MAKE THE TOMB SECURE!

MAKE THE TOMB SECURE!

            In Matthew’s version of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the political and religious leaders gather together to plan their strategy, after Jesus is executed as a revolutionary by the Roman government.  They felt that he was a dangerous person because he was inspiring others to see themselves and see others as children of God rather than as subjects of Rome. So, in Matthew 27:65-66 the Roman governor orders guards to be put at the tomb of the executed Jesus and that a huge stone be placed at the opening of the tomb.  That 27^th chapter of Matthew closes with these words:  “they… made the tomb secure by sealing the stone.” 

            Make the tomb secure!  Make the tomb secure! It has been the call of the fallen powers since the beginning – proclaim that death and violence rule!  It is the orders of Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell and the governor of my home state of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson.  Make the tomb secure!  The powerful ministry of Jesus of Nazareth had political implications from the beginning.   As he helped people turn towards God, of necessity we would, sooner or later, turn away from Rome or America or racism or sexism or militarism or materialism as the center of our lives.  McConnell and Sessions and Trump and Hutchinson all understand how dangerous this stuff is – make the tomb secure!  Don’t let life and love out into the world!  Have everyone dominated by fear and death!  That’s why Arkansas wants to kill so many people in its execution chambers before the end of this month – death rules!  Make the tomb secure!

            In this Eastertide, we are asked to remember this story of death and fear and domination and to take it seriously – but, not too seriously!  In chapter 28, Matthew ridicules and makes fun of “make the tomb secure!”  It begins in comic fashion – an angel comes and pops that huge stone out of the tomb.  It is such a powerful force that it is described as a great earthquake.  And, then the angel comes forth – not a fierce, fire-breathing, sword-bearing angel of Mel Gibson movies - but rather a young man who hops up on the rock and sits on it and who speaks to Mary Magdalena and the other women who have come to anoint the dead body of Jesus.  The powerful guards are stunned – they shake all over and go into a catatonic state, petrified with fear. 

            Then the stunning news – death does not rule:  the tomb is not secure.  The power of life and love and justice has come out of the tomb, and that same power of life and love and justice bids us to follow Jesus, by no matter what name we call God, or even if we don’t believe in God.  The four horsemen of fear – McConnell, Sessions, Trump and Hutchinson- all tell us that the tomb is secure, but we know a different story in this season.   Another Magdalena – Magdalena Garcia – put it this way yesterday on her Facebook page:  “Jesus lives – how about His followers?”  We are asked to put our trust in this story of life and love and justice.  Hard to do – we are so afraid, so confused, so shaky.  Yet, it all began with people like us.  Here we go – the tomb is not secure!

ON THE ROAD TO CHATTANOOGA -- THE MEANING OF THE RESURRECTION

ON THE ROAD TO CHATTANOOGA – THE MEANING OF THE RESURRECTION

            In one of Luke’s stories about the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the risen Jesus walks several miles on the road to Emmaus with some of his followers.  During this journey, where they walk and talk together, they do not recognize the risen Jesus – the followers assume that he is just another sojourner.  Only when they offer him hospitality in their home and supply him supper, only then do they recognize him.

            I had a similar experience on the road to Chattanooga in 1975.  Caroline and I were driving up to visit her parents in Chattanooga, and I was studying for my Presbytery exam to be ordained.  This was back when the southern Presbyterian Church still existed, and there were extensive examinations on the floor of the Presbytery meeting.  Caroline and I had just accepted a call to be co-pastors at St. Columba Presbyterian Church in Norfolk – we would be the first official clergy couple to serve in a local church in the PCUS.  Caroline had already been ordained to be a pastor by Atlanta Presbytery in 1973 to be a campus minister at Georgia Tech.  I was going over various doctrines to prepare for the Norfolk Presbytery exam. 

            Since Caroline has been my primary theologian for many decades, I felt hopeful when I asked her on that trip on I-75 about a doctrine that was giving me trouble.  “What do you think that the meaning of the Resurrection is?  I’m having trouble figuring that one out.”  At that point, I was not sure that I believed in life after death, and if I didn’t accept that, what could I say about the Resurrection during my Presbytery examination?

