Resurrection: We Can Make It

On this night, on this very different night,
as the Jews say at the time of Passover,
Jesus comes to teach us how to live and how to die,
That the grain of wheat dropped to the ground and dying,
Can then grow and produce;
And so he teaches us how to lose in order to win.
AND JESUS SEEMED TO HAVE LOST IT ALL.
Before us, on Good Friday, we had Jesus on the cross, the broken man;
Jesus, the grain of wheat stomped to the ground as so many poor people.
Jesus, crucified on wood.
He did not run from his brokenness.
But he faced his moment of truth saying in effect:
LET DEATH COME; LIFE WILL GO ON NOW AND FOREVER.
He looks the death squad in the face,
And proclaims it conquered.
So Easter, celebrating the resurrection and death of Jesus,
Is the moment in our faith;
The mystery of our faith.
IT IS THE PLEDGE OF GOD THAT WE, TOO, SHALL OVERCOME ALL THE FORCES OF DEATH,
AND WE, TOO, SHALL LIVE FOREVER.
THAT LIFE AND GROWTH ARE OURS
EVEN IN THE MIDST OF PAIN AND TROUBLE.
On this night
God gathers together all the tired stragglers and strugglers
On the road to Emmaus
To celebrate that
Christ is risen from the dead,
And we can rise, too.
To celebrate among all our troubles
That HOPE is always just around the corner from despair.
We keep dying here and being born again,
Dying and being born again;
Just when we seem to be settling down,
We have to move on down, move on down the road.
People move in, people move out;
Harry disappears,
His pride keeping him from returning to the community
After a fall.
It makes you realize we are a family when a brother is so missed.
And as I look around at his friends
Who are so down, disheartened, heads bowed, disappointed
I realize that we are not only reliving the story of Jesus
Dying and rising, again,
But we are reliving the story on the road to Emmaus,
When the risen Christ comes to us once more
And shares our sadness and
Rekindles our hope.

Is there no balm in Gilead, is there healing there, is there no physician there?
Tonight tells us that there is a balm in Gilead.
There is a physician there.
It is Jesus, suffering and risen.
Jesus comes and shares our pain,
Lifts up our pain,
Heals our pain,
Connects our pain to his, with others,
And transforms our pain.
We need to connect our own pain, our own human story, to his;
Only in this way will we realize that nothing, absolutely nothing,
No sin, no failure
Is outside God’s love and mercy.

On the road to Emmaus, risen Jesus listens to our story,
And tells us we are not walking or running in circles;
And we need to stop hiding part of our story,
We need to stop clinging to our aloneness
And really that was and is Harry’s problem, and our own
For we are not allowing God to touch us when we are lost in pain;
And we are hiding from God those places DEEPEST INSIDE ourselves
Where we are most in pain, where we are most confused, guilty, alone.

Easter tells us that we CAN MAKE IT;
We have the power to make it,
The power of God, the power of resurrection.
Because the Son of God on that first Easter
2000 years ago rose from the dead and overcame death and negativity,
WE HAVE THE POWER.
To NOT BE AFRAID OF GOING BACK ON DRUGS…We have the power.
To NOT BE AFRAID OF FALLING ON OUR FACE…We have the power.
TO SERVE EVEN WHEN WE CAN’T DO IT ANY LONGER…We have the power.
The power of God, sitting with us,
Waiting within us, waiting to be used.

In a moment, we will remember the death and resurrection of Jesus every day
With the covenant meal of bread and wine.
We will remember how on the night before he died
He broke bread and shared the cup, and through this
We will all partake of his very life.
And as we remember this:
Know that whatever God gives us
Eventually works in to the lives of others,
Like a grain of wheat that dies and becomes bread for others,
Like the sin of each of us affects the others,
Like a stone thrown in a pond, ripples into even wider circles:
SO THAT EVERY ACT SPREADS OUT AND INSPIRES AND CHALLENGES.
Let’s make a commitment today to do positive acts toward each other
So that the SOLIDARITY OF EVIL IN THIS WORLD
Is matched by a SOLIDARITY OF GOODNESS, of good people.
Let’s lift each other up,
Let’s hope with each other,
Change with each other,
Suffer with each other,
Even die a little with each other,
And rise with each other.
Amen

