Judson Sermon 20130331 "Rolling, Rolling, Rolling" from Jacqueline Thureson on Vimeo.
print version. in the fashion that I read it. not a complete text, but pretty close to it.
Rolling,
Rolling, Rolling
text: “They found the
stone rolled away from the tomb.” (Luke 24:2)
Easter Sunday –
31.March.2013
Judson Memorial Baptist
Church
Minneapolis, MN
The Rev’d G. Travis
Norvell
Jesus gave his life to a cause worth dying for,
the non-violent transformation of humanity, centered on the ancient teaching of the prophets & poets of ancient
Israel.
He
sought to bring to life
the beloved community
the flowering of
liberation,
justice,
peace,
forgiveness,
righteousness,
& to proclaim - through his life -
jubilee.
He died on Good Friday
shamed,
humiliated,
and mocked.
On Saturday the world waited and rested.
And on Easter morn the women with Jesus who had
come from Galilee,
under the shadow of
dawn,
stole away,
to give him a proper burial.
When
they arrived at the tomb the body was absent and they discovered, or actually
they were discovered,
by
two holy messengers in dazzling white clothes.
Instantly
the illuminated tomb was transformed,
it
became a liminal place where the separation between heaven and earth is membrane
thin,
where righteousness and
peace kiss.
We
have exaggerated up Hallmark images of harps, lullabies, frolicking, and such
but those aint biblical images. To
inhabit a liminal moment is to inhabit holy ground, all expectant bets are
off. Rather than soothing,
calming, caressing, or tranquil words, the
women encountered two messengers with sharp tongues.
Why
seek ye the living among the dead?
The provocative question stirred the souls of
the women enough for the messengers to
deliver one imperative: Remember.
Remember the words,
the healings,
the
feedings,
the embraces,
the teachings,
the moments of grace,
the power of
forgiveness,
the
experience of life,
the elation of truth,
remember, remember, remember.
The holy messengers asked the women to
remember. Remember their memories,
experiences, and encounters with Jesus.
They remembered.
Even thought this morning we are separated by
2,000 years, at least six languages and cultures, yet…even still we can feel
the release of fear in this moment when they fully remembered.
They were instantly transformed - ready then,
more than ever, to live.
When God invades our heart, unexpectedly, we
find our selfsame existence ceases.
Instantly the great fears of the early community vanished when the women
remembered and began to tell their idle
tale. When they left the tomb
they were prepared to live lives that Jesus called them to live.
Last
week we celebrated Palm Sunday and the baptism of Ben and Seneca. It was also the 30th
anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero. Father John Dear tells Romero story
this way, After his friend
Jesuit priest Rutilio Grande was brutally killed for speaking out against
injustice on March 12, 1977, Romero (who was a safe, conservative pick for
Archbishop) was transformed overnight
into one of the world’s great champions for the poor and oppressed. At the
local mass the next day, Romero preached a sermon that stunned El Salvador.
Romero defended the work of Grande, demanded justice for the poor, and called
everyone to take up Grande’s prophetic
stand for justice.
Two
weeks before Romero was executed he told a reporter, “I have often been
threatened with death. If they
kill me, I shall arise in the Salvadoran people. If the threats come to be
fulfilled, from this moment I offer my blood to God for the redemption and
resurrection of El Salvador. Let my
blood be a seed of freedom and the sign that hope will soon be reality.”
For the early church, the memory of Jesus was
symbolized in the image of the cross and their propelling vision was the
resurrection.
It was the symbol not of death but of life, a
way of life worth living.
The cross has been largely translated as Jesus
dying for our sins,
Jesus did
not die for our sins, Jesus lived for our hearts.
The resurrection has been largely translated
solely as an event in the afterlife.
Easter would be much easier for you and for me
if it were just about the afterlife.
It isn’t
about the afterlife, it is about this life, here and now.
the
cross
&
the resurrection
were
the generative symbol and vision for the way of God in this world,
a
prophetic call to non-violence as the way to transform the world.
