"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.