The Eliot Church of Newton

 Texts: I Corinthians 15:1-11; Mark 16:1-8

During these weeks before Easter, I’ve found myself recalling
      a very particular image of Jesus, one that I first encountered as a young man.
As many of you know, I was a member of a Catholic religious order,
      the Crosiers, and I spent my seminary years in a monastery. 
My first year of monastic training, my novitiate,
      was in a monastery in Hastings, Nebraska. 
There was a statue in that monastery
      that had been banished from the church sanctuary. 
It was a life-sized plaster statue titled “Jesus Scourged”
      and was intended to depict the suffering of Christ
            after he had been whipped and crowned and mocked by the soldiers.

I don’t mean to sound blasphemous, but all of us 20-year-old novices
      thought it was the most marvelously repulsive piece of bad art we’d ever seen. 
It was very life-like and extremely graphic in its depiction
      of the oozing blood and torn flesh of a tortured Jesus. 
It was an artwork not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach. 
But apparently some important benefactor had given the statue to the Order,
      so they couldn’t just throw it out or smash it to pieces. 
So the Crosier Fathers did the prudent thing: 
      They put a purple cloak around it, complete with a hood
      to cover the bloody crown, and set it on a pedestal in a dimly lit corridor
                  on the third floor of the monastery. 
It was a perfect hiding place. Out of sight, out of mind.
But we all knew he was there, my confreres and I. 
Some of the bookrooms and offices we used were at the other end of that hallway,
      and we would have to tiptoe down that corridor,
            watching Jesus Scourged out of the corner of our eye,
                  to make sure he wasn’t moving that day
      -- tapping his foot or scratching his nose.

And we had reason to watch. 
Every so often, some young cleric or brother would fail to be vigilant,
      and would walk down the corridor not thinking about Jesus Scourged,
            and suddenly we’d hear this blood-curdling SCREAM,
                  and he’d come tearing down the stairs to report
      that Jesus Scourged had just reached out and gripped his shoulder
            and spoken his name as he walked by!
We’d get the brother calmed down and walk with him back to the attic to check,
      and there was Jesus Scourged, cloak unruffled, cold and still as stone,
            standing sadly, head bowed, in all his gory plaster agony. 

But the monastery would be atitter with rumors for the rest of the day: 
Jesus Scourged had struck again.

You see, the problem with Jesus Scourged is that he would never stay put. 
Sometimes, we’d get reports that Jesus even leapt off his pedestal
      and grabbed someone as they passed.
He also had a habit of showing up in the most unexpected places. 
A novice would go into his room at night to go to bed
-- and he’d pull aside the closet curtain, and find himself
      face to face with Jesus Scourged, six inches in front of his nose,
            standing sadly in the darkness. 
This created a great dilemma, because bedtime at the monastery
      was a time of major silence, when no noise or talking
            would be tolerated by the novice master,
      and screaming hysterically was completely out of the question. 
But invariably, the startled novice would scream anyway,
      and the rest of us would all come running. 
Usually the whole novitiate would be put on discipline for a week,
      and Jesus would be sent back to the attic.

Now obviously, the wanderings of the statue of Jesus Scourged
      were assisted by a group of creative young clerics
            with too much time on their hands and too much mischief in their heads. 
If you had the time and the patience to move the statue into hiding,
      borrow his purple cloak and hood for yourself, and take his place
            on the pedestal in the dark hallway, inevitably some unsuspecting monk
                  would come by close enough to be scared out of his wits.

But when I read the biblical accounts of the resurrection
      and post-resurrection appearances of Jesus to his disciples,
            their responses of startle and terror and fear and disbelief
                  don’t sound all that unfamiliar. 
Matthew says the guards “shook and became like dead men”
      and the women ran from the tomb “with fear and great joy”. 
Mark says “They went out and fled from the tomb,
      for terror and amazement had seized them. 
            And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” 
Luke says the women were “terrified” by the bright vision of an angel
            where they expected to find the dead body of Jesus. 
      And when Jesus appeared to the other disciples, they
            “were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost.”
The Gospel of John has several stories of Jesus startling appearances
      -- standing by the tomb, walking through locked doors, hailing from the seashore. 
      And each time, there is a response of disbelief and lack or recognition
            before the disciples understand that this is Jesus come again among them. 

Jesus Scourged reminds me in some strange way that the belief
      that Jesus lives and walks among us isn’t just a message of sweetness and light. 
It isn’t just an assurance that God has come down from heaven
      and now all is right with the world. 
Jesus, alive and walking among us, is a presence that can startle us
      and shock us and even terrify us. 
Because if Jesus is alive and walking among us,
      so is his message of the radical love of God, and extravagant hospitality
                  and radical inclusion
            that breaks through all the social norms and religious rules. 
And that’s shocking. Sometimes it’s terrifying.

