Vulnerable = Resurrection

DATE: April 8, 2012, Easter
SCRIPTURE:
Mark 16: 1-8
BY: Rev. Cynthia E. Robinson

Lord Jesus Christ,

Take our hands and work with them;
take our lips and speak through them;
take our minds and think with them;
take our hearts and set them on fire
with love for you and all your people;
for your name’s sake.

Amen.

Today we celebrate the resurrection, that irrational, unexplainable, seemingly mythical event when God raised Jesus from death. What does that mean, to be raised from death? What does it mean that God raised Jesus? How does a mystery like that make any difference after we’ve had our Easter dinner and feasted on chocolate bunnies? What are we really celebrating?

We call this a holy day, a holy event because God had the last word on death. And yet there has always been a natural order of birth, death and rebirth. We are surrounded by it; our lives depend on this cycle of life. Yet we human beings have tried to subjugate and control this cycle for our convenience, often damaging the natural process.

All through the salvation story we can see how God reaches out, human beings reject. God allows human beings to suffer the consequences of their disconnection, human beings repent. God then opens the way to return to connection and relationship. It’s another example of the birth, death, rebirth cycle that plays out in our lives. Birth, death and rebirth remind us that we are vulnerable.

When we say that in Easter we celebrate the resurrection, what we are really celebrating is vulnerability. Being vulnerable is when we say ‘I love you’ first, without thought to a response. Being vulnerable is allowing ourselves to be fully seen, to risk ourselves with no guarantees. Being vulnerable is investing ourselves in a relationship that may not work and doing it anyway. Being vulnerable is being like Jesus.

Being vulnerable is messy. It’s a messy way to live. When we open ourselves like that, when we love, we expose ourselves to the possibility of rejection and pain. We all know what that’s like, to love and to not be loved in return. We can become guarded, careful, fearful, shamed by our experience, wondering if we are even worthy of love. Some of us may have learned from those experiences not to open ourselves like that ever again.

However, when we guard our hearts from pain and rejection, we also close the way of resurrection; the way to joy and creativity and the ability to give. Professor Brené Brown, a researcher/storyteller at the University of Houston, says that adults today are the most in-debt, obese, addicted and medicated in U.S. history. We find ways to numb ourselves, to keep this feeling of being vulnerable under lock and key. We all do this. If we think we are exempt, we are fooling no one but us. Perhaps we are not in debt but we still buy more than we need and save not nearly enough. We may not be obese but we still indulge ourselves at the table or between meals and we lead less-than-active lives. We may not be addicted to drugs or alcohol or tobacco; we may not be on medication but we still have to have that coffee or soda or some kind of treat. We engage in too much screen time of any kind. We are overscheduled and far too hurried.

All of this serves to gloss over the cliff-like edge between us and that open chasm of our feelings. But feelings are feelings and they travel the same pathway whether they be sorrow or joy, hope or despair, anxiety or calm, fear or love. When we numb ourselves to the bad stuff, we also blunt our ability to feel the good stuff. We then become miserable, which leads us to feeling vulnerable, which then leads us to engage in our numbing behaviors and the cycle begins all over again.

And the shocking thing of it is our culture has given us permission to do this: it’s called rewarding ourselves, treating ourselves, giving ourselves a little comfort; after all, we say, we deserve it considering all we put up with. This is how our culture makes money, it’s Madison Avenue at its finest; this is how an empire is made and recessions are born: with human misery, out of our impaired ability to deal with the fact that life is vulnerable and messy and it ends with our death.

From the very beginning life on this earth has been this way. The only instance when there was no mess, no risk was in that formless void. When God spoke, when energy became matter, mess and risk entered in and hunkered down for the duration. In the creation of the heavens and the earth and especially in human beings, God not only created vulnerability but also became vulnerable to the creation. In reaching out and desiring a connection with those made in the divine image, God became willing to enter into the cycle of birth, death and rebirth.

In the birth, life and death of Jesus, God became completely and utterly vulnerable. In all of the gospels, Jesus is a poor, itinerant, homeless rabbi, dependent on the kindness of others, and at the mercy of the religious authorities. He heals, he speaks truth to power, and he eats and drinks with the rabble of his time. Again and again he crosses the line drawn around God’s love, so much so that it leads to his messy, vulnerable death.

When we are born and when we die we are at our most vulnerable and dependent. As children we love with our whole hearts, we immerse ourselves in joy and in play. It is only as we grow that we learn that the world may not and sometimes does not love us as we love ourselves. And so we begin the cycle of shame and fear that can plague us all through our adult lives. We learn to hide and shield ourselves from being vulnerable.

In Jesus, God shows us how to live a vulnerable, open, wholehearted, joyful life. From Jesus we learn the risk, the price of a wholehearted love but we also learn courage, hope, and the knowledge that not only are others worthy of love and compassion but that we are too. Jesus teaches us through his vulnerable life and messy death that the practice of gratitude, joy and love are possible even in the face of great terror so that we might be able to face our own fears and be healed.

In the resurrection of Jesus we are at our most vulnerable, when our post-modern mind messily connects with our deeply emotional, hope-ridden hearts. Did the resurrection really and truly happen? The resurrection story from the gospel of Mark is my favorite because it has the most human response to an unfathomable mystery: the women run from the tomb terrified and tell no one. My honest answer to this central mystery of our faith, vulnerable and messy though it is, is “I don’t know”. “I don’t know” as the sincere answer to any question leaves us all vulnerable and open to feelings of disappointment and shame. Hence, our need for certainty pervades our faith and our intolerance for the ambiguous and the unknown disconnects us from one another.

The irony is that in this vulnerable, empty space, we are then fertile ground in which resurrection grace can be planted. In the “I don’t know”s of life we begin to look for signs of grace. We allow hope to enter in and make a home.  We let go of the shields and façades that we used to protect ourselves and instead allow ourselves to be fully and deeply seen by others. Only in this way can we truly and deeply see others as they are. Yes, we are all imperfect; yes, our lives and our life together are often quite messy. We are also worthy, just as we are.

So, risen Christ, we praise you in the midst of this messy, imperfect world! Raise us with you. Every morning is Easter morning from now on. Every day is a resurrection day! Christ is risen, Church! Amen.