of a TV
remote. Instead, my friends, let’s choose life. I leave you with a quote from
Father Henri Nouwen in his book Our
Greatest Gift. He says, “The resurrection does not solve our problems about
dying and death. It is not the happy ending to our life's struggle, nor is it
the big surprise that God has kept in store for us. No, the resurrection is the
expression of God's faithfulness to Jesus and to all God's children. Through
the resurrection, God has said to Jesus, "You are indeed my beloved Son,
and my love is everlasting," and to us God has said, "You indeed are
my beloved children, and my love is everlasting." The resurrection is
God's way of revealing to us that nothing that belongs to God will ever go to
waste. What belongs to God will never get lost.”
Beloved,
you are never really lost. Your life is never wasted. Know that you are each
precious in God’s sight and that with each death in your life, God weeps. But
more importantly, know that with each resurrection in your life, God dances.
Amen.
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