March 31, 2013

Clay Nelson

Easter Day


Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Look out here comes the preacher walking the Easter sermon tightrope. Can I balance the life-giving message of joy and hope that the ancient story of resurrection suggests, with the progressive theology and openness St Matthew’s embodies. Can I make it across safely to the other side without falling into either the dreaded, dogmatic pit of spirit killing, rigid orthodoxy or the confusing fog of bland generalities that can mean just about anything? We’ll know in about 12 minutes.

In past years I’ve gotten across by first making a blood sacrifice of a sacred cow, the literal belief in Jesus’ bodily resurrection. Some say what’s the harm in believing the unbelievable? From my perspective, suspending our disbelief to hear today’s Gospel as history and not myth denies the reality of resurrection that occurs daily in our lives. Easter is not an occasion to celebrate something that happened once long ago. It is to be celebrated moment to moment in our daily lives. It is not a fairy tale. It is in the DNA of life itself. If we think resurrection is reserved only for the Son of God we miss the point and the hope it offers. What’s more it is not just a Christian experience. It is a human experience reflected in many religions.

Robert Morris speaks about the commonplace and frequently unnoticed ways that people rise above their loneliness and fear as ordinary resurrections. He points out that the origin of resurrection is the Greek word anastasis, which, he notes, means standing up again, and, as he puts it unpretentiously: We all lie down. We all rise up. We do this every day. The same word, as he notes, is used in Scripture: I am the resurrection and the life. He observes: the resurrection does not wait for Easter. [i]

But Easter is here. The Saxon goddess Ostara, famous for transforming her bird into a bunny that lays coloured eggs, has done her work to fill our children with wonder and delight. So what do we want before we leave here this morning besides the chocolate eggs and hot cross buns we will offer at morning tea?

Madelene L'Engle's tells of being with her grandchildren at bedtime for reading and song. “Her grandchild Lena turned to her and asked: Is everything all right? She said, Yes, of course, everything is all right. Lena asked again: Gram, is everything really all right? I mean really? L'Engle says she looked at that little child in her white nightgown and realized that she was asking the cosmic question, the question that is out beyond the safety of this home full of light and love and warmth. Every Christmas we come to the manger child and ask the same question: Is everything really all right? Every Easter we come to the tomb and ask that same question: Is everything really all right?” [ii]

We live in a world where so much is not all right it is hard to find any hope, even here in New Zealand where a lot more is right than in most of the world. Just one example: While the figures vary, it is safe to say at least 250,000 of our children in New Zealand are growing up in poverty. That means they are not getting proper nourishment, health care, and in too many cases education. Where is their hope? If their parents are fortunate enough to have jobs they are clearly not being paid a living wage. If their parents are on a benefit it is considerably less than the minimum wage, which is already well below a living wage. Where is their hope? Can we tell them this Easter everything is all right? Really all right?

All too often what they hear is, “It’s your fault.” Even from those who are touched by their plight, they hear, “I’m sorry, a living wage is not sustainable. We can’t afford it.” Seriously, how are our children at fault for the circumstances of their birth? How are the fruits of poverty: lost potential and productivity, higher crime; increased healthcare costs sustainable? How are we not at fault when we remain quiet in the face of higher and higher income inequality that benefits only those at the very top? When we accept goods and services from companies, churches and government entities that don’t pay their employees enough to support their families, who is at fault for child poverty?

All too often those of us who do not have to go to school on empty stomachs look at poverty and only see statistics, not flesh and blood. For us the poor are faceless. They will remain trapped in the cycle of poverty until we have a national will to look them in the eye and say no more. Easter is here.

This week Parliament had their last debate before voting shortly on something that was once thought unimaginable, marriage equality for the LGBT community. I listened to one list MP, Jacinda Ardern, who competed and lost to represent this district, who said she was dedicating her vote for the bill to her uncle who in 1948 spent three years in prison for loving the wrong gender. The reason New Zealanders are no longer prepared to discriminate against this class of people is because they are no longer faceless. We have looked at our family members and friends and co-workers in the eye and said no more. Easter is here. Everything is all right.

Until we know who the poor are and what they look like it will not be all right. Until we see the 13 year olds reduced to being sex workers, the thousands who line up in our parking lot to get food parcels before Christmas, until we know the names of our cleaners and more importantly, the names of their children it will not be all right.

Peter Rollins, author of The Orthodox Heretic, has this to say about 'the' resurrection:

"Without equivocation or hesitation I fully and completely admit that I deny the resurrection of Christ… I deny the resurrection of Christ every time I do not serve at the feet of the oppressed, each day that I turn my back on the poor; I deny the resurrection of Christ when I close my ears to the cries of the downtrodden and lend my support to an unjust and corrupt system. However there are moments when I affirm that resurrection, few and far between as they are. I affirm it when I stand up for those who are forced to live on their knees, when I speak for those who have had their tongues torn out, when I cry for those who have no more tears left to shed" [iii]

I would add, when we look into our children’s faces and see Jesus’ face, then I will know Easter is here.

In the face of not everything being all right, I live in the hope of the empty tomb. It proclaims grace is and has always been everywhere. The task is to make it so.

[i] Jonathan Kozol, Ordinary Resurrections, New York: Crown Publishers, 2000, 107-108.

[ii] The Summer of the Great Grandmothe, New York: Harper & Row, 1986

[iii] Rollins, P, The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales. Orleans. Paraclete Press, 2009