"THE UNIVERSAL SOLDIER"

“THE UNIVERSAL SOLDIER”

According to historian David Blight, Memorial Day was started by formerly ensIaved African-Americans on May 1, 1865, just a few weeks after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox.  It happened in Charleston, SC, to honor 257 dead Union soldiers who had been buried in a mass grave in a Confederate prison camp.  They dug up the bodies over a two week period and buried them properly, with a processional of many thousands bringing flowers to honor the service of the soldiers in ending slavery.   

I served my country as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War from 1970-72.  My alternative service was a staff person (and later director) of Opportunity House in Nashville, a halfway house for men being released from prison.  It was here that I got my first glimpse of the horror that is the American prison-industrial complex.  It was quite an education for me, and ever since then I have been involved in ministry to those in prison in one form or another.  I’ll write more on that journey with the CO this fall when I remember my 50^th anniversary of starting it. 

Because of my CO status, Memorial Day is always complicated for me.  I honor the men and women who serve our country in the military.  My adopted father, Gay Wilmore, served in the US army in World War II.  In the midst of my ambivalence about Memorial Day and about nonviolence and the efficacy of violence in service of social justice, I want to give thanks to my father-in-law Herman Leach, to my father, to Charlie Callier, to Bob Wetzel, and to so many others who have served our country.   My mother’s almost fiancé, Bob Buford, was killed in WW II.  I was in seminary and gave up my deferred status in 1970 in order to try to start a movement with others to end deferments for ministers and seminary students.  I never felt that the Vietnam War was anything but a misguided attempt to kill and maim people of a different color.  In saying this, I do not intend to demean the Americans who served there – I had two friends killed in that war.  

It did make me understand that there is a war machine that loves to create chaos and death and profit.  That machine is obviously not confined to our country – Putin and Kim and Trump all seem cut from the same cloth, all war mongers who never served in the military, reminiscent of the leaders who sent us into the disastrous war in Iraq in 2003.   I also want to thank people like Fannie Lou Hamer, Vernon Dahmer, Elijah Lovejoy, John Brown, Martin Luther King, Jr.,  Malcolm X and so many others who have given their lives for our country, even on these shores.  Perhaps the best that I can do with this ambivalence is to turn back to Buffy St. Marie’s song, published in 1964.  She was born as a First nations Cree in Canada, and I remember her powerful writing and voice in bringing “Universal Soldier” to the consciousness of so many of us.  Check out her version online somewhere – here’s one with commentary  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGWsGyNsw00

He's five feet two and he's six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He's all of 31 and he's only 17
He's been a soldier for a thousand years

He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an atheist, a Jain,
a Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
and he knows he shouldn't kill
and he knows he always will
kill you for me my friend and me for you

And he's fighting for Canada,
he's fighting for France,
he's fighting for the USA,
and he's fighting for the Russians
and he's fighting for Japan,
and he thinks we'll put an end to war this way………

But without him how would Hitler have
condemned him at Dachau
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He's the one who gives his body
as a weapon to a war
and without him all this killing can't go on

He's the universal soldier and he
really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
They come from him, and you, and me
and brothers {sisters} can't you see
this is not the way we put an end to war

            Let’s honor those who serve our countries, and let’s honor those who work for justice with equity. 

"FORTY-SIX YEARS!"

“FORTY-SIX YEARS!”

            We gathered on a hot afternoon in May in 1974 in the backyard of Ed Loring in Decatur.  Actually, we had been gathering all day that May 18, as we got the house and the yard ready for our outdoor wedding.  There were plenty of tensions around – several couples attending were having troubles, were already separated or would be divorced soon.  Caroline’s mom wanted us to get married in the home church in Chattanooga, but that church - Central Presbyterian (now closed)- had refused to endorse Caroline’s request to be sponsored as a candidate for ministry.  The reason for the refusal:  women should not be ordained as pastors.  Only later would Caroline find out that she has a host of pastors in her family tree! Momma Martha Leach was none too pleased with our having a “hippie” wedding outside, but at least Caroline was getting married!  At least something was working out.