            Caroline answered:  “I don’t know what it means for life after death.  I’ll leave that part up to God.  But I see the Resurrection as a way of understanding our lives now.  It has more to do with our lives than our deaths.  In the Resurrection of Jesus, God is calling us into new life now, in this life.”  I knew then that I had met the risen Jesus, that my eyes had been opened, and I now could recognize the risen Jesus.  It was an answer that changed the way I looked at the Resurrection and at the Bible itself.  I came to see that the purpose of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is not to get individuals into heaven, as I had been taught to believe by the heritage of the slaveholders. The purpose of Jesus Christ is to enable us to live in the presence of God now.  Just as God rolled away the stone from the tomb of Jesus on that Easter morning, so God continues to roll away the stone from the tomb of our hearts, so that we may be released from the power of death.  Strange to say, but I came to recognize the risen Jesus on the road to Chattanooga.

            We should note that this difficulty of recognizing the risen Jesus is a theme in the Resurrection stories in the Gospels.  As I mentioned earlier, the followers on the road to Emmaus have trouble recognizing Jesus.  In John’s Gospel, one of the primary disciples, Mary Magdalene, cannot recognize the risen Jesus, even though she is seeing him and talking with him.  He’s not a ghost – she thinks that he is the caretaker of the cemetery.   In Mark’s account, the women who come to the tomb of Jesus are so stunned by the news of the Resurrection that they don’t say anything to anybody. 

            In our reflections on Easter and the Resurrection, we should use this entry point, not as a sign that we are unfaithful but as a sign of the depth of our captivity.  We are so captured by the powers of the world, that like those first disciples, we have trouble recognizing the risen Jesus standing right in front of us.  The power of the Cross reminds us of our captivity, and the power of the Resurrection reminds us that death does not rule – not only when we die, but even more especially when we live.  The risen Jesus is out in front of us, calling us out of the tombs of death so that we, too, can have our hearts and our eyes opened to see the power of God in this life, right now.  Let us listen for those witnesses who are pointing us to the risen Jesus, so that we may find that same power that enabled those first disciples to stand up to the Roman Empire and to change the world.

RIDE ON, KING JESUS

RIDE ON, KING JESUS

            This traditional spiritual was my favorite one that the Sanctuary Mass Choir sang while I was pastor at Oakhurst.  It resonates deeply as we begin this Holy Week.  All four gospels have an account of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem at the time of Passover.  In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it is Jesus’ first trip to Jerusalem.  He seems to have deliberately chosen to enter the Holy City at this festival, with its emphasis on God’s freeing the Hebrew slaves from captivity in Egypt.  His followers catch the hint – it is time!  The Roman oppressors will be overthrown, the corrupt religious leaders will be thrown out of the Temple, and Temple worship will be restored to its rightful place as a sanctuary for encountering the presence of God.  His followers shout and celebrate as they enter the Holy City – “blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord!”  It is time!  Ride On, King Jesus!

            The parade for Jesus enters Jerusalem from the east side of the city from the Mount of Olives, a traditional place from which the Messiah is supposed to be coming.   On the west side of the city, there is another parade, perhaps on the same day.  It is the Roman governor of Palestine, Pontus Pilate, and his Roman soldiers entering Jerusalem during the Passover festival.  Pilate lives in Caesarea near the Mediterranean coast, the capital of the province.  Yet, at Passover, he and the Romans come into to Jerusalem to warn the Jewish residents there:  “Celebrate your Passover, but be careful – don’t get carried away with the idea of freedom and liberation from captivity.  Stay within the bounds of making Passover an event of the past, and things will go fine.  Be careful – if you go outside the bounds, we will crush you.”

            So, these two parades enter Jerusalem about the same time.  Jesus, riding on a jackass, no weapons, no army, no money, just a ragtag band of followers fired up about the reign of God coming.  Pilate and his army, trumpets blaring, drums beating, calvary armed for battle, infantry ready to fight – the reps of Rome are here!

            This drama of Holy Week will have these two systems wrestle in the hearts of the people of Jerusalem and in our own hearts too.  This drama is always contemporary because these two systems are in a mighty struggle in our individual and collective hearts.  One system tells us that the center of life is love and justice and compassion and mercy.  The other system tells us that the center of life is domination and money and redemptive violence and death.   Most of us find ourselves in the middle of this struggle all of our lives, and Holy Week reminds us that we almost always bend towards the system of domination in our hearts and in our actions.  Like those first followers of Jesus, we just can’t stay with him, when the system of domination roars at us, or whispers in the night to us.  Some of us are like Judas, so disappointed in Jesus that we betray him.  Some of us are like the male disciples who promise to follow Jesus all the way but then flee in terror when he is arrested.  Some of us are like the women disciples who watch at a distance when Jesus is lynched by Rome.  No one stays with him. 