This is the Jesus who commands us to love our enemies
      and do good to those who hate us, and bless those who persecute us. 
This is the Jesus who blesses the peacemakers
      and those who face persecution for the sake of justice. 
This is the Jesus who comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. 
This is the Jesus who just won’t stay put.

What am I talking about exactly? Let me offer a few examples:

It was 70 years ago this weekend, on Easter Sunday of 1939,
      that Marian Anderson sang on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial,
            at a concert arranged by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt
                  after the Daughters of the American Revolution
                                       refused to let her sing at Constitution Hall because she was black. 
Marian Anderson, arguably the most gifted contralto of the 20^th century;
      Arturo Toscanini said that she was the kind of singer who comes along
      once every hundred years. 
And why did the good women of the Daughters of the American Revolution
      refuse her entrance to Constitution Hall? 
I don’ think it was because they were mean-spirited
      or even just because they were prejudiced,
            or because of their interpretation of a few Bible passages
      that seemed to sanction racial segregation,
I think they were terrified that God had given such talent to a non-white woman,
       more talent in her field than most Caucasians ever attained. 
And I think they realized somewhere in their hearts that their biases
      Of white supremacy were a sham,
            that the age of segregation was soon to pass,
                  and that the walls would come a’tumbalin down. 
In the symbol of Marian Anderson at Lincoln Hall on Easter Sunday,
      before a crowd of 75,000 people,
            they encountered Jesus alive and walking among them, and they were terrified.

In 1850, a feisty, 25 year old woman, Antoinette Brown completed her studies
      at Oberlin College and Oberlin seminary. 
But, even though she graduated, she was not granted a degree or access to ordination,
      because she was a woman.  
Three years later Antoinette Brown was called as pastor of the
      Congregational Church of South Butler, New York and she was ordained,
            making her the first woman ordained by a congregation
                  in a regular Protestant denomination in the United States. 
Even then, the larger Congregational judicatory
      at first refused to recognize her ordination. 
And was this because they were hard-hearted chauvinists? 
Well, maybe … but they were also basing their decision on their interpretation
      of several Bible passages on the role of women,
             and were asserting the long-held belief that therefore it could never change. 
But I think their staunch opposition was also fueled by their realization on some level
      that the strict social norms of gender discrimination were weakening,
            and they were terrified.
The God who said “behold, I will do a new thing” 
                  and “in Christ there is neither male nor female, neither Jew nor Greek,
                                                            neither slave nor free” really was doing a new thing. 
They were meeting Jesus alive and walking among them, and they were terrified.

And more recently, does anything terrify many conservative and evangelical Christians
      more than the prospect of gay rights and gay marriage? 
Except for a few fringe hate-mongers, many of these folks  are good Christian people,
      fervent in their love of God and loyalty to Christ and the church. 
But because of their interpretation of a few Bible passages,
      they can’t get past the social constraints that homosexuality is inherently evil
            and condemnable, and their leaders create all kinds of doomsday scenarios
                  about how marriage as we know it and family life as we know it
                                  will be utterly destroyed if gay couples and gay families are allowed
                                                           to live among us on equal footing with heterosexuals. 
On the contrary, we have seen here in Massachusetts and more recently
      in several other states that this is not the case at all.
And we have seen time and again that homosexuality is one God- given variation
      of all human sexuality, one way of loving engagement and commitment
             in a range of ways. 
Here too, “Behold, God is doing a new thing.” 
We are meeting Jesus alive and walking among us,
      the Jesus who will never stay put,
            proclaiming a message of radical love and extravagant welcome.
And for some, that is terrifying. 
For others, that is blessing and good news.

The examples, of course, can go on and on—about war and peace,
      about justice and mercy, about a wealth and poverty.
In each of these areas, Christ’s message, which is blessing and liberating for some,
      may seem shocking and terrifying to others.
And if there was ever a time when we needed to hear and to proclaim Christ’s message
      about all of these topics, it is right now. 
We live in a time when the nuclear threat is less from cold-war nations,
      than from terrorist cells and tribal alienation. 
We live in a time of a growing world-wide rift
      between the obscenely rich and the abjectly poor.
We live in a time when our whole nation and much of the world
      faces the worst depression in 80 years,
            and we are reminded again why three of the seven deadly sins
                  are sins of excess or overconsumption – Greed, Gluttony and Lust. 
And we must also learn anew the moral code that was one of the first ethical questions
      ever asked in the Bible:  “Am I my brother’s keeper?” “Are we sister’s keeper?” 
And the answer is an emphatic, “Yes! We are.”

I know this sounds like a heavy Easter message. 
But I don’t mean it that way. 
The message I want to convey is the same message as that of the angel. 
      “Jesus is not buried in that tomb. He is alive and well and going ahead of you. 
      Follow, and you will see him.”