Jesus
sought to create a way,
based
on the ancient teaching of the poets and prophets of Israel,
to
stop the spiral of violence in the first century.
To
offer a way towards peace through love,
forgiveness,
healing,
the rebuilding
of communities,
embracing
of the Other,
the
outcasts,
the
expendables,
those with their backs
against their walls,
through
radical hospitality,
through
letting the spirit of God permeate every inch of his body, marrow deep.
On Easter morn God honored Jesus’ life, work,
words, embraces, healings, spreading of an infectious truth, and expansive
love.
God resurrected Jesus, an act akin to the Old
Testament portrayal of God with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm rescuing
Israel.
A resurrection of the body, not just of spirit
or of soul but of body, wounds and all.
God
honored Jesus with a resurrection of Jesus’ entire body of work.
We are all going to die, so what are we going to
do with our lives to make the world a better place?
How are we going to live our lives with the time
we are granted on this earth to heal,
to love,
make
peace,
to reconcile,
to establish equality,
harmony,
to make the beloved community a
reality.
How are we going to use our time to offer a body
of work that God honors?
Recently
Andrew Young, now 81, was
interviewed on the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968. He said, “I was really upset that I didn’t get
shot, too. I was more afraid of living without him and his leadership than I
was afraid of dying.
Death is no problem. We’re all going
to die. It’s the one thing we have in common.
(The late civil rights leader) Hosea
Williams once told Martin Luther King III: “Your father helped me become a man.
He helped me conquer the love of wealth and the fear of death. And when I
conquered them, I could become a real man.”
For me, it was the same thing. You
have to start living for something that’s worth dying for.”
Young went on to tell the rarely told story of
King’s scar. On September 20, 1958
Martin Luther King, Jr. was in New York City on a book signing tour, Stride
Toward Freedom, his account of the Montgomery Bus Boycott had just been
published.
During the signing a woman approached him and
stabbed him in the ribs.
The knife went in at such an angle that the
doctors had to open his chest with both a horizontal and vertical cuts.
Upon the healing of his chest King had a cross
scar on his chest. He said every
morning when I brush my teeth I’m reminded that today could be my last. How
am I going to live today to make the world a better place?
As a congregation we are going to throw all of
our love energies at making sure there are full rights and privileges for our
LGBT brothers and sisters,
at the helping to change the way we view the
environment – it is God’s gift to us that God has entrusted to us,
by offering alternatives to violence as the only
way to solve conflict resolution,
helping the friends of God to experience human
flourishing through art, prayer, and forgiveness, and doing all we can to live
our lives as ambassadors of reconciliation.
I invite you to join with us in our sojourn as
we seek to counter the spiral of violence,
the powers of death,
the three great evils of racism, poverty, &
war,
& the ubiquitous temptations of
meaninglessness, and apathy.
They are not the ways of God.
The ways
of God in this world are threaded together through the cross and the
resurrection
spelled out as
peace,
life,
the beloved community,
social equality,
meaning,
and
passion.
I invite us to claim
the cross of Jesus
and his resurrection
as the generative symbols
and metaphors
for our lives as Christians.
On Friday night we read the names and some of
the stories of the 54 homicides of 2012 in Hennepin County, they were old and
young, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, rich and poor. They were largely domestic disputes, they were people caught
in the crossfire of gang turf war, they were simply at the wrong place at the
wrong time. It isn’t enough to tell their stories and mourn their deaths; we can no longer sit idly by.
Their names and stories were all reminders that
what the world needs most is a few people,
a practicing beloved community,
a cross-centered
&
resurrection-full community
dedicated to ways of non-violence,
peace,
reconciliation,
and forgiveness.
The resurrection of Jesus of is the clarion call
for us to live with our hearts, minds, bodies, and souls open to this
world.
Let us put
aside the time we have wasted and live lives full of resurrection.
Brothers
and Sisters may this be the day you greet resurrection with open hearts, minds,
bodies, and souls.
May this
day and your life be full of Resurrection.
Amen &
Amen.