            We had no money, so we asked folk to bring covered dishes for the wedding meal – we had both grown up in the church, with all those great Wednesday night and Sunday after worship covered dishes.  It worked – we had several hundred people attend, and there was food enough for all.   One added bonus – many people left their dishes (Corningware and such) as wedding gifts, and we are still using some of them today!  We had asked people to give donations to non-profits, whom we suggested (or to those they preferred) instead of giving us gifts. 

The wedding party began at 11 AM, ceremony at 2 (led by Ed and Sandy Winter, mentor of Caroline’s from Chattanooga), and the party continued until at least 11 PM, when we went to bed.  We were blessed to be surrounded by so many friends, family and supporters – my mother and Mary Wetzel drove over from Helena, my college friend Harmon Wray and many others came from my Nashville days, my lifelong friend David Billings and wife Meredith from New Orleans (she made our wedding rings), Caroline’s family from Chattanooga, including her grandmother Sophie Leach from west Tennessee (who had intrigued me with her stories of coming EAST in a covered wagon from Texas to west Tennessee), friends of Caroline’s from that aforementioned Central church, Caroline’s students from her campus ministry at Georgia Tech, Columbia Seminary students, friends from Caroline’s new church Central Presbyterian in Atlanta (they did take her in and approve her, thanks to pastor Randy Taylor, who had six daughters), and feminist friends.

I grew up as an only child, raised by a single mother, so sharing intimate space with Caroline was quite an adjustment – I learned that the world did not revolve around me as an only child.  When we had two children, I was glad that they could learn in a feet-on-the-ground level that the world does not center on them – their sibling was there to remind them of that!  It has been quite a journey in these 46 years – it is such a powerful and difficult blessing to find that someone can get to know you in such an intimate way and still want to be with you!  Wow!

We chose May 18 as our wedding date because Caroline did not want to be a June bride and because it was on a Saturday.  It came right in the middle of my exams at Columbia Seminary, so we had to have a quick honeymoon, and we are so grateful to Erskine and Nan Clarke for providing the apartment in their home in Montreat for that quick turnaround!  While we were there, we went to Asheville (before it was hip), and we toured Thomas Wolfe’s home there and met his brother Fred, who was walking up the sidewalk to the home.  We chose the date before we developed race awareness, and I have since found out that May 18 is also the date in 1896 when Plessy v Ferguson was announced by the US Supreme Court, effectively legalizing neo-slavery for another 58 years until May 17, 1954, gave us Brown v. Board of Education.  So, three powerful events in that trio of days – Plessy, Brown, and our wedding!

"MOTHER'S DAY"

“MOTHER’S DAY”

            I was raised by women in a patriarchal world.  In my childhood days, that used to bother me – why was I the only son whose father had abandoned him?  As I grew into adulthood, I began to shift my perspective.  Why should I allow my father’s absence to dominate me more than my mother’s presence?  Thanks to friends and therapists, I was able to begin to shift from being dominated by my father’s absence to at least a consideration that I ought to be dominated by the love of my mother’s presence.  So, I want to thank my mother and all the mothering women who raised me.    

            My father, for whom I was named, abandoned my mother and me for another woman when I was about a year old.  We lived with an Irish woman in Memphis for awhile, and she kept me when my mother worked as a beauty operator (what they were known as then).  She nicknamed me “Nibs,” using the Irish word for the British aristocracy who believe that they are the center of the world.  Since I was named for my father who had left, “Nibs” stuck.  My mother was still in shock; she was poor; and she was looking for shelter.  Her grandmother’s sister, Bernice Higgins, had recently been widowed, and she needed physical and fiscal companionship in her small home across and down the Mississippi River from Memphis, in a town called Helena, Arkansas.  We moved there sometime during my second year, and it would be my constant and stable home until I got married to Caroline in 1974.  I would come back to it often until my mother’s death in 2004. 