            That’s the difficult truth of this Holy Week – it is why it is always a contemporary story.  We believe in the Tomahawk missiles.  We believe in the power of money.  We believe in redemptive violence.  And, the difficult truth is exposed to us this week – we would rather kill Jesus than be transformed by his love.  This Holy Week reminds us of our captivity and the deals that we make to rationalize that captivity.   Whatever our particular rationalization – racism, sexism, nationalism, homophobia, materialism, militarism (the list seems endless) – it all leads to the Cross.

            Ride On, King Jesus!  We have such high hopes for Jesus and God – and then the world intercedes:  violence, Donald Trump, rollback of the EPA guidelines, denial of climate change, the reinforcement of private prisons, and so much more.  We tend to shrink back, lower our gaze, tamp down our hopes, lose the vision.  Ride On, King Jesus?

            Holy Week does not permit hopes to rise – we must allow ourselves as individuals and communities to be exposed, so that we will understand the depth of our captivity to the powers.  Yet, Jesus does ride on, and we can give thanks for that.  He does ride on, not to the throne of Rome but rather to the Cross of Rome.  We must sit with that truth this week.  We know that’s not the end of the story, but we must linger here for awhile, in our own Gethsemane.   

FORTY-NINE YEARS AGO

FORTY-NINE YEARS AGO

            I was a senior in college at Southwestern at Memphis (now Rhodes College) forty-nine years ago .   How can it have been so long?  Where did the time go?  Who knows where the time goes, as Sandy Denny once wrote in song.  By this time in 1968, I had crossed over a bit from my captivity to race, and I was working in the garbage workers strike.  I was part of a group of students who went to worship services at white churches and interrupted their worship services to urge them to support the garbage strike.  I’ve often wondered what I would have done if folks came in and did that at Oakhurst when I was pastor there!

            I was also involved with some of the first black students at Southwestern, some of whom were involved with the Invaders, a group of young black adults in Memphis, who were pushing for change and who felt that Martin Luther King, Jr., was not realistic about the intransigence of white power, and thus he was increasingly irrelevant.   I was in the beginning of my formation on these issues, and I felt caught intellectually.  I had admired Dr. King for his witness against the Vietnam War a year earlier, but he seemed increasingly ineffective against the white power structure.  I had a chance to go hear Dr. King’s last sermon on April 3, 1968, at Mason Temple, but to my everlasting regret, I declined because I did not think that it was worth it.

            About 6:30 PM the next night, one of my black colleagues found me as I came out of the library and told me that Dr. King had been killed.  My friend was seeking to raise money to buy guns for self-protection, but fortunately, I had no money on me.  If I had any money, I would likely have given it to him, because I, like so many others at that moment, had lost belief in the efficacy of nonviolence.  I remember the violence that broke out in Memphis and in so many other places, and I remember the tanks and half-tracks that the Army and National Guard rode through the streets of Memphis over the next few nights.

            Over the years, I’ve thought about those events a lot.  Though Dr. King was not the Civil Rights Movement, his assassination seemed to take the air out of it.  Looking back, Dr. King turns out to have been an incredibly courageous and radical-in-the-making, and though I do not believe that James Earl Ray was the only one involved in his assassination (if he was involved at all), Dr. King’s developing radicalism is undoubtedly what got him killed.  We have also sought to sanitize him and make him an American saint over the years, but we should always remember that while he remained committed to nonviolence, by the end of his life, he had come to believe that the American vision built on racism, materialism and militarism had bankrupted our individual and collective souls.  He had come to believe that we needed another American revolution.  It was that belief that made him dangerous and got him killed.  In his fine book on Dr. King and Malcolm X (“Martin and Malcolm and America”), James Cone had a fine insight on this kind of movement.  Dr. Cone indicated that Dr. King had begun with love as his guiding principle and had moved toward justice as the guiding principle.  In a similar movement, Malcolm X had begun with justice and moved towards love.

            We are in a mess in this country, and much of the reasons for this are the powers that Dr. King and Malcolm X exposed in their ministries for love and justice.  As we remember their lives and deaths and their witness, and especially Dr. King’s on this day, let us re-commit ourselves to the love and justice that drove them.  May it drive us also.   I like what my friend and colleague, the Reverend Magdalena Garcia, posted on her Facebook page today:  “Articles about what happened to MLK's shooter? Frankly, I'm not interested. I want to know what happened to the message!”  May we find and live the message.