Resurrection Life

 

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
April 16, 2023

2 Easter A 

          Donna Hart was my friend, my mentor, and my colleague.  She was born the same year as my mother-1932- and until her death in 2006, she was a fearless force to be reckoned with.  Donna had been betrayed by her husband while her three children were young.  She got a divorce and set out to rebuild her life.  She took on a fledgling and controversial domestic violence shelter in Springfield, Ohio and through sheer grit and determination she turned the shelter into a vibrant ministry that has helped countless women and their children rebuild their lives.  She knew what it was like to have to rebuild a life as a single mother and she worked hard to make that a better experience for others.  In the 1970’s, Donna had no problem showing up at the Statehouse in Columbus to speak the truth to power and advocate for laws that protected the victims of domestic violence rather than the perpetrators.  Donna also knew what it was like to be housing insecure and worked with the city through the Neighborhood Housing Partnership to provide quality affordable housing to those on low incomes.  As Donna aged, her health deteriorated to the point where we thought we would lose her.  But she fought her way back and lived several more years, during which time she became a deacon in the Episcopal Church.  Most Sundays, she could be found at the healing station in the church, much like ours, praying for those who knelt there.  Donna was able to take her own pain, her own wounds, and use them in productive and powerful ways to make a difference in the lives of others.

          I always think of Donna when I hear today’s gospel reading.  In fact, I chose this very passage for the gospel reading at her funeral.  On Easter evening, Jesus appears to the disciples who are behind closed doors, living in fear.  The problem here is not the Jews.  The problem is the disciples’ fear.  Having heard Mary’s witness that she has seen the risen Christ, the fearful disciples are hiding behind locked doors.  But neither a locked door nor fear stops the Risen Christ who appears to the disciples, breathes the Holy Spirit into them and sends them out into the world. 

          Thomas is not with the disciples, however.  Thomas is out moving on with his life.  While historically the disciple has been known as “Doubting Thomas,” I find that moniker to be highly unfair.  At least he is not in hiding!  And the story is not about Thomas.  The story is about Jesus.  But understandably, when the disciples tell Thomas that they have seen the Lord, he is skeptical.  Who wouldn’t be?  So he says “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”  Thomas is really asking no more and no less than the other disciples had already experienced.  And Jesus complies.

          How do the disciples recognize the risen Christ in their midst?  By the wounds in his hands and his side.  The resurrection has not erased the wounds of the crucifixion.  Resurrection life is not about erasing the past or pretending like wounds never happened.  Resurrection life is about allowing God to transform those wounds and then using them to bear witness to the love of God.  The resurrected Jesus showed the disciples his wounds to bear witness to resurrection life.

          Peter’s message in the reading from Acts is similar.  Peter is speaking to the Israelites, his own people.  He is not an outsider criticizing the actions of others.  Peter is the one who denied Jesus three times in Jesus’ moment of need, so he does not have a lot of ground for criticizing others!  He is not casting blame for the death of Jesus but setting the crucifixion in the context of God’s plan of salvation.  According to Peter, God took the actions of those who killed Jesus and used those actions to bring about resurrection, freeing Jesus from death.  God took the horrible actions of human beings and created resurrection life.

          As followers of Jesus, of the Risen Christ, we are called to bear witness to resurrection with our lives.  As my friend Donna did, we are called to bear witness to our Easter faith that wounds and death do not own us.  Life and Love own us.   We may do that in a public way, as Donna did, or we may do that in a more private way.  Those who have known hunger may work at a food bank.  Those who have known housing insecurity may work with Family Promise or Habitat for Humanity.  Those who have known grief may walk alongside those who are grieving.  Those who have known addiction may walk with those who are struggling.  The opportunities to be resurrection people are endless.   The story of Thomas reminds us that the world needs to see what resurrection life looks like.  Resurrection life is not perfect and without scars.  Resurrection life is living, not like we belong to fear and death, but as people who belong to life and love.

                                                          Amen.

         

Voice

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
April 9, 2023

Easter Day 

          My grandparents died some 30 years ago, yet I can still hear the sound of their voices calling my name.  My mother’s mother had a distinctive southern accent specific to southeast Alabama.  I would recognize that accent anywhere and I embarrassed my children more than once going up to strangers in various parts of the country and asking them where in southeast Alabama they lived.  The southern accent of my paternal grandmother was the raspy southern accent of a well-heeled lifelong chain smoker.  My father’s stepmother was from South Carolina and never lost that South Carolina drawl.  And my grandfather had the deep voice of a Texan who had lost the twang but kept the accent.  While they were alive, I could hear the love in their voices when they spoke my name.  Now, to remember the sound of those beloved voices speaking my name is to know their love deep within my soul.