After my father left our family, I would not see him or hear from him again until the fall of 1970, when I was almost 24.  As I indicated, I grew up fatherless in a patriarchal world.  I was raised by women, and though my heart hurt deeply at my father’s abandonment of me – it would take me years to notice that he also abandoned my mother – in my adult years, I have sung the praises of these two women who took me on, who raised me, and who taught me perseverance, humor, and compassion:  Mary Armour Stroupe, my mother, and Bernice Higgins, my great-great aunt, sister of my great-grandmother, who became a grandmother to me.  I called her “Gran.”

            Gran told me stories of our family history, of the Browns and Armours.   She remembered stories of her great-grandfather William Brown, born in 1827.  He was a staunch Presbyterian who used to work in the fields in his religiously prescribed white clothes.  The women in the family had to wash these clothes and make them white again despite the mud and fields.  While she didn’t care for that religious belief of working in white clothes, she did receive his conservative Presbyterianism and joined First Presbyterian Church of Helena, where I was later baptized and raised as a child of God.   Because I grew up in segregation, I knew little about the African-American culture around me.  Indeed I didn’t want to know anything about that culture because I had breathed in the white supremacy of the segregated South.  If I had known more and had accepted white supremacy less, I would have discovered a culture where matrilineal culture was powerful.

            So, today, I want to send up praises of women, especially my mother and my Gran.  Gran was not my primary caregiver, but she was right in the mix.  She was at home for me every day after school until she died of a heart attack at age 79.  My mother was the primary caregiver, and though she worked six days a week in the beauty shop, she seemed to always have time for me after she had walked the mile home from work and had been on her feet all day.  She gave me great care, and I want to say “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” from my anxious heart, a heart that survived and grew compassionate because for all her hard-knock life, she was a compassionate, loving woman. 

            I was talking with our daughter Susan the other day about my mother - “Grandma,” as Susan called her.  I am beginning to think about doing some sort of memoir about my mother and her navigation of all the factors in her life while she was raising me:  the racism that permeated our lives, our poverty that she sought to shield from me, her being a single woman in a patriarchal world, her deep faith, her powerful intelligence and inquisitive mind, her longing to be made whole. When I asked Susan about her primary thoughts about “Grandma,” she replied that she was impressed by Grandma’s agency in a world that told her that she was meaningless and worthless: a woman abandoned by her man, a woman who had to rely on her own intelligence, work and wit to get her (and me and Gran) through rough times,  a woman who would not allow sexism and racism and poverty to define her.  So, I’m thinking about such a work, but as I do, for now, I just want to say “Thank you.” 

"REMEMBERING GAY WILMORE"

“REMEMBERING GAY WILMORE”

            My friend and mentor and adopted father Reverend Dr. Gayraud Wilmore died on April 18 at age 98.  He was tired and ready to go, but like the gospel song “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” says it:  “Undertaker, undertaker, undertaker, please drive slow, for that body that you are carrying, Lord, I hate to see him go.”  Gay was a scholar, pastor, activist, teacher, WWII veteran, prolific book and article writer, churchman, and friend and mentor to many.  I’ll focus on my personal engagement with Gay here, but if you want to know more about his history, here is a good link.   https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/wilmore-gayraud-stephen-1921

            He was born in the year when African-Americans in Tulsa were terrorized and lynched, and their wealth was destroyed.  He was born far away in Pennsylvania, but the struggle for justice was a centerpiece of his life.  I first encountered Gay in his powerful book “Black Religion and Black Radicalism,” but one of his hallmark pieces was his co-editing with James Cone a documentary history of black theology.  They were co-founders of the Black Theology movement.  He and Cone were lifelong friends, and I remember Gay’s sorrow at Dr. Cone’s passing in April, 2018.  In a lecture series at Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta in 1999, Dr. Cone had this to say about Gay:  “He is the daddy of Black Theology.  If anyone took risks for Black people, it was Gay Wilmore.  I just want that name to be thought of along with mine.  He was my strongest critic and my best supporter.”  Gay Wilmore and James Cone were among the early leaders in wrestling the control of theology from white males.

