Jane Acuff
May13, 2007
Christ Covenant MCC
Decatur, GA 30033

First lesson: Audre Lorde, "We Were Never Meant to Survive"

Second Lesson: Matthew 28: 1-10

Good morning, please pray with me. Gracious and loving God, thank you for the opportunity to once again come together with our chosen family. Help us learn to love each other and You just a little bit better today. Amen.

One evening a few years ago I was sitting at my computer after a long day at work. I had changed out of my work clothes and into my sweats and I was relaxing and having a little supper. A woman I knew had died a few days earlier and her funeral was that evening. I told some mutual friends that I would meet them there. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I had not known this woman well but she was part of my community. I had made a commitment to my friends, although a casual one, and now I did not want to go. I was tired, I was not dressed and I just wanted to stay home and chill. But something I was beginning to learn about myself kept urging me to go. My friends would have forgiven me; they would have understood that I was just too tired but that small voice said, once again, “go, you said you would.” I went. After the service while standing in the aisle talking to some folks I heard someone say my name and I felt a hand on my shoulder. There stood a woman who had been dear to me at one time in my life but with whom I had had a terrible falling out. I had contacted this woman a couple of years earlier and tried to make amends for some bad behavior on my part but I had never heard back from her. And there she stood. It only took a second for me to recognize the grace and love that was written all over her face. Today that woman is my life partner, Linda Armstrong.

I want to pose a question to you this morning: what if the resurrection happened and no one showed up? What if the angel appeared and the only witnesses were the Roman guards who passed out from fear?

The two women in our gospel lesson, the two Mary’s, DID go and it seems to me that Jesus’ death may have been more real for these women than for the other disciples. They were the ones, after all, the only ones according to Matthew, who stayed at the cross until Jesus’ lifeless body was taken down. They were the ones, the only ones, who accompanied that body to the tomb. It was certainly not their duty to stay to the end and it was certainly not their obligation to trudge through the stench of death to the gravesite. Those women had every reason to abandon Jesus, his body and to abandon the hope that Jesus’ message had brought to their lives. Everyone else had. After all, he was dead and it was over. Why did they go?

I have had the experience of being present when someone died. The moment of death can be sacred, like the moment of birth. It has felt to me as if the veil between heaven and earth lifted slightly at those moments of death and birth. As a hospital chaplain I witnessed a lot of death but always, at that point, at the moment of death, my job was to attend to the living. Things were different for me when my partner’s dad, Bruce, died this past December. I had only known Bruce after Alzheimer’s had stripped him of his ability to fully function in this world. I spent time at his bedside during the last year and a half of his life.

On the day Bruce died, at home, in his bed with his family surrounding him, I found I could not walk away. For the moments immediately following his death I needed to stay with him. When the funeral home folks arrived and asked everyone to leave the room so they could prepare to take him out, I stayed. I needed to be in the room while they wrapped his body, I needed to walk with the gurney as they rolled his body to the hearse, and I needed to watch them load his body and drive away. I needed to know something and I needed to stay in the holiness of his passing and maybe those women did too. I imagine that they really “got” Jesus’ message at a deeper level than the other disciples and that they really believed his promise to return. They knew Jesus was dead and yet they came again, as the scripture says, in the darkness before dawn, in the scariness of the night and the graveyard and the political climate, they came to “see the tomb.” Again, I wonder, who would have been there to witness the earthquake, the angel or the emptiness, and who would have brought the message to the others to meet Jesus in Galilee if those women had not shown up?

Sometimes it is so hard to show up! Showing up is what we do when we have made a commitment and decide later that we would rather sleep in or watch a movie or do anything and yet we get up, get dressed and get moving. Showing up is answering the phone. Showing up is being fully present to our partners, our children, our co-workers and not escaping into daydreams, alcohol, drugs or sex.

The biggest reason I can think of for not showing up is FEAR. The Mary’s in our gospel lesson had plenty of reason to be afraid. We have reasons to be afraid too. We fear opening our credit card bills, we fear we will be asked to do something we don’t want to do and we fear claiming our personal responsibility to say NO if we need to. Some of us fear discrimination and persecution because of our sexuality or gender. I have not gone to visit my favorite aunt in years because I do not want to hear her prejudice toward lesbians. But I am missing a blessing by letting that fear stop me. I am missing the blessing being in her presence always gave me and I am missing the blessing of being of love and service to her.

In Audre Lorde’s poem, that Tessie read, we heard about those who live on the edges of decision, of those who were imprinted with fear from birth. It is obvious that Audre Lorde knows what she is talking about. The fear of eating and not eating, the fear of living and not living and the fear speaking and not speaking, are legitimate fears to those who live at the margins of any economic, political or racist society. But in the end Audre Lorde says, “it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive.” The poet is reminding us to feel the fear and do it anyway, because we may experience a miracle and we certainly can NOT experience one if we are hidden away or shut down.

I want to encourage you to show up for life as fully as you can. Follow through with your commitments and your dreams. Pay your bills, be faithful to your partner, do what you say you are going to do.

I have experienced resurrection a couple of times in my life because someone was willing to show up. Many years ago, I had a terrible accident that landed me in an intensive care unit, when I woke up I felt intense dread that my behavior had caused other people a lot of pain. When the nurse came around I asked her a question that surprised me. I had not gone to church for many years and even though I never stopped believing in God, I did not feel particularly close to God at that time in my life. So it surprised me a little when I touched the nurse’s arm and asked, “Do you think God will forgive me?” That nurse leaned down and wrapped her arms around me and said very quietly but with certainty,

“He already has.”

Relief washed over me in that exact moment. In that moment that woman, that nurse who chose to show up for her shift that day, offered God’s grace to me and I was able to accept it.

Because THEY showed up, Jesus’ friends were able to receive a blessing, a blessing whose worth extends to us 2000 years later. Notice with me that God’s message to the women is the same, whether spoken by an angel and accompanied by an earthquake and lightning, or by Jesus’ tender voice, “do not be afraid.”

Imagine with me the joy they must have felt! Here was their teacher, their brother and their friend who they had watched die an agonizing and shameful death, here he was alive and embracing them and saying: “You are here, you made it, you showed up! Rejoice and relax, I am here and I love you. Do not be afraid.”

One more thing, because of his divinity we often overlook the sheer joy the very human Jesus felt when he saw that his friends were there to greet him! Remember that Jesus has been dead and buried for three days and the Apostles Creed claims he even descended into hell. I know from experience and you probably do too, that when you have been to hell the best thing that can happen is to be welcomed back by someone who loves you.

And Jesus’ resurrection can teach us to “fear not” the ultimate unknown, death.

While preparing for his consecration as the Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire, out gay priest Gene Robinson received death threats. He was even asked his blood type so emergency workers could begin medical treatment, if necessary, enroute to the hospital. Bishop Robinson said to his anxious daughters “you know, there are worse things than death. Some people never actually live and that is the worst death of all. If something does happen, remember that the God who has loved me my whole life, will still be loving me, and I will have died doing something I believe in with my whole heart."

That is the power of resurrection according to the Bishop, “not what happens after death, but what the knowledge of our resurrection does for our lives and ministries before death…We don’t have to be worried about how all this is going to turn out. We know the end of the story. God reigns. Death is vanquished.” www.thewitness.org/article.php?id=859

I want to leave you with this: Do not be afraid, show up and see the risen Christ for yourself, show up and be the risen Christ for someone else. Touch someone and help them deal with their fear. Let someone touch you and help you deal with yours.

Resurrection is real

Thanks be to God

Copyright © 2007 by Jane Acuff. Permission granted for non- profit circulation with attribution of author and venue. Other rights reserved