Friday’s walk, in cold rain under dark skies, to modern sites of crucifixion, was painfully necessary. We turned first toward B’dote, place of Dakota Genesis and Genocide. We bore witness at George Floyd Square. We traveled to Rene Good’s memorial at 34th and Portland. We paused in front of Karmel Mall to decry the scapegoating of our Somali community. We stood at an intersection where ICE abducted a neighbor and abused witnesses. We ended our journey at 26th and Nicollet, site of Alex Pretti’s execution. Every once and a while, on this solemn walk, a bright gleam of sun would peak through the clouds, and the spring birds would seem to turn up their volume. At each place of torment, we sang a verse of “Were You There?” Were you there when he cried out to his mama? Were you there when they called her nasty slurs? Were you there… when our neighbors were afraid, when they dragged our friends away, when they shot them in the streets … were you there? Oh, sometimes, it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Trembling is at the center of Matthew’s story of Jesus’ last week. On Palm Sunday, when Jesus entered Jerusalem, Matthew reports, “the whole city was in turmoil.” The word used is here is seismos, earthquake. So Jesus’ Palm Sunday entrance shook things up: created instability, made trouble. Again, Matthew depicts a seismic event as Jesus died (Matthew 27:51): “At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split.” And finally, on Easter morning, the women made the pilgrimage to the tomb. As dawn gradually brightened the sky, maybe they wept quietly or wailed inconsolably. Perhaps they were simply numb. I imagine when they saw the soldiers guarding the body of their beloved, they were angry and afraid.
Suddenly, the earth shook again. Lightening blazed. A heavenly messenger in blinding white rolled back the stone—bursting the emperor’s official seal on the tomb and paralyzing Caesar’s troops, who became like dead men. And then the angel sat atop the weighty stone. Perhaps with a small knowing smile. Because as it turns out, the attention-grabbing pyrotechnics that accompanied the appearance of this messenger were not the real show. The angel turned to speak directly to the grieving women: “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has been raised, as he said.” It sounds to me as if the tomb was empty before the angel arrived. By the time the stone was rolled away, Jesus had already left. He had been raised quietly, secretly, subversively, right under everyone’s noses. No one and nothing could stop God’s uprising of life happening through Jesus, not the stone, nor the guards, not the emperor or the corrupt religious officials.
Were you there when Christ rose up from the grave? Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. My friends, the seismic truth is that crucifixion is never the last word. That love (also known as God) is always stronger than our fear. That love arises again, and again. That we belong to an unstoppable stream of life. It runs through our veins, day and night, that runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measure.
Fear and great joy. That somewhat rare combination of emotions the women experience when Jesus appears to them describe vividly what it’s like to be there, when the holy disruption, the generative trembling of resurrection happens. When have you felt something like that, fear and great joy… raising children? riding an out-of-control horse? preparing for the first day of school? watching a thunderstorm sweep across the sky? living into your true self? honoring your experience of queerness or neurodiversity? trying para-sailing for the first time? sharing a vulnerable truth with a caring community?
This past Palm Sunday, thousands of Christians around the nation retraced the steps of Jesus as he entered the holy city, that earth-shaking event. Here in St. Paul, we marched down University Avenue 10,000 strong, holding signs that declared the teachings of Jesus. “Love God and neighbors.” “Blessed are the poor, the immigrants, and the peacemakers.” “Woe to the greedy billionaires. Woe to those who take our neighbors. And woe to those who make unjust war.” Palm Sunday was a holy disruption because Jesus, with his humble donkey of peace, mocked Caesar’s military parade. And because the people hailed him, waving branches, laying cloaks and shouting, “save us,” the empire wanted to be left alone to exploit and degrade the people. Jesus made the empire tremble because he brought to life a community of truth-telling and resistance, a community of shared abundance and mutual service, a community that feeds, heals and welcomes everyone.
This week, I was in a Zoom meeting with pastors from all over the country, debriefing the Palm Sunday events. I was assigned to a breakout room with a pastor from Apple Valley. He said that a handful of people from his church decided to participate in the Palm Sunday path even though they had never done anything like this before. The most powerful aspect of the experience for them, he thought, was to poke their heads out and realize that they weren’t alone. However, he also mentioned that on the day of the march, they felt bad that they had not been able to bring busloads of people with them like they saw other churches do. They worried their efforts weren’t enough, wouldn’t matter. This pastor’s eyes got bright as he described how he had urged them to instead celebrate the momentous, earth-shaking thing they had done. In that conversation I felt a deep trembling of hope, as I recognized a holy disruption, a groundswell shaking the earth, as many, many people arose, one, two or three at a time, a great swelling of those who had previously stayed quiet and complacent, now pouring into the streets to bear witness in public to what it means for our politics when we love like Jesus.
On our Good Friday walk, at the intersection of 29th and Pillsbury, we heard and held a story repeated several thousands times over in our community in recent months. Witnesses had gathered, blowing whistles, filming agents, trying to defend their neighbor. In the end, they had been unable to stop the kidnapping. Our friend and colleague Rebecca Voelkel spoke in that place. She lifted up the sacredness of bearing witness to all crucifixions that we can’t prevent. That was the role, she reminded us, of the women in Jesus’ story. The women, who stayed to at the cross in solidarity to the end and who returned again, courageously, faithfully, to the tomb at early dawn. Rebecca urged us to “hold on to the reality that those who do not flee, that whose who bear witness, and who grieve, are also often the first to bear witness to resurrection…”
Friends, we were there. We are there. We follow the one who creates holy disruption after holy disruption, disarming the forces of terror and oppression, and liberating us to come alive with power of love. Jesus’ invitation to his followers to meet him again in Galilee affirms that the tomb is not the end of their story, or of ours. Resurrection is the ongoing experience of all who walk with Jesus. With fear and great joy, we continue to arise. Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble tremble. Amen.