            Gay took many risks for Black people, but perhaps his most public one was in approving money from Presbyterian ministers to be sent to the Defense Fund for Angela Davis in 1971, when he was the director of the Presbyterian Committee on Religion and Race.  He was excoriated for that, and eventually left his position and began a career of teaching and writing and mentoring.  I don’t remember when I first met Gay in person, but I remember my first real encounter with him.  After Inez Giles and I had published our book on racism “While We Run This Race,” (Orbis Books) in 1995, Gay led a contingent of folk who met at Oakhurst to talk about the book.  In that engagement I experienced what Dr. Cone had experienced:  Gay was an insightful critic as well as a strong supporter.

            After that, Gay and I co-chaired Presbytery’s Committee to Combat Racism, and we authored a statement adopted by Presbytery in 1997 on the necessity of whites to come out of denial. Gay wrote the original draft of it, and the white opposition to it in our Committee was deep.  I gained even more respect for Gay as I watched him work through that process, without yielding any principles of the statement.  I saw him then in what I would call essential “Gay action:’’ He was gentle but fierce.  Strong, strong, strong, but never denying the humanity of the other.

            He and his partner Lee moved to DC in 2000 to retire and be closer to their children.  We visited him as often as we could after our daughter Susan settled in Baltimore.  He read my blogs faithfully, giving me criticism and support.  In my first year of blogging, I wrote about my pain at the absence of my father in my life.  Gay replied that he would love to be my “adopted” father, and I was delighted.  So, shortly after Father’s Day in 2017, he sent me a formal document “adopting” me.  On our next visit, we shared with him an official certificate – so thank you, Gay!

            After his death, I was looking through some of our correspondence, and I came upon this hand-written note from him in 2018: 

            “Dear Nibs, You have made these closing years, as the century rolls on, of the

            greatest significance to me and to the whole Wilmore family.  Your blogs are

            great!  You never permitted us to be really separated, Nibs, and I thank you

            and the Lord God for that!  You have been a wonderful friend and brother,

            I will be forever grateful….in life and in death.  Love, Gay

            I can think of no greater tribute to give to Gay than the words from Martin Luther King’s sermon “Drum Major Instinct,” preached at Ebenezer two months before his assassination and played at King’s funeral:   “Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice; say that I was a drum major for peace; I was a drum major for righteousness.”  Gay was that and so much more, and I join a host of others in saying to him and to God: “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

"ENGAGING DEATH AND LIFE IN THE AGE OF COVID-19"

“ENGAGING DEATH AND LIFE IN THE AGE  OF COVID-19”

            Last week I did my first funeral in the Covid-19 era, and it was surreal.  Jackie Smith, a longtime member at Oakhurst, had died suddenly of a heart attack at age 65.  Her son Johnathon called me to see if I could do the service, and I indicated that he would have to contact the current pastor of Oakhurst, Amantha Barbee, to get her permission for me to do it.  Reverend Barbee graciously agreed, and we set up the service.  Johnathon had grown up at Oakhurst, and his mother Jackie was fiercely dedicated to him.  She knew that his racial classification as “black” meant that he would be seen as less worthy, and she made it her goal as a single mom to raise him up so that he would see himself – and others would see him – as a child of God, with equal dignity to others.

            I was anxious - would I get Covid-19 from someone or something at the funeral?  And I was curious all week as I approached the time for the funeral – how would this work? I checked in with the mortuary where the service would be held, and they indicated that they were obeying all the Covid-19 guidelines.  The funeral could not be at Oakhurst Church because it was closed.  I arrived at the mortuary with gloves and mask on (made by CJ Evans!), hand sanitizer in my robe pocket.  Mr. Kendrick, one of the coordinators of the mortuary, told me that there would only be 10 people in the service, the maximum that the governmental order allowed, and that the congregants would be spaced accordingly.  All other people attending would be allowed to stand outside the open doors of the chapel and look in, listening on the speakers placed out for them.  The service was also live-streamed, so there was a camera near-by.  I forgot all about it, so I’ll undoubtedly need our daughter Susan to give me some tips on doing these kinds of services live and on camera.

