perpetual resurrection:
turning our hearts toward the good
Easter Sunday ● March 31, 2024
Rev. JAlexis Lillie © 2024
You can view the full worship video recording at:
https://youtu.be/S-sk989twK0?si=Seen0f_ydrHTuZMM
Scripture Readings:
The Gospel of Mary 4-5 (adapted from A New New Testament)
Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed!
This was the old-school Easter greeting in my faith communities growing up. And it begs the question –What does that even mean to be risen? To be resurrected??
My favorite line from my favorite poem ends with these words: Practice Resurrection. This is so much my favorite line, that it was one of my first tattoos. Because of that, because people see it, I am often asked: “What does that even mean??!”
I think people are surprised, because we've come to think of resurrection, even if only subconsciously, as something solely related to Jesus. Something that's one-and-done. An event. A cataclysm.
In the what I’m going to call the "traditional" rendering of the Easter resurrection story, Jesus dies, is buried, and comes back to life (resurrects). And this has caused no shortage of debate and disagreement - even judgmentalism and dismissal between those who hold to this ephocal, cataclysmic, traditional reading, and those who find other ways of interpreting this story.
When we read the resurrection story through the lens of the Gospel of Mary – a beautiful extra-canonical gospel and our second reading – I think we can open up some of the typical ways of looking at resurrection, and even step beyond and outside of some of the classic debates.
This resurrection thing is perpetual. It's not AN EVENT, and then that's it. It's ... a practice.
Let's take a look at a few of these statements unique to the Gospel of Mary through which we can view resurrection, and our continual participation in this process.
This section of the Gospel of Mary offers perhaps some less-familiar teachings that revolve around Jesus following his appearance at the tomb, what I'm going to call the "Easter resurrection story" to distinguish it from this idea that resurrection is continual.
First, let's look at the phrase, "The Child of True Humanity exists within you.” I love this rendering! It’s a unique statement to the Gospel of Mary, but not a unique concept. Another similar term we may be more familiar with is, "Son of Man," which is used frequently in the Christian Scriptures to describe Jesus. We might also render that as "Child of Humanity" to give us a more inclusive phrase, and then we're not too far from what we read in the Gospel of Mary.
These phrases offer us glimpses into how Jesus understood his life's work, at least in part – to show us how to live fully into our own “image-of-God-ness” — our human-ness and sacred-ness.
Many points in Jesus' life are expositions on this theme. The nativity teaches this: Jesus is born human and divine. His baptism teaches this: It’s something we remember this for ourselves each time we witness the new birth of a baptism in our community, that continual process of birthing and becoming. Jesus' parables teach this: they often highlight the image of God witnessed in our own humanity. So, too, the cross and resurrection teach this: human in capacity to die, and divine in the power of living beyond death.
Resurrection is one way of teaching us this – one part of the story – and it points to what Jesus has been teaching along. With this framework, I think we can understand that Jesus is up to something that is both completely groundbreaking, and intimately familiar. The Child of True Humanity – which sounds so other-worldly and cosmic – is already here, intimately, within us.
This sacred humanity is not something new. It's something Jesus has living through example, down to the names he calls himself, and that he’s been teaching all along. It is an awakening to what has existed eternally. So resurrection, Easter Sunday, is a part of a continual waking up to this truth.
We are not saying anything that Jesus hasn't said and demonstrated before. And going beyond that, Jesus isn't saying anything creation has not said before! We certainly sense that intimate familiarity in the cycles, the resurrections of nature. The seasons: birthing, dying, and being born again.
The post-Jesus-at-the-tomb resurrection story is one more point of entry to this truth. We are reminded: the resurrection power that we see in Jesus, and in so many places, is within you. Don’t make it too complicated, Jesus says! Recognize it (which is really what I've been inviting you into all along!) And follow it!
The next phrase I want to look at in relation to our Easter resurrection story, is this line here: "Do not lay down any rule beyond what [Jesus] determined. Don't promulgate law ... or else we may be dominated by it." I alluded to this idea when I briefly lifted up some of the ways varying interpretations of the Easter resurrection story are used to divide people, communities, churches.
The codification of believing in the resurrection as a "one-and-done" event can take the shape of what Jesus is cautioning against: A rule beyond what Jesus offered. A law that may dominate us. The development of the resurrection event as a cornerstone for creedal Christianity and, by extension, so-called “salvation,” is something that comes later in church history. Not something suggested by Jesus or even his early followers.
In a way, all of the conversations we have about whether or not Jesus was really, literally raised from the dead – or not – is what the Gospel of Mary is warning against. The Jesus in the Gospel of Mary invites us to be free from the domination of the law, by following the continual resurrection of the Child of True Humanity that is within us.
The last phrase I want to lift up comes toward the end, after Mary reflects on what Jesus has said and attempts to comfort the disciples. We're told that after she says these things, "she turns their hearts toward the Good." In a moment of distress – when Mary's friends and fellow disciples are worried about how they will follow the True Child of Humanity, when they are worried about meeting death like Jesus did – she pulls them from distraction and back to what is Good.
Perhaps they're able to follow the thread that we've considered: that Jesus' life and work, at least in part, revolves around making us aware of the divine humanity within us. and listening to and following that divine humanity out into the world.
So I hope now this idea of "practicing resurrection" or "perpetual resurrection" is not so hard to imagine. I think about the ways I have resurrected myself into new and different iterations of myself. The biggest one that comes to mind for me is when I'd gone through a particularly extreme period of growth, I chose a new last name for myself, Lillie - some of you may remember the story behind that.
I know a number of you have similar stories of self-resurrections. Through literally being reborn into a new name, a new gender, or identity. Or myriad other ways we can manifest new ways of being.
Perhaps our communal life together gives us the most powerful entry point to this idea. There are many versions of COTV that came before us, and we are in a time when we are discerning what the next iteration will be, as we move forward through some changes and challenges. Being in community also gives us the blessing of experiencing others' transformations. When someone else resurrects themselves, that changes my reality, when a person we're journeying with emerges anew.
And there's another pretty big, relevant example that many of us are familiar with on a weekly basis: The communion table! When we celebrate communion, we embody this practice of resurrection. As we say in the liturgy: Jesus is present in the gifts of bread and cup. Jesus continually shows up for us here, so we are able to encounter the Child of True Humanity, and resurrect that presence into the world we inhabit.
So this morning we've looked beyond the Easter resurrection story, into the ways this event points more deeply to the practice of resurrection. This doesn’t need to be shocking or scary or alarming. To be like Jesus, to acknowledge the Child of True Humanity, is to be continually experiencing newness, resurrection, renewal.
The Gospel of Mary 4-5 (adapted from A New New Testament)
When the Blessed One had said these things, he greeted them all, saying, “Peace be with you! Bear my peace within yourselves! Beware that no one lead you astray saying, ‘Look over here!’ Or ‘Look over there!’ For the Child of True Humanity is within you! Follow it! Those who seek it will find it. Go then and proclaim the good news of the realm. Do not lay down any rules beyond what I determined for you, nor give a law like the lawgiver, lest you be confined by it.” When he had said this, he departed.
But they were pained. They wept greatly, saying, “How shall we go to the nations and proclaim the good news of the Child of Humanity? If they did not spare him, how will they spare us?”
Then Mary stood up. She greeted them all, and said to her brothers and sisters, “Do not weep and be pained, nor doubt, for all his grace will be with you and shelter you. But rather let us praise his greatness, for he has prepared us and made us Humans.” When Mary said this, she turned their heart to the Good, and they began to discuss the words of the Savior.