          This morning, Mary Magdalene is frantic.  She has gone to Jesus’ tomb in the week hours of the morning before daybreak and the tomb is empty.  Someone has stolen the body of Jesus and she does not know where to find him.  Peter and the other disciple are not frantic; they just seem a bit confused.  They look into the empty tomb and one believes but we are not told what he believes.  We are only told that the two did not yet understand the scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead.  So they just go home, which I find rather anti-climactic. 

          But Mary stays at the tomb, weeping.  She stays in that way that we linger at a grave, holding on to a moment, not quite ready to go home.  The tomb is peaceful, if empty, and home is full of grief, dashed hopes, and loneliness.  When she looks back in the tomb, two angels ask her why she is weeping, and again she says “They have taken away my Lord and I do not know where they have taken him.”  In her grief, she is not the least bit fazed by the presence of two angels speaking to her.  She is focused.  She is not going to abandon Jesus.  She is going to find his body.  Then, in one of my favorite lines in all of scripture, Mary turns from the tomb and sees Jesus but mistakes him for the gardener.  Not until Jesus calls Mary by her name does she recognize the risen Lord in her midst.  She must have embraced Jesus in her joy, because Jesus says “Do not hold onto me.”  Then he tells Mary to go to his brothers and tell them that he is ascending to his father.  Her witness to the disciples is “I have seen the Lord!” and she tells them all Jesus said to her.

          Three things strike me about the Easter story in John’s gospel.  First, Mary thinks her beloved Jesus who she knows so well is the gardener, because who else would be in the garden so early in the morning?  I wonder how many times we are focused on the work we need to do, trying hard to be faithful and do good, and we mistake the risen Christ for a helpful friend, or a grumpy neighbor, or a stranger doing a random act of kindness, an impossible toddler, a person in need, or just a caring voice calling our name?  Easter opens our eyes to the reality that the risen Christ is abundantly present in our midst, sometimes in the least likely places. 

Secondly, Mary recognized Jesus when he called her name.   There is a lovely passage in the book of Isaiah in which God says “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.”  (Isaiah 43:1).  When the resurrected Jesus calls Mary’s name, Mary is being claimed by new life.  In that instant, Mary’s focus turns from looking for a dead body to wonder and awe at the new life before her.  Her life is transformed.  Easter calls each of us by name in the same way, releasing us from the hold of death to the joy and hope of resurrection life. 

          Lastly, Jesus says to Mary “Do not hold onto me.”  Like Mary, we do not get to hold on either.  Easter faith is not about holding on.  Easter faith is about letting go.  Like Mary, we can long to cling to the way things were before….before a pandemic, or a family tragedy, or a disappointment so we can be who we were before.  But the tomb is empty, giving us no reason to cling to the past.  We do not belong to death.  The voice of the Risen Christ claims us and calls us to let go of the tomb in all of its forms so we can move forward into the abundance of resurrection life and love. 

Like Mary, the resurrected Christ calls us each by name so that we can know the love of God deep within our souls, so that we can recognize the risen Christ in our midst, and so that we can move forward into the world to proclaim with our lives that resurrection life and love have won this day and forever. 

                                                                   Amen.

The Powers of Darkness

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
April 7, 2023

Good Friday

          Heavy on my heart this Holy Week is the shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville last week.  Don and I lived in Nashville not far from that church while we were in graduate school and we worshipped there one Sunday when I had an assignment to worship at a church in a tradition other than my own.  One of the children killed was the daughter of the pastor, and the sister of the substitute teacher killed was a friend of one of our own parishioners.  The powers of darkness had won, once again, and this time with very few degrees of separation.

          Tonight, we heard the account of the passion of Jesus in John’s gospel.  In the beginning of that gospel, we hear the words “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”  We hear the ending of the story before the story is even told.  On this Good Friday, as we wait and watch with the dead body of Jesus, as we live in a world where terrorists, violence, fear and suspicion seem to win way more often than not, how are we to live as followers of Christ and bear witness to a story in which light ultimately triumphs?

          I am sometimes asked what it means to be a Christian.  While being a Christian does mean patterning our lives after the life of Jesus, that is not the primary meaning.  There are a great many people after whom we would do well to pattern our lives. But being a Christian is fundamentally different from simply trying to live like someone we admire.  At the most primary level, being a Christian means that I am not defined by the sum total of my success minus my failures or vice versa, and certainly not by anything that happens to me or in the world, good or bad.  As Christians, we are defined by the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Our baptismal liturgy tells us that in baptism we are joined with Christ in his death and resurrection.  We are people who follow a crucified AND risen Lord. 