            This may sound weird, but I generally like leading funerals as worship services.  In the context of death, the preacher has an unusual opportunity to point all of us to the meaning of life and the meaning of our own lives.  It is much easier to do this when the person who dies had lived into their 80’s rather than when someone in their youth or young adulthood dies and are thus cut down before they went through the cycle of life.  But, even in a tragic circumstance, there is the opportunity to help us all re-focus our energies and our vision about who we are and about what life is. 

In funeral services, my goal has been to emphasize five areas.  First, we are worshipping God, and this occasion to remember the power of death helps us to focus on the meaning of life and the Author of life.  Second, we gather together to give thanks for the life of the one who has passed.  Again, it helps if the person has lived a fine life, but even for those of us who have been rascals, there are redeeming features to be remembered and to be lifted up.  I love using the quote from Psalm 139:14 “For all these mysteries, I thank you, for the wonder of myself, for the wonder of your works.”   

Third, we acknowledge that the power of death has captured our loved one and threatens to capture our hearts.  We acknowledge the power and the necessity of mourning – mourning for the loss of the loved one, mourning for the stark reminder that all of life is under the power of death, mourning for the stark reminder that death will come to our door too.  When Caroline’s dad Herman Leach died in 2011, I led his service in Chattanooga, and I remember our younger granddaughter Zoe telling me after that service: “I don’t want you to die.”  It tore at my heart, and all that I was able to reply was: “I don’t want to die either, but I will.  But, hopefully, it will be a long time from now.” 

Fourth, we affirm that life belongs to God, that we belong to God, and that even walking through the valley of the shadow of death, we can be assured that death is not the final word in the life of our loved one or in our own lives.  Whatever happens to our personal identities after death, we can be assured that we will not be deserted by God.  Again, a Scripture quote pops up from the rascal St. Paul: ”If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord;  whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”   And, finally we affirm the particular life of the person who has died.  I strongly believe in doing that.  I understand the impetus to be impersonal at a funeral, giving priority to the ritual, but such an approach misses the power of life that brings us together on that occasion.  This person was a living, breathing child of God, with an historical context and many stories evolving out of that context.  Some of those need to be shared to help all of us acknowledge the powerful connections to their humanity and our own humanity, as well as the painful shadow under which we all live our lives, a reality that drives much of artistic impulses in all ages:  we are finite and mortal beings.

All of this was rolling through my heart last week as I led the funeral for Jackie Smith.  In a time of deep loss and painful grief – no touching, no hugging to acknowledge our connections and our loss!  I haven’t been reminded in a long time of the pressure of the Word, as I was at this funeral.  The lack of contact was palpable, leaving me feeling a gaping hole, even though I know that my words were eloquent and comforting.  I could not sing the body electric, to use Whitman’s powerful phrase, and I felt it.  I’m glad that I could do a funeral in the Covid-19 era – I hope that I don’t have to do another one.  But, it feels like we are all going through a funeral together as life shifts so dramatically in Covid -19. 

'50TH ANNIVERSARY OF EARTH DAY"

"50th ANNIVERSARY OF EARTH DAY"

(Rev. Alan Jenkins serves as a parish associate at Oakhurst Presbyterian Church, serving on the CreationWise team. Originally ordained to an eco-justice ministry to the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta, he is now a full-time hospice chaplain with Harbor Grace Hospice’ in-patient unit at Atlanta Medical Center. Find him fishing, riding his bicycle, advocating for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s divesting of oil companies, and at jenkins.alan73@gmail.com or https://www.facebook.com/alan.jenkins.520.)

