Now Let Us Rise
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
April 9, 2023
“…maybe we are not so different than the leaves.
…maybe we are also always being reborn
to be something more then we once were.
…maybe that’s what waking up each morning is.” (For the Hardest Days, by Clint Smith)
“Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.” (Gospel of Luke 24:5)
So much of life unfolds around us unseen. As children we grow mostly unnoticed, until one morning a pair of shoes is too tight to wear. We age without registering small changes from day to day. Plants germinate in the dark, under the ground, and buds swell on trees imperceptibly, long before we see them.
We are surrounded by mysteries, unseen changes, rebirths, and resurrections, most of the time without ever noticing or understanding the significance. But today is a day when we not only notice a mystery, but celebrate it.
Scholars point out that Jesus’ resurrection, the actual act of his rising from the dead, is never described. The rest of the ancient story is told in great detail, isn’t it? From his trial to his agonizing death, to the removal of his lifeless body, the whole sequence of events is recounted for us and we can easily picture it in our mind’s eye: the cruelty, the shouting and the dust, the agony, and the grief.
And then, the women who return to the empty tomb are told by mysterious shimmering strangers only that “he is not here, but has risen.”
This central piece of the story, this scene on which hinges all of Christian belief in eternal life, remains unseen; a mystery. The story continues, of course. In the days following, Jesus mysteriously returns to his disciples, and there are numerous encounters in his presence, even conversations.
Official explanations and interpretations came much later, even hundreds of years later, intended to prove beyond all doubt that Jesus was in fact the Messiah, and to give legitimacy to this new religion called Christianity. For some, that is enough. The story ends there.
But in fact, the story continued, and continues. In fact, nothing was ever the same after the death and resurrection of Jesus. Nothing was ever the same for the women who made the discovery, or for the disciples. They could not resume their former lives.
And this is the true meaning of resurrection: it is a call to transformation. We do not return to the life we led before the crushing loss of a loved one, before the diagnosis, before the surgery, before the marriage ends. In truth, the path always leads onward from that moment. The path leads on, and we are asked to follow it. We rise, and we transform.
maybe we are not so different than the leaves.
…maybe we are also always being reborn
to be something more then we once were.”
New leaves will emerge from the roots of the same plants, but they are not the same leaves. They are wholly new and different.
We rise from what we think is the ending, and we transform.
“(now (wrote our poet) the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)”. (e.e.cummings, I thank you, god)
The ancient story is a mystery, yes. And it is a reminder that life continues, but in new ways. A mystery, a reminder, and an invitation.
The ancient story is an invitation to us to remember that what might seem to be an ending is not. And it is an invitation to us to rise, again and again, over and over, to respond, to turn an ending into a new beginning.
We humans are meant to rise. We are meant to grow, to learn, and to never turn back, or to stay in one place, to stay standing at the entrance to the tomb.
Longtime Boston activist and former state representative Mel King died recently. He was 94, and is well-remembered for the many, many actions he led to promote justice, equity, and inclusion for all. We remember best, perhaps, his Rainbow Coalition. Raised in Boston, he attended Claflin University in South Carolina, and experienced firsthand the segregation of the Jim Crow era. Mr. King remembered sitting in the back of the bus just once, and from then on hitchhiking. He rose up from experiences such as that, rose up early and often. He was controversial, always, and it’s impossible to briefly summarize his life of rising, over and over again, whenever he saw the need. But the New York Times included this story in King’s obituary: “In 1989, Mr. King, who by then was executive director of the New Urban League, joined with other members of that group to disrupt an awards luncheon of the United Fund, a major local philanthropy, which had recently reduced its financial allocation to the league. Mr. King scooped half-eaten rolls and pieces of coconut pie into a laundry bag marked “Our Unfair Share — Black Crumbs,” held it over his head and dumped it on the head table. ‘We’ve been getting crumbs,’ he said at the time. ‘We’re no longer going to accept crumbs.’ ”
(https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/08/us/politics/mel-king-dead.html?)
We humans have many invitations to become more than what we thought we were; to rise.
Transformation took place in Tennessee this past week. As you might have heard, protestors have been converging on the state legislature in Nashville to demand stricter gun control laws, in the wake of the shooting on March 27 at the Covenant School that took the lives of three adults and three nine-year-olds. Democratic legislators Justin Pearson, Gloria Johnson, and Justin Jones brought megaphones onto the House floor to lead the demonstrators in the chamber in protest chants. As a result Representatives Pearson and Jones, both young black men, were expelled from the legislature. Representative Johnson, a white woman, was not expelled.
But we humans are meant to rise: to seek justice, to protest oppression.
In just a few short days, the whole world has learned the names of the three representatives: the Tennessee Three, we are calling them. Their lives have been transformed, because they rose up.
“maybe we are not so different than the leaves.
…maybe we are also always being reborn
to be something more then we once were.”
“There comes a time when you have to do something out of the ordinary,” Jones posted on Twitter.
And Pearson delivered remarks before he left the House chamber, saying, “You are seeking to expel District 86’s representation from this house, in a country that was built on a protest. IN A COUNTRY THAT WAS BUILT ON A PROTEST. You who celebrate July 4, 1776, pop fireworks and eat hotdogs. You say to protest is wrong because you spoke out of turn, because you spoke up for people who are marginalized. You spoke up for children who won’t ever be able to speak again; you spoke up for parents who don’t want to live in fear;… In a country built on people who speak out of turn, who spoke out of turn, who fought out of turn to build a nation.
“I come from a long line of people who have resisted.” (Los Angeles Times)
The Republican majority in the Tennessee legislature was attempting to end something: not just a protest, but to silence these men, to end their careers. Instead, they rose up. They are transformed: household names, suddenly, and we have all had a chance to experience their eloquence and to see their potential. They are something different, something more than they were just a few short days ago. And much as Jesus’ disciples were transformed by his death and resurrection, we too, watching what is happening in Tennessee when people have decided that they have simply been pushed too far, are sensing transformation in our politics. We are witnessing. What will the invitation be for us?
We are offered many invitations throughout our lives. Often they appear just at the time when we think that life as we know it has ended. We might be bereft, unable to see the path forward in those pre-dawn hours. The resurrection happens out of our view, after all. We cannot see right away what might be shifting inside us; in our hearts and in our minds, much as we cannot see what happened within the tomb, or under the surface of the ground, buried in the dirt. And then there is a moment, when the stone falls away, when the path suddenly emerges as the light of a new day begins to brighten, and we rise up and begin to move forward again.
As I wrote these words, I kept hearing the words of another person who also knew what it meant to rise. And in closing I will offer you the words of Maya Angelou, excerpted from her poem, “Still I Rise.”
“You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise…
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.”
May you sense the invitations that life offers: invitations to become something more, to learn to see beyond the end to a new beginning. May this day of bright sunlight and the promise of new life sustain you and carry you forward, into the daybreak of joy.
Amen.
