Rock, paper, scissors

 

John 20: 1-18
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
April 17, 2022 – Easter

Photo of a yard sign, white background and black block letters, "You are worthy of love".

Late last fall I purchased some yard signs with hopeful messages on them. We have one of them here in the worship space. On one side it reads “You are worthy of love” and on the other side it reads “Don’t give up”. As the omicron variant was bearing down on us in the second year of this pandemic, I thought this was an important message to give to the community. When living with trauma and uncertainty, oftentimes we can ping pong from a heightened state of fight or flight to the valley of despair and hopelessness in our search for serenity. I wanted to remind us all of our inherent belovedness.



One morning in December I brought the signs to the church. The signs came with the metal yard sign stakes but in a separate cardboard box that was bound with plastic bands. I went to my office, grabbed my scissors, came out to the front parking lot, and took the box out of the car. I cut the plastic bands and put the scissors on the roof of my car. I assembled two of the signs and planted them on either side of the entrance to the parking lot. Satisfied with how everything turned out, I got in my car and drove home.



The next morning, I drove to Newark High School to meet with the student I mentor. After we finished our time together, I went to the Peach Blossom Eatery for some coffee and a nosh and parked in the lot behind the restaurant. When I returned to my car, the scissors were on the roof more or less where I had left them the day before.



I could think of only two possibilities, both of which seemed unbelievable. One, someone found the scissors in the church parking lot or wherever and then returned them when they saw my vehicle. Or two, they had been on the roof of the car since the day before: when I drove home, at one point over 50 mph, when I pulled into my garage and got out of the car, when I got into my car the next morning, when I drove again down Paper Mill around 50 mph, when I arrived at the high school and when I departed, when I got out to go to the restaurant. From point A to point B they hung in there the whole time. David supplied a third option—that the scissors goddess picked them up and held onto to them for me until I was ready to see them—but that theory is still under investigation.

Poster of Jesus in watercolor and acrylic paint swaths in rainbow colors, with black letters in the shape of a cross with this quote by Parker Palmer: "Every religious tradition is rooted in mysteries I don't pretend to understand, including claims about what happens after we die. But this I know for sure: as long as we're alive, choosing resurrection is always worth the risk."

So why tell that story on Easter? Resurrection is an experience, a mystery, a force that can leave us gobsmacked, dumbfounded, speechless. We try to explain it or we disbelieve it or we fall to our knees in awe of it. We think of it as an event, as something that might have happened once, and yet what if resurrection has been here the whole time—we just haven’t noticed it.



Like a rock from the basement of time, worn away by forces beyond its control and yet still itself, we are still here, you are still here, and that is no small victory. We take so much for granted—our bodies, our lying down and rising again, the breath that enters and leaves our lungs, the hope that ebbs and returns, the love that sets and rises again like the sun. Like the Avery and Marsh song I sang every Easter when I was young, “every morning is Easter morning from now on, every day’s resurrection day, the past is over and gone”. The church, our church, is still here, every Sunday a resurrection when we gather in worship.

Poster with a colorful frame and different iterations of a cartoon figure in different emotional states around the center opening, with this quote in a handwritten font: "You are doing well. And if you aren't doing well, you are doing your best. And if you aren't doing your best, you are doing. And if you aren't doing, you are being. And in being, you are bold. That's it."

With everything that Mary Magdalene had been through, from point A to point B, though she probably couldn’t say how, she hung in there the whole time. Healed of seven demons; along with other women, traveled with Jesus and provided for him and his disciples out of their resources; the trauma she experienced as she witnessed his crucifixion and death, then readied herself to attend to his dead body, and the first to witness his resurrection and to proclaim it in all four gospels—she is more the rock of the Jesus story and in truth the Church would not have been built if not for Mary’s faithfulness.



Faithfulness is a funny thing. It’s a million tiny things—action and inaction, showing up when we’re full and when we’re down to our last drop, steps and missteps, our gifts and our flaws, our relationships, our vision and our inability to notice what’s right in front of us, the things we do and the forces beyond our control—that make for how we get from point A to point B, the scenic route we travel, the map we make as we go, the testament of our lives and our life together, the grace that appears to be paper thin but holds us up nonetheless.



I think sometimes resurrection works the same way. It’s a million tiny things that make for new life, a lot of which goes unnoticed or devalued or taken for granted. If we were to write them down on a piece of paper, eventually we’d have a resurrection memoir. Yet it’s hard to see that when we’re in the middle of the story, when that paper thin grace can’t seem to cover the rock of our grief, our trauma, our fear, our sadness, and the evil of this world cuts through that paper grace like the sharpest scissors.

Photo of stone steps leading up and out of a dark tunnel, with green moss growing on the rock wall on either side, with this quote by Frederick Buechner:
"Resurrection means the worst thing is never the last thing."

The force that kept those scissors on my car was friction. Our faith and our hope chafe against our despair and our anxiety, and yet this is how we get from point A to point B, how we hang on despite ourselves and each other, how we witness to resurrection on the daily, not because of anything simple or easy but because we have within us that rock we call faithfulness, that rock we call hope, that rock we call love.



Frederick Buechner wrote that resurrection means that the worst thing is never the last thing. When we practice resurrection, when we persist with it every day, we too become witnesses to Christ who suffered the worst thing and yet it was not the last thing. We are still here, you are still here, and that is no small victory. From the benediction that will send us forth, “Evil cannot keep us down. Love rises. Love persists. Love always will.” Amen.

Benediction – enfleshed.com


As the Risen Christ called out, “Mary”
on the other side of death,
may you hear your own name
on the lips of the Beloved
calling you into hope,
even when your heart is shattered.
Evil cannot keep us down.
Love rises. Love persists. Love always will.
Let us go forth in a collective hallelujah.