Earth Day poses a seemingly heretical question to me: Does Christianity have what it takes to live in harmony with God’s Creation? Do our ecclesial traditions lead us to relate to the eco-systems that give us life (air, water, soil, millions of diverse biological species, etc) in such a way to sustain our bodily needs and maintain ecological balance? Does our theology lead us to infinite wonder and awe of God’s Creation enough to not only preserve it, but to savor it? To defend and fight for it from empire-like, ravenous forces? Or even prevent us from simple temptations of modern convenience?

I cannot help but wonder about spirituality of First Nations / Native Americans Peoples. To defend sacred, life-giving water, they put their bodies down in front of bulldozers’ building oil pipelines. They organize to deconstruct hydro-electric dams so salmon can run free. Their spiritual traditions are in synch with the seasons and the cycles of biological life. They refer to other living beings as “all my relations,” as if they were as important and valued as human life. Our Christian liturgical seasons, on the other hand, have little to do with harvest, with soil, with “all our relations,” with fall, winter, summer and spring. [Before I’m labeled a heretic for asking these questions: I do believe that our Creator God, as witnessed in the Old and New Testament, does give what we need for an ecologically sustainable, regenerative, earth-healing livelihood. Yet we must also humble ourselves to learn from other traditions, such as indigenous peoples].

Since the catastrophic El Niño of 1997-1998 (intense floods and droughts throughout the Americas), the climate crisis garnered my theological attention. Lately, the most hopeful theological lens I’ve come across in this realm revolves around a rather ironic theme: apocalypse! Author Theodore Richards’ book The Great Re-imagining: Spirituality in an Age of Apocalypse got me started. He rightly describes apocalypse as both the end and the beginning of the world … as we know it. For example, the Middle Passage of West Africans, ripped from their mother land and enslaved in The New World was apocalyptic. Their world was obliterated, an end. The only way to survive was a beginning, to create a new culture, a new theology, a new language, all in the face of oppression. This example is one of many, from the Holocaust, to mass migrations, to natural catastrophes.

And, today, we find ourselves in the midst of an even larger apocalyptic event, punctuated by a slightly smaller apocalyptic event, COVID 19. The larger one is, of course, the climate crisis: tipping points lead to catastrophes, lead to hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and to ever-intensifying wildfires in California, to failed crops from Guatemala and the Mid-West.

Apocalyptic talk usually instills fear within us, and rightly so. The world as we know it is ending. Normalcy and predictability that many were comfortable with will no longer be. We’re in new territory, and technology alone will not save us. And, yet, if we’re faithful to the journey that apocalyptic times require, we may pass through this threshold transformed, closer to the Beloved Community where new leaders, new ways of being community, and new ways of relating with Earth emerge. Apocalyptic talk, then, is not something to fear. Rather, amidst the world’s evermore revealed injustices, apocalyptic talk opens a window to a new world we can spring towards.

I’m reminded of what I’ve heard about a particularly bold, brutal yet transformative event in the Civil Rights Movement. After a long campaign in April of 1963 in Birmingham, a street march was organized in early May, where even children were allowed to participate. Organizers knew that the dogs and fire hoses might come out, and they knew the cameras would be rolling for a national audience. This intensification of the conflict and the gruesome images splashing front page news across the country forced the power brokers to come to the table, to hear voices long since silenced- voices urgently needed to help this nation become a more democratic, just union.

The COVID 19 pandemic wasn’t as boldly intentional as the planned actions in Birmingham were; nonetheless, the pandemic intensifies the numerous conflicts already ongoing, and thereby opens windows. An apocalyptic opportunity, however painful, is in the making. To name just a few areas: Our privatized, employer-based health care system is now ever more clearly exposed for its inadequacy and inequality. The injustice of mass-incarceration is receiving a much-needed spotlight right now. With dramatic improvement in air quality, a Stanford University study estimates 50,000 – 70,000 lives are being saved in China from absence of air pollution. This is also an opportunity to explore what strengthens our body’s immune system. Clean air is one of them, and Black revolutionary urban farmers like Rashid Nuri in Southwest Atlanta (Truly Living Well Center for Natural Urban Agriculture) are showing that locally grown, organic fruit and vegetables are another. The youth working those garden beds, by the way, are the same youth leading the global climate strikes.