          On Good Friday, our liturgy holds together death and resurrection.  We will hear “We glory in your cross, O Lord, and praise and glorify your holy resurrection; for by virtue of you cross, joy has come into the world.”  On this holy and somber night, when the powers of death and hell have taken their best shot, we hold fast to the belief that the darkness cannot overcome the light.  The death of Jesus is real.  Evil is named, not denied.  But even on Good Friday as we stand before the cross and witness the power of evil at work, and the pain and horror evil causes, we praise and glorify the resurrection, bearing witness to the light.

          Jesus was not alone at the cross.  Good Friday calls us to gather at the cross with Jesus as did Mary, Mary’s sister, Mary Magdalene, and the disciple whom Jesus loved, and be people who can look evil in the eye without living in the shadow of fear.   Good Friday calls us to gather at the cross and not look away as Jesus gives up his spirit, recognizing those places where we are complicit in the forces of darkness and fail to receive the gift of Jesus’ life, which no one took from him but which Jesus gave out of his great love for humankind.  Good Friday calls us to tend to the broken body of Jesus as Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea did, tending with the same extravagant loving care to those who are victims of violence, injustice, and hate in our own world.  In the midst of the pain and grief wrought by the powers of darkness, in the midst of this Good Friday world, we are called, not to deny the power of evil, but to be the very embodiment of the words “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”  We are called to let our lives be defined by the death and resurrection of Jesus.

                                                          Amen. 

Chaos

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
April 2, 2023

Palm Sunday 

          If everything we know about Palm Sunday came from our Palm Sunday liturgy, our worship, we would leave this morning believing that Palm Sunday was Jesus’ orderly entry into Jerusalem, well thought out since the beginning of time, going exactly according to plan, with people singing their hearts out in praise preferably in the right key, and united in their expectation that something amazing was about to happen.  Those of us who plan worship actually work hard to make that your experience.  However, a close reading of the Palm Sunday story in Matthew’s gospel tells a very different story about Palm Sunday.  

          Our first clue that perhaps this was not an orderly, well thought out event is when Jesus sends his disciples to find a donkey and a colt to fulfill what the prophet said, which is actually a blend from the prophets Isaiah and Zechariah.  Well and good until verse 7 when Jesus sits on both the donkey and the colt at the same time.  I have never ridden a colt or a donkey and know nothing about either, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out how one can ride both at the same time. 

          The second clue is in the words that the crowds are shouting.  “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!  Hosanna in the highest heaven!”  We hear shouts of praise.  But the word “Hosanna” literally means “save” or “help.”  The crowds are shouting for Jesus to save them.  Save them from what?  What are they expecting from this Son of David?  First century Jews were no more united in their expectations and beliefs about the messiah or most other aspects of their faith than 21^st century Christians are.  But the people are in Jerusalem for the Passover, which is the Jewish feast that celebrates their liberation from Egypt.  In their worship, as instructed in the book of Exodus, the people relive their deliverance and celebrate God’s saving action.  So clearly the people want to be saved from something, something so big and important that they have taken to the streets to make their appeal to Jesus.  And when a large crowd is gathered to celebrate their liberation from an oppressor, even long ago, the current oppressor, in this case the Romans, has reason to take notice. Trouble is on the horizon.

          Thirdly, at the end of the passage, when Jesus enters Jerusalem, the whole city is in turmoil, which is never a good sign.  When the people ask “Who is this?” the answer is not “the Son of David” which the crowds had been shouting.  The answer is “the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”  Why the change?  I don’t know and the commentaries are not clear.  But here is my guess.  Prophets were notoriously unpredictable and often met with resistance to the point of being killed.  I wonder if the people’s answer is partially “we don’t have a clue” and partially a recognition that the next part of the story may not go well for Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth.  Perhaps they want to distance themselves from what is about to unfold.

          Despite our attempts to make our Palm Sunday liturgy the opposite of chaos and confusion, the reality is that Palm Sunday was full of both.  There is nothing orderly about this day that sends us into Jesus’ arrest, trial, and crucifixion.  In a moment, we will enter into those events.  In our mind’s eye, we will watch as Jesus is arrested, betrayed, tried, crucified and as he dies.  We will shout “Crucify him.”  When we shout those words, we are not playing the part of someone else.  With those words we are owning our own place in the crowds and the way we tend to behave when we are caught up in crowd mentality.  We are owning the times we deny Jesus, owning the times we are complicit as others suffer unjustly, owing the times when we are bystanders to the evils that rob others of life because we fail to take action.  Palm Sunday challenges us to grapple with the question: “From what do we wish the Son of David to save us?  And in what ways do we take matters into our own hands to achieve our salvation, even at the expense of others, rather than trust the sacrificial love of God?”

                                                                                      Amen.