Easter 1989

Now There Stood By The Cross of Jesus His Mother

Shaking on his cross,
his face covered with sweat and blood,
his eyes bulging,
Jesus happens upon the figure of his loving Mother
standing at the foot of the cross.
Everyone is shouting, making accusations,
hurling insults, harnessing the condemned man.
Only Mary, silent and powerless to help,
offers comfort and support
with her presence and probably her tears.
"Come, all you who pass this way,
Look and see whether there is any suffering
like this suffering" (Lam 1:12).
It is not enough that Jesus should suffer in body and soul.
Even the most sacred affection,
the affection we feel for our mother,
is crushed under the cross.
God demands everything from Jesus,
even his mother.
And Jesus surrenders her too.
Now there are Catholic paintings
which show the Mother of Jesus as a
kind of fainting Mother of Sorrows,
but I don't believe that;
I've seen too many mothers, far less perfect than Mary,
take leave of their own flesh and blood
as they sail for Vietnam or Lebanon,
as they go off to jail,
as they die of AIDS;
as they stand at an open grave,
and show strength and fortitude and even majesty.
This is not a woman who faints.
Mary, the Mother of Jesus, watched redemption happening,
in silence.
She did not cry out.
She is not named among the women who wept for Jesus.
We read in the Gospel only these movingly restrained words:
"Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother"
St. Ambrose, of the early church says:
"I read that she stood;
I read nowhere that she wept".
Yet surely there were tears, silent or not.
She suffers because
every mother suffers doubly.
She suffers her own pain
and she suffers the pain of her child.
But, says the Song of Solomon (8: 6-7)
"Stern as death is love,
its flames like a blazing fire,
deep waters cannot quench love,
nor floods sweep it away".
Mary's love was stronger than death.

She now faces that moment
prophesied by old Simeon:
"You yourself shall be pierced by a sword" (Luke 2: 25)
Mary has come to be with her son.
She shares the pain imposed on him unjustly.
And we must feel with Jesus:
outraged and dishonored and seemingly disgraced,
she is probably the last person in the world
he wants to see gazing up at him
and yet the sigh of her must have brought joy
even in this mystery of iniquity
which seem to have brought him to infamous ending.
Yet she was standing there, like Mother Courage,
freely shouldering it all with Jesus,
along with a few other faithful ones,
in order to let redemption enter this world.
The Kingdom of God was taking root.
In the Catholic Church we call Mary
the Queen of the Poor of God,
and I feel she was standing there,
standing in for all the victims of injustice, oppression and violence;
In Argentina, the army in the dark of night,
would take away husbands and sons and murder them
in the name of their dictator;
and the mothers would gather in the plaza
in front of the dictators palace,
and simply stand and pray silently.
They were called the "Mothers of the Plaza",
the mothers of the missing,
and they just stood there, day after day,
year after year,
until the government was toppled down.
That's what Mary did.
And she was the poor young girl who said
that the powerful the rich, and the proud
would be toppled from their throne,
and the poor and the powerless would take over.
In her song of praise we call the magnificent,
she sang about a divine revolution
in which God would confuse the proud
pull down the mighty from their throne
raise the poor to high places,
give the hungry every good thing
and send the rich away empty (Luke 1: 51-53)
But this divine revolution and its hopes had its price.
Given its sinful condition of this world,
it will be effected only through the Sacrifice of
God's Son Jesus,
and it will continue to be effect only through
our sacrifices.

Jesus whispered to Mary,
"Woman, behold your son".
To me this is more than saying
"Mother, look after my friend John,
and John, look after my mother".
Earlier, when someone told Jesus, as
he was speaking to the crowds, long before,
"Your mother and brothers and sisters are here",
Jesus made a point:
"Who is my mother and my brother and my sister?
Whoever does the will of God."
Jesus said: I'm going to turn upside down your ideas of
family and tribe and all that:
those days, they said they all belonged to
the blood of Abraham;
I belong to the blood of the Kirk family in Alabama,
people I don't have much in common with except birth;
but Jesus tells us that
we're now one new family, beyond tribe and race and class,
a new family in the blood of Jesus.
And your brother or sister is anyone
who does the will of the Father.
And now Mary is standing in for this
New Human Race Jesus is creating,
made one finally with the glue of the Holy Spirit.
Woman, behold your son.
Brother, behold your sister.
Sister, behold your brother.

O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Son of Man,
we praise you and we thank you
for saving and redeeming us;
we stand at your cross as your mother,
as your brother and sisters,
and we grieve for you
as you continue to be crucified day after day
and we say to you:
Here we are Lord,
here we stand with you,
do with us what you will.Amen

Emmanuel Church, Holy Friday, 1987