So, it’s the 50^th Anniversary of Earth Day, prompting my question: Does Christianity, do we Christians, have what it takes to live in harmony with God’s Creation? Here in this apocalyptic Eastertide, may we allow God to use us as the new creation in Christ that we are, a creation compatible with all Creation!

"THE RESURRECTION IN THE MIDST OF CRISIS"

“THE RESURRECTION IN THE MIDST OF CRISIS”

            Wow, what does Resurrection mean in the middle of the disaster of coronavirus?  What does Resurrection mean with death, anxiety, and uncertainty all around us?  What dos Resurrection mean when the world seems so crazy?  Well, exactly what it meant on that first Easter morning.  The Resurrection is rooted in this kind of world – a world out of our control, a world filled with anxiety and death and uncertainty.  A small group of women and men caught a vision from a street preacher named Jesus of Nazareth. 

            That vision changed them so much that they began to stand up to the Roman Empire that had executed Jesus.  They began to believe that love and justice were the center of their lives, even when (and especially when) Rome told them that it was the center of all of life.  They began to change their lives. They began to invite those who were poor and sick to come into their homes.  They began to share their property.  They had women who were leaders.  They started living their lives as if God were present with them right then, in a way that they had not experienced before.  Indeed, they began to say that God was revealed in a new and exciting way in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.  They started calling him Jesus Christ to say that in his story, life had changed. 

            So, in the rawness and the anxiety and the reshaping of our lives in these coronavirus (c-v)days, we have a chance to touch the reality of those first disciples who followed Jesus.  Let us recall that on the day of Resurrection, the struggles of the disciples are made plain in the Bible.  The men are so scared and defeated that none of them venture to the tomb of Jesus.  The women who do come to the tomb have trouble recognizing the risen Jesus standing right in front of them.  In Mark’s account, the women are too terrified to tell anyone that Jesus is risen.  And when they finally do tell the story, the male disciples dismiss their story as an idle tale.  The story of the Resurrection is rooted in fear and disbelief, and yet, and yet, here he comes, the Risen Jesus coming for them – and for us.

            In that sense, this desolation of the c-v time gives us an opportunity to remember our context and to remember the context.  I’m not saying that c-v is God’s will, though as a Calvinist, I must wonder……I am saying that the depths to which c-v is forcing is to go in our lives offers us an opportunity to see the power of the Resurrection,  a power that is deeper and wider than our Western church’s view that the goal of life is to be middle class.  The c-v reminds us that for most of the world, what we are experiencing now is closer to the routine.

The c-v is beyond much of our control, and it takes us back to that “primitive” zone of the early church, where the early followers of Jesus were all too aware that their lives could be destroyed at the whim of Rome or a virus like c-v.  The life expectancy at the time of Jesus was 35, although if one made it to adulthood, the average age was closer to the early 50’s.   C-v will alter our lives forever – we do not yet know what life will look like once the pandemic calms down – it may never go away.  The c-v is a negative, destructive power which brings fear and death.  The health and economic damage will reach catastrophic levels.  We must face that with a clear sense of reality.  It is changing our lives forever – we won’t be able to go back to “normal.”

Yet, the promise of Resurrection is just as strong on the positive side – it has the potential to come to us in the midst of all the negative forces and offer us a new view of ourselves and of life.  Let us remember what “normal” was before c-v:  the growing gap between rich and poor, a health care system that rationed care but blamed those who were poor for the rationing, a tax system that heavily favored the wealthy, a prison-industrial complex that grinds up people of color and poor people.  Let us resolve in this kind of time we will find a new vision of what our lives can be. In the midst of death, the risen Jesus comes to us, just as he came to those first women and men disciples.  May we be like Mary Magdalene in John 20 – in the midst of the terror that is c-v and death, may we hear our names called: “Mary.”  And may we recognize the risen Jesus and begin to live in a whole new way, as she did.