"WHO WILL ROLL AWAY THE STONE?"

 “WHO WILL ROLL AWAY THE STONE?”

In the Gospel of Mark, the account of the Resurrection appears in chapter 16.  It is a powerful rendering of the events that shook and transformed the Jewish group who followed Jesus of Nazareth.  There are many aspects to the story that are intriguing, including the fact that the earliest manuscripts of Mark end on a preposition.  There have been many theories posited about the meaning of such an abrupt ending to Mark’s gospel.  

Intriguing to me in this season in 2022 is an earlier phrase in that same story.  As the women go to the tomb of Jesus to anoint his body for a proper burial, one of their main concerns is that there is big boulder blocking the entry to the tomb, placed there so that potential graverobbers will be less likely to break in and steal any valuables left behind with the body – after all, Jesus is buried in the tomb of a rich man, Joseph of Arimathea.  The women express their concern in a poignant phrase: “Who will roll away the stone for us?”  According to Mark, their fears are allayed when they arrive at the tomb, and the stone has already been rolled away. As they go into the tomb, full of fear, they hear from a live young man in the tomb that Jesus is no longer there but will meet them soon.

That question “Who will roll away the stone for us?” is a metaphor for all of us wandering through life, living under the power of death.  Especially in these times, the power of death seems especially close, not just because I am aging but also because the country and the world seem so fragile right now, because the powers of death seem so overwhelming and strong right now.  From the prison/industrial complex to the Russian war in Ukraine to the White South Rising, there seems to be no end to the power of death.  Many of us are struggling, like those women disciples of Jesus did, wondering “Who will roll away the stone?”

We had a fine visit over the weekend in Athens with our longtime friends John and Dee Cole Vodicka.  They had invited us up to hear a presentation by Pulitzer Prize winning poet and essayist Natasha Trethewey at UGA, and it was excellent – more on that in another blog.  While we were there, we heard of Dee and John’s efforts, through their Sunday school class at Oconee Street Methodist Church, to roll away one of the stones.  They are looking at ways of making some reparations in relation to racism and economic oppression, and they are working with the Linnentown Project in Athens.  

In 1962, with the support of the city of Athens and US Senator Richard B. Russell, he University of Georgia used a federal “urban renewal” grant (now known as “urban removal”) to demolish a Black community known as Linnentown – it was called “slum clearance” then.  As happened all over the country, Black communities were destroyed through “eminent domain,” and seized the wealth-building assets to construct UGA dormitories Brumby, Russell, and Creswell Hall.  

Over the last few years, people have begun to work on rolling away that stone of oppression and injustice in what became known as The Linnentown Project.  In February, 2021, after much research and lobbying, the unified government of Athens-Clark County unanimously adopted the “Linnentown Resolution for Recognition and Redress.” All worked closely with former Linnentown residents to draft and pass the resolution.  It is the first official call for reparations in Georgia.  And, now onto the thorny but necessary of redress and reparations.  Direct descendants of former Linnentown residents are being identified and approached about redress and reparations, and this is an ongoing project.  If you’d like to read more about this effort, here is the link to one of the sites:   https://www.redressforlinnentown.com/removal

“Who will roll away the stone?”  That is the question for all of us in our time, and in all times.  I am grateful to those involved in the Linnentown Project, including our friends, Dee and John, as they seek to find their way to rolling away the stone of white supremacy in their midst, a rolling away that includes reparations.  As I have said before in this space, those of us classified as “white,” must be about the business of rolling away the stone of white supremacy, and these are the necessary steps for use to be on that journey:  recognition, repentance, resistance, resilience, reparation, reconciliation, and recovery.  We give thanks for folks at the Linnentown Project who are showing us the way, and we are all asked to be on the journey also.

"RESURRECTION POWER - AND STILL I RISE"

 “RESURRECTION POWER – AND STILL I RISE”

My view of the Resurrection was changed in the spring of 1975 when I was talking with my spouse Caroline Leach on a trip to her hometown of Chattanooga.  I was soon to be examined for ordination as a minister, and we were discussing various theological issues.  I asked her about her understanding of the Resurrection of Jesus.  I wasn’t sure that it actually happened in the way that the stories in the Bible recount it.  She replied that the meaning of the Resurrection was not so much what happens to us when we die, but rather what happens to us when we are living.  The Resurrection is a metaphor for finding life-changing power, when we begin to find liberation from our captivities – and,  of course there are many captivities.  It became clear to me that the power of Resurrection is a call to new life, to new ways of perceiving ourselves, the world, and others around us.

