John 20:1-18
Taylor Mali is a wonderful poet in the genre of spoken word poetry, sometimes called slam poetry. This means that his work is intended to be performed, not read. So although I cannot do it as well as he does, I want to share with you his poem about speaking.
In case you hadn’t realized, it has somehow become uncool to sound like you know what you’re talking about? Or believe strongly in what you’re, like, saying? Invisible question marks and parenthetical you knows and you-know-what-I’m-sayings have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences, even when those sentences aren’t, like, questions? Declarative sentences—so called because they used to, like, you know, declare things to be true, OK?—as opposed to other things that are, like, totally, you know, not? They’ve been infected by this tragically cool and totally hip interrogative tone, as if I’m saying “Don’t think I’m a nerd just ‘cause I’ve, like, noticed this, OK? I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions. I’m just, like, inviting you to join me on the bandwagon of my own uncertainty.” What has happened to our conviction? Where are the limbs out on which we once walked? Have they been, like, chopped down with the rest of the rain forest? You know? Or do we have, like, nothing to say? Has society just become so filled with these conflicting feelings of neehhh that we’ve gotten to the point where we’re the most aggressively inarticulate generation to come along since, you know, a long time ago? So I implore you, I entreat you, and I challenge you to speak with conviction; to say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks the determination with which you believe it. Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker, it is not enough these days to simply question authority. You’ve got to speak with it, too.[1]
I thought of this poem as I prepared the liturgy for our sunrise service. During the sunrise service, we are symbolically reenacting the arrival of the women at Jesus’ tomb; so the service starts in silence, at a place of uncertainty and grief. The liturgy calls for me to announce that Christ is risen, but the people do not yet believe. So their written response has question marks at the end of those familiar lines: Christ is risen? Indeed? I find that some people can’t do it. Undoubtedly they see the question marks, but perhaps it feels odd to say it as a question. It may even feel sacrilegious, I don’t know. But the question marks are intentional and appropriate to that service. By the time we get to this service, the sun has risen, and we have heard the good news. It is Easter morning. Your response is a declarative sentence and you say it easily: Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Our Easter liturgy has no room for “Christ is, like, you know, risen? OK?”
But our speech does not always reflect reality, does it? Some of us aren’t so sure about resurrection. And I don’t mean whether Jesus’ body was physically resurrected from the grave. Some of us believe Jesus’ body rose from the grave, and others of us believe that only Jesus’ spirit lived on. Both beliefs are faithful and neither one would raise an eyebrow around here. But it’s one of those words that we take an “all or nothing” approach to. We think either it means a particular belief system in Christianity, or we equate it with merely fixing something. Go online and you can learn how to resurrect your hard drive, how to resurrect your characters in a video game, and how Justin Bieber is attempting to resurrect his career.
What I’m talking about is none of these. I’m talking about the power of resurrection within our own lives. Now, I am painfully aware of the fact that some of you have recently lost loved ones, and any talk of resurrection sounds hollow. I cannot offer you the resurrection you long for. But God can and does offer you a different kind of resurrection: not a resurrection of the body, but of a spirit of hope, a spirit of love.
A few years ago, I experienced every preacher’s nightmare: I woke up on Holy Saturday with laryngitis. I was facing what is arguably the most important Sunday of the church year, and I had no voice. In my prayers that day I cried to God, “I don’t want to be voiceless for the resurrection!”
But if I am truthful, it wasn’t the first time. It wasn’t the first time in life that I had found myself voiceless … or been voiceless because I could not find myself. There was a time when I was silent on Easter—and every Sunday—because I could not believe, could not conceive of anything dead returning to life. I knew about death. I lived in the tomb a cave carved out by pain and shame and misplaced blame and sealed by a rock of rage. I didn’t think anything could budge that rock. But then miracles happened—tiny miracles, little more than a breath at times and as easily ignored. Both those breath miracles came one after another until the stone was … inched … not rolled away, but moved just enough to let in light and air, enough to make me believe in hope. I pried on that rock from within and others pried on it from beyond, and God was in the prying and the scraped knuckles and the inching of the stone. Now I believe in the resurrection—not because I’m sure about what happened to Jesus, but because I am sure about what happened to me. I will not be voiceless for the resurrection. Nor will I be, like, you know, inviting you to join me on the bandwagon of my own uncertainty. I believe in resurrection … because I have experienced it.
“The Resurrection is not just a nice thing that happened to Jesus a long time ago…. Resurrection is a continuous possibility for us…. It is a gift of God that raises us out of whatever grave” we have fallen into.[2] I believe in resurrection because I live it.
Do you? Do you believe in resurrection? Do you believe in the resurrection of that dream—the one that used to light up your eyes, but now you’re afraid you’ll never achieve? Do you believe in that resurrection? Do you believe in the resurrection for that marriage that’s on the rocks? Or perhaps in the resurrection that will come for you as individuals, rather than together? Do you believe in the resurrection for your loved one struggling with depression? Do you believe in the resurrection for your friend with addiction issues? Do you believe in the resurrection of hope for healing, or the resurrection of peace for the journey that will not end in a cure? Do you believe in the resurrection of a mutual relationship with your children or an honest relationship with your parents? Do you believe in the resurrection of joy, even in the face of sorrow? I believe.
Many years ago, a contemporary Christian artist named Sandi Patty recorded a song called “Was it a morning like this?” “Was it a morning like this, when the sun still hid from Jerusalem, and Mary rose from her bed to tend the Lord she thought was dead? Was it a morning like this, when Mary walked down from Jerusalem, and two angels stood at the tomb, bearers of news she would hear soon?”
“Was it a morning like this?” When I first heard those words, back when I had brown hair and a newly printed diploma from a Christian college, and I thought that as long as I followed Jesus, life would be hunky dory … yeah, back then, I thought this song was about the weather. Was it a morning like this—windy and cold, or warm and sunny? Or maybe was it a morning like any other—just an ordinary morning.
But now I know better. Now I know that the real question is: Was it a morning like this, when life is so “lifey,” as Anne Lamott says? Was it a morning like this, when life is good, but we’re not sure what comes next? Was it a morning like this, when our joy is either overflowing or absent? Was it a morning like this, when our hope is lost and we don’t know where it went or how to find it, or what we would do with it if we did. Was it a morning like this, with unpaid bills and unrequited love and tantrum-throwing toddlers or too many silent meals. Was it a morning like this, with fresh grief and old wounds and the scent of despair in our nostrils? Was it a morning like this?
It was. It was a morning of all of this and more. And yet . . . the stone was rolled away. The grave did not win. The strength of death was no match for the power of love.
Was it a morning like this when Peter and John ran from Jerusalem? And as they raced toward the tomb, beneath their feet was there a tune?
Did the grass sing? Did the earth rejoice to feel him again Over and over like a trumpet underground Did the earth seem to pound, “He is risen!” Over and over in a never-ending round, “He is risen, alleluia, alleluia! Alleluia!”
I believe in resurrection! Do you?
[1] Mali, Taylor. “Totally like whatever, you know?” Copyright 2002.
[2] Feldmeyer, Dean.