APRIL 17, 2022

On Easter Sunday, Kaleo was joined by our friends at Bridge Worship Collective and had service outside in the courtyard at Grace Lutheran. I was a bit intimidated taking on the Easter sermon by myself 😬 so I asked if my friend Chris would split it with me! Below is a recording and transcript of my message.

It’s been three days. I still can’t believe it. I haven’t left my house since… since Friday. I was there, so many of us were. There, in the crowd. We tried to pretend we didn’t know each other, know him. I couldn’t stay away. But I wasn’t brave enough to stand with his mother. How can I explain it to you? It was like nothing I had ever seen before, like nothing I had ever heard before, like nothing I had ever smelled before. You could taste the blood in the air. The stench, the smell of death, rotting pieces of people, unwashed bodied, fetid breath. The crowd roaring and hooting. It was nothing new for them, but it was too much a horror to ever be routine, even knowing they’ll be back at it again. Soon. With some of us who followed him.

Some of us sisters found our voice and blessed him and his mama and he blessed those of us who would never birth a child to die on their crosses. His poor mother. She did what she could for him before Shabbat. I know she was there again first thing this morning to bury her child properly. My heart aches for her and for us all.

It’s been three days now. The sun is up, I hear people going about their business, but I can’t just yet. When I woke there was a moment when I didn’t remember and then it all came crashing in. I can’t imagine a world without him in it. I can’t imagine going to the market, baking bread, like it’s any other first day.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll venture out…

An imaginative description of words by Wilda C. Gafney of what Mary Magdalen perhaps thought the day before she went to the tomb. 

We joined Grace Lutheran for Good Friday and at the end of the service, Pastor Sarah invited us into a time of silent prayer and candle lighting. We stared at the cross in front and above us with black cloth wrapped around it and a crown of thorns placed on top. 

I have never been to a Lutheran service and the way that they invited us to reflect on the death of Jesus with hymns, Scripture readings, reflections, candles, and silence. 

It reminded me quite honestly of George Floyd's vigil. 

That same feeling you carried hoping that your people could just be without oppression without racism without constraint without assimilation without code-switching without pretending like everything is good when we know very well that it's not and then one of your very own dies brutally.

I imagine that maybe that's what Mary Magdalene felt. 

To hear that Jesus would be the one to overturn the Roman Empire and then to see him murdered doesn’t make sense. Not only was he murdered but he was murdered brutally. Not only was he murdered brutally but he was murdered inhumanely. The powers-that-be we're making an example out of him as they always do.

But on Friday, as I stared at the candles from the back pew I imaginatively put myself in Minneanpolis, MN at prayer vigil…for George Floyd. And imagined what it would have been like to witness a massacre.

Maybe Mary's curiosity of the words of Jesus that she replayed in her memory…is what lead her to the tomb? Maybe it was her memories that lead her just see…to just…see.

JOHN 20:1-18 (NIV)

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2 So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”

We see Mary here overwhelmed with emotion! No one can tell her that Jesus didn’t die she saw it with her own eyes. She saw the large bolder of a stone rolled in front of the Grave that no man could single-handedly roll away. So when the stone was rolled away the only explanation she had was they (probably one of the Romans in power) has taken back the body of Jesus. 

3 So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 4 Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7 as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. 8 Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. 9 (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) 10 Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.

Can you imagine the types of conversations they were having?

Remember…empire – the powers that be that overtax you, that marginalize you, that have the power to take your money away, the power to unjustly incarcerate you, the power to kill…the bid for power OVER, power to dominate, power to control…is what empire IS and HAS ALWAYS BEEN after.  

With that being said…

Can you put yourselves in the shoes of the disciples? 

Their friend, hero, Lord and Savior was unjustly murdered. He was the one that said He was going to save them from the Roman Empire. But what they saw with their eyes was not him overturning the Roman Empire but they saw the Roman Empire over turned Him. 

BUT…

Imagine the conversations after they have just seen the stone rolled away.

If Jesus has risen from the dead then Jesus really is greater than Empire. Then Jesus really can save us from the oppressor. Then JUSTICE really does roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

If He has risen from the dead, then He truly is the greatest of them all.

Because even Empire’s power to kill could not constrain him.

Even Injustice could not defeat him…

and if THAT is true…

Then the world about to change.

Because that means that the ways of Jesus truly are more powerful than the ways of empire. 

THE FOLLOWING IS A MODIFIED VERSION OF POEMS COMPILED BY BRIAN ZAHND. (Read the original here)

So when Christ came

He did not bring

Another empire of men

Built upon a lie

As the liar in the desert tempted

Instead, he brought

THE EMPIRE OF GOD

GOOD NEWS!

The government of justice and mercy, grace and truth

And the truth is

EVERY EMPIRE OF MEN IS BUILT UPON A LIE

Though every empire says

“We have God on our side”

So you will have to decide

How patriotic a Republican or Democrat believer can be?

May we be salt and light

A prophetic voice

A Christian conscience

May we preserve and illuminate

Cry aloud and convict

But never forget

EVERY EMPIRE OF MEN IS BUILT UPON A LIE

And to stand for truth

And to stand for God

Is to stand against the lie the empire is built upon

And in the midst of imperial self-justification pray—

(Lord God) THY Empire come…

The Empire of Men will oppose the Empire of God

To know this is dangerous

To say it can be deadly

Do you think I’m kidding?

What crucified Jesus?

Self-righteous religion?

No, not religion alone

Religion as the whore of Empire

This is what killed Jesus

And Paul

And Peter

And MLK

And Breonna Taylor

And John Brown

Because this is what empires do

Silence the prophets who will not prostitute the truth

Religion is tolerated

Imperial religion is promoted

But the prophetic hope of ANOTHER WAY

Must be censored

Even by the sword

This is the way of empire

Because

EVERY EMPIRE OF MEN IS BUILT UPON A LIE

And if you ask me my politics I will say

JESUS IS LORD!

JESUS IS LORD!

JESUS IS LORD!

This is more political than it is religious

I glimpsed this truth out of the corner of my eye

ENDING PRAYER

We veil our faces before your glory,
 O Holy and Immortal one,
 and bow before the cross of your wounded Christ.
 With angels and archangels,
 we praise you, our Mercy,
 and we bless you, our Compassion, 
for in our brokenness 
you have not abandoned us. 
Hear us as we pray through Jesus, our high priest:
 heal all division,
 reconcile the estranged, 
console the suffering, 
and raise up to new life
 – all that is bound by death. Amen.

ENDNOTES

1. Here is the opening text by Wilda C. Gafney on Mary Magdalene: https://www.wilgafney.com/2020/04/12/three-days-later-a-womanist-midrash/

2. Here is the original compilation of poems: https://brianzahnd.com/2008/08/out-of-the-corner-of-my-eye/