The first witnesses to the Resurrection were the women disciples.  The primary witness, the only one mentioned in all 4 Gospel accounts of the Resurrection, is Mary of Magdala.  Early on, the church moved to discredit her witness by positing that she was a prostitute redeemed by Jesus, or positing that she was in love with Jesus, or that she was a sexual helpmeet for Jesus.  This tendency is seen in the 24th chapter of Luke’s gospel, when the male disciples dismiss the women’s testimony, telling the women that they are only delusional. Indeed, in the earliest written account of the Resurrection in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, the witness of the women is not mentioned at all – a quick dismissal.  Yet, the Gospel writers decide that they must keep the women’s testimony in the narrative, because it is all that they have.  Indeed, as some of my friends wrote in their FB posts this weekend:  “In line with the Biblical witness, the only preachers on Easter Sunday should be women.”

I thought about this meaning of the Resurrection as I watched Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings at the end of March and then her powerful speech on April 8 in accepting her confirmation to the Supreme Court.  As a Black woman, she had endured a psychological and emotional crucifixion in the hearing, as white Republican after white Republican tried to do to her what was done to Mary of Magdala.  Unlike Jesus at the Crucifixion, she fought back with a depth of intellect and dexterity rarely seen in public life.  She quoted Maya Angelou’s incredible poem “Still I Rise:”  “I am the dream and the hope of the slave.”  Her referral to Angelou’s poem stimulated me to read that fine poem again, and in many ways, it has one of the most profound understandings of the meaning of the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.  So in honor of those first witnesses to the Resurrection, the women disciples, and in honor of Justice Jackson and her tremendous poise and fight for the meaning and interpretation of the Resurrection, here is Maya Angelou’s portrait of the Resurrection in “Still I Rise:”

"Still I Rise"

BY MAYA ANGELOU

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I've got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

"RIDE ON, KING JESUS"

 “RIDE ON, KING JESUS – HOLY WEEK IS UPON US”

            Holy Week comes into our lives where we live, as individuals and as a culture.  It reminds us of the tragedy that courses through our collective and individual histories.  The week begins in celebration of a new vision of compassion and justice and community, values that enable us to resist oppression.  Many of Jesus’ followers are shocked that Rome and Jerusalem are able to absorb this parade and even to crush its values.  The Cross reminds us that the powers are always resistant to God, are always resilient in their responses to God’s breakthroughs for justice and love, and are always threatening us with the cost of seeking justice and living lives based on love.  Holy Week is God’s final reminder to us of the cost of discipleship, a reminder that asks us to consider our lives and the meaning of our lives.

Holy Week takes both the meaning of our lives and the cost of that meaning seriously.  To live out of justice and love means that we will be in danger of being run over by the other parades of our lives – Rome, racism, Covid-19, war in Ukraine, Trumpdemic.   We know that the story does not end here on the Cross, but the story does remind us of the cost of living lives based in justice and love.  In order to get to the true meaning of our lives, we must encounter the Cross and walk with Jesus through that valley of the shadow of death. Thank God, it is not the final word, but it is a powerful word, and yes, we were there when they hung him on the tree.  

            So begins the drama of Holy Week – in excitement and high hopes.  Yet this story is also filled with resistance and struggle.  Jesus rides on into Jerusalem in this atmosphere of liberation and into a belief system that lifts up violence and domination and death.  This week encourages us to enter into that drama, entering from whatever perspective we bring and entering in with whatever agenda we have.  Some of us bring the high hopes and excitement of Palm Sunday.  Some of us bring the puzzlement and confusion of Jesus’ refusal to overthrow the Romans.  Some of us bring the struggles of life – trying to figure out why Jesus seems so intent on offering redemption and life to everyone, even the dreaded enemies.  Some of us bring the disappointment of Maundy Thursday, when Jesus has an opportunity to strike the blow for freedom – instead he yields so easily to arrest.   Ride on, King Jesus – by the way, where exactly are you going?

            The drama of Holy Week – some of us know the defeat of execution, of Good Friday.  We’ve known sorrows all our days, and this day of crucifixion touches those places of defeat and sorrow and suffering.  Were we there when they crucified our Lord?  Yes, many of us were, and we continue to be there, with our sons and parents and partners locked up in mass incarceration, with many of us trapped in a cycle of drug abuse and homelessness and domestic violence.  Yes, we know that defeat, we know that suffering.  We were there when they crucified our Lord.  Ride on, King Jesus!  Well, maybe, but are you sure that you know where you are going? 

            The drama of Holy Week is our story and God’s story.  Ride On, King Jesus!  And he does ride on, not to the throne of glory, or even to the throne of Rome.  Rather he is given the death penalty by the state, as it is revealed to him and to us, that we would rather execute Jesus than be transformed by his love.  After the cheering crowds of Palm Sunday, he ends up alone and feeling abandoned.  The Gospel accounts indicate that all the male disciples flee in terror when Jesus is arrested – only the women disciples stay with him. Although Peter tries as hard as he can to keep his promise to follow Jesus to the end, even the Rock of the church decides to flee before the end arrives.  We may not holler out “Crucify him!” but we definitely indicate that he is such a disappointment to us.  Ride on, King Jesus – or maybe just ride on out of here.

