Easter
Year B
Isaiah 25:6-9
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Mark 16:1-8
May the words of my mouth O God… speak your truth…
There’s a 2013 movie called Elysium… which takes place 130 years in the future… when humanity is sharply divided between two classes of people… those who live a hardscrabble existence in Earth’s ruined cities… where resources that were once abundant… are now in short supply… and the ultra-rich… who live on a luxurious wheel-shaped habitat in earth’s orbit… it’s more than thirty-seven miles in diameter… and a mile wide… and is capable of supporting half a million residents… and it has rivers… and forests… and secluded palatial homes… and one of the center-pieces of each home… are healing machines called Med-Bays… which can not only can cure all sorts of diseases and cancers… but which can even bestow immortality on Elysium’s citizens…
And knowing this… some people go to extremes trying to get there… but they must first get past Elysium’s extensive arsenals… which shoot at the shuttles… or forcibly deport their passengers if they happen to make it through…
But back on Earth… after being exposed to an accidental yet lethal dose of radiation in the factory where he works… a man named Max agrees to undertake a dangerous mission… first… to board one of those shuttles and get past Elysium’s defenses… and after adding Earth’s entire population as legal residents of Elysium… he would reboot the system-wide database… and then he could use one of these machines to heal himself… but Max finds himself pursued by a maniacal vigilante… and then he is cornered by Elysium’s security forces and ruling elite… and he is forced to make a choice… because even if he manages to reboot the database… healing himself is no longer an option… but he could choose to reboot it anyway… ultimately bringing salvation to humanity… and that is what he does… clearly… Max becomes a Christ figure… sacrificing himself to ensure perfect health and immortality for others… and in doing so… he has seriously upset the status quo… the same kind of thing Jesus did when he overturned the money changers’ tables and drove everyone out… it did not destroy the Temple… but it was an attack on how it operated…
And in adapting something that Fr. Richard Rohr wrote… we can say that much of human nature… wants either to play the victim… or to create victims of others… in fact… the second follows from the first… because once we start feeling sorry for ourselves… we begin to look for someone else to blame… accuse… or attack… ] doing so settles the dust more quickly… and takes away any immediate shame… guilt… or anxiety we might feel… in other words… it works… at least for a while…
And all we need to do is look around to realize that this pattern hasn’t changed much throughout history… ] hating… fearing… or diminishing someone else… holds us together for some reason… scapegoating is in our hard wiring… and the sequence… goes something like this… we compare… compete… and create conflict… we conspire… condemn… and then we crucify… ] and if we don’t recognize some variation of this pattern within ourselves and nip it in the bud early on… it almost inevitably takes root…
And it’s hard for us religious people to hear this… but the most persistent violence in human history has been violence that we’ve treated as sacred… but which was… in fact… not… ] we imagine that we are fearing or hating on behalf of something holy and noble… like God… religion… truth… morality… our children… or love of country… because it takes away all of our guilt… and we may even think of ourselves as taking the moral high ground… but it rarely occurs to most of us that we are becoming what we fear…
But Jesus walked willingly into a human world defined by violence… and a dependence on scapegoats… he was murdered… because as humans… when the stakes are high… we determine who’s in and who’s out through violence and death… as did the leadership on Elysium… but Jesus broke the system… because what was supposed to happen… didn’t… the scapegoat didn’t stay dead… and the victors… in this case… didn’t get to write the only version of the story… the scapegoat came back to life and told a different story… a truer story… a story about life and love… and through Jesus’ story… we discovered that our ideas about God had been wrong…
In our Lenten bible study… we fed our theological imaginations by reading from different translations of the Gospels… and looked for truths which lay behind the words themselves… truths which remain true regardless of the context… and as I thought about it… this film raised an important question which must be asked… a question on which both our individual and our collective hopes hang… does art imitate life… or does life imitate art… ] or to put it another way… do we discover a timeless thread of truth about resurrection that’s woven into a modern story… or does a modern story about immortality simply claim to be true when it’s really not…
In this case at least… I’m confident that the timeless truth of resurrection and eternal life are woven into the fabric of creation… are woven into our consciousness… and find countless expressions in the patterns of death and rebirth in the world about us… and are hinted at in stories such as this…
And one of these stories… is today’s passage from Isaiah… it’s one of my favorites… because it was written about 800 years before Jesus was born… and what it tells us… is that the end of death is not only a Christian idea… it affirms that God will… and has… swallowed up death forever… in fact… after Lazarus died… Mary and Martha both said to Jesus… If only you had been here, my brother would not have died… though I know that he will rise again… in the resurrection… on the last day… these were Jewish women… who trusted these words from Isaiah… that in God’s time… God would draw all of us close in for healing and new life…
In our baptisms… we were united with Christ in a death like his… so we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his… what we seem to want is to never die… but what God has prepared for us is eternal life… beyond space and time… and when we die to death we are united with God more fully… and more joyously than we can imagine… what we seem to want are the McMansions of Elysium… but Jesus has gone ahead to prepare a better place for us… and I don’t know how much… if at all… it will be anything like Elysium… but I’m confident that we’ll want for nothing…
The three women in this morning’s Gospel question each other… Who will roll away the stone for us… they’d seen it rolled into place… and knew that they weren’t capable of moving it… ] yet… in order to anoint Jesus… they needed help… ] but on a deeper level… using our theological imaginations… we might understand their question in this way… Who will teach us how to enter into the death and resurrection of Jesus… who will teach us how to be buried with Christ in order to rise with him… it’s a question we’re still asking ourselves these days…
The women are instructed to go and tell the disciples… and Peter… that Jesus has gone ahead of them to Galilee… just where he said he would be… because Galilee is the place where it all began… the place of the original preaching… teaching… and healing… ] following Jesus is not over… it begins again… and not just for the disciples then… but for us now… but this time it’s with a greater understanding that Jesus’ death and burial was not a disruption of his messianic mission… it was one of its essential dynamics… new life is all around us… it turns out to be unavoidable…
Happy Easter !!!