            This is the drama of Holy Week – we’re longing for love, but we’re believing in death.  That’s the truth revealed to us in Holy Week – the truth that we do not have our acts together.  The truth revealed to us is that we’re always scrambling to find that magic formula that will make us feel better, whether its guns or money or race or sex or sexual orientation or nation or control of women’s bodies – the list seems endless, but they all end up looking like and sounding like Holy Week.  We’re longing for love but believing in death.

            Ride on, King Jesus – and he does.  Not to the throne of Rome but to the death penalty.  It’s not the end of the story, but we must go through this part of the story this week.  Let us find our place in this old, familiar but oh, so relevant story.

"WRESTLING WITH MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR"

 “WRESTLING WITH MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.”

Today is the 54th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, where I was a senior in college at Southwestern at Memphis (now Rhodes College).  I wrote a column for The Atlantic a few years ago about my memories of that day and that time.  Here is a link to those reflections, if you’d like to see them https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/doubting-mlk-during-a-strike-in-memphis/550118/

       I’ve lived with Martin Luther King, Jr. and his witness all of my life.  I’ve had two major conversions on his work and his ministry, and in both of those instances I had dismissed his work.  I don’t remember when I first became conscious of his public ministry.  In my years as a youth, I was so captured by a belief in white supremacy that I could not imagine that a new wave was flowing on the ocean of the civil rights movement.  The neo-slavery, in which I lived and breathed and believed, seemed to be permanent to me.  My imagination was so captured and so truncated that I could not perceive the fire that was coming, a 1950’s and 1960’s fire that was shaped and led by Martin Luther King, Jr.  I did not have eyes to see or ears to hear or a heart to receive.

When MLK came upon the public scene, I dismissed him as a charlatan who led fools.  That view began to shift when I listened to his speech at the stunning March on Washington in August, 1963, almost 60 years ago.  I was shocked at the number of people who came to that March – 250,000! – and I said to myself:  “They can’t all be fools or dupes.”   It was dawning on me that there was more to the story than I knew.  Then, came Dr. King and his powerful speech, one of the best that I had ever heard.  And, I definitely knew that there was more to the story than the white supremacy in which I had wrapped myself.  Although I wasn’t converted on that day, a window into my consciousness had been opened, and I began to look for new understandings.

Those came in my college years, and indeed by the time of my senior year in college, I had gone the other way.  I had made acquaintances with young Black students at Southwestern, and most of them viewed Dr. King with a sense of irrelevance, if not contempt, because they felt like his doctrine of non-violence would never wrest equal rights from the iron fists of white supremacy.  Though I was not yet prepared to see myself as a white supremacist, I did agree with them that Dr. King was no longer relevant.  When King came to lead a non-violent march on March 28 in 1968 in support of the striking sanitation workers in Memphis, our group of organizers saw his presence as a negative rather than a positive.  That march ended in violence, with police attacking Black youth, and with the youth responding with violence.  For a second time in my life, I dismissed the witness of Dr. King as irrelevant and even harmful to the movement for justice and equity.

The rifle shot on April 4, 1968 that killed Dr. King at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis caused another shift in me.  I’ll never believe that James Earl Ray acted alone, but whoever the cabal was, they expressed the deep and abiding power of the White South in American history.  By “White South,” I do not mean a geographical location but rather a spiritual force that believes in white, male supremacy and which seeks to enforce it by any means necessary.  That force always seems to be present in American life, and indeed in our time, it is rising back up. 

     In response to King’s assassination, I have sought to find out much more about his life and his witness, to honor it, and to seek to follow it.  Dr. King not only was spiritual and moral force on the movement for justice and equity, but he also was one of the first leaders to speak out against the war in Vietnam.  As he got more sophisticated in his understanding of the deadly forces in American culture, he understood the three intertwining forces that seek to crush life in America: militarism, materialism, and racism.   He proposed - and was organizing -The Poor Peoples’ March on Washington for the summer of 1968, in which he would emphasize these three forces and their malevolent influence in our life together.  It was likely this insight and this response that took his life 54 years ago.

    I honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on this day – let us all take a moment and pause and give thanks for him, for his witness, and for those who made it possible.  Let us also take a moment and reflect how those forces – militarism, materialism, and racism - still remain powerful in our lives.  Let us not only honor Dr. King.  Let us seek to follow him, not the “saintly” MLK who will be honored by major corporations and thus dismissed once again.  Let us seek to follow the dangerous Dr. King, who sought to bring all of us to a vision of justice and equity, a vision so dangerous that he had to be taken out.  We took his body and his life but not his spirit and his soul.  May we hear his voice and his witness, and may we find our way down that path, however haltingly and slowly, as my journey has been.