Mom's Death and What Is Lost with Her

I've written a few things about Mom over the past three months--mostly short comments on facebook.   For those of you who remember my outpouring of pain and suffering in dealing with the death of Everly, you might notice a difference in my grieving this time.  Some of you remember that the family has endured a series of losses, beginning with the long illnesses of Herbie (Everly's dad) and Everly, Everly's death in July 2013, Herbie's death in May 2014, Aunt Dot's death in June 2015, and Hugh Delle's death on February 15 this year.  Each death, each relationship, has it's own weight on our family members' capacity to cope.

I was not surprised by the incapacitating grief that overcame me when Everly died.  I was a little surprised by the different kind of grieving I've had since my mother died.  People's experiences of loss don't come in a standardized schedule.  As a child and a very young man, my grandparents' deaths happened at the stage of life in which it was not unexpected.  Through the sadness of losing them I somehow made sense of their deaths.  But there was a turning point in my psyche with Everly's death, a different understanding of what a human life is and what anyone can expect from living in the world.  Dealing with loss moved from the margins to the center.

I go to this effort to write and post about grief, as I have said before, because many of you have told me that you appreciate thinking through these things with me.  Some of you say it helps you grapple with the confusion of grief and loss in your own lives.  So what follows is some storytelling about the past few years with Mom, with particular attention to her declining health.  More than any other reason, I write about this to help myself gain insight into how to live through loss and grief as a follower of Jesus.

Hugh Delle and I were privileged in the past few years to be together more than we had been since I left home for college.  Everly and I moved in to W. D.'s and Hugh Delle's home in 2010 to share life on a daily basis.  During that time, we developed everyday household routines as well as working through big decisions and life changes.  It was planned to be a short stay while Everly and I worked out housing, but it dragged out longer because the real estate market made it hard to sell our house in Durham.  By the time that finally happened, we were seven months into cancer treatments, and buying a house did not seem like a wise next step.  Mom and Dad welcomed us to stay, and we continued in our habits of living in one house that branched off into two wings, each with our private retreats when needed.  The common space for meals and conversations was a blessing to us all.  After Everly's death, I continued living with Mom and Dad for another year while I sought the direction for the next steps of my life.

Going through so much together built a mature kind of intimacy of mother-son relationship.  Growing closer, we knew much more about one another's lives than before.  Closeness brings blessings and warmth.  It also can give opportunity for disagreement or conflict.  We had our share of both, but I guess even the disagreements and conflict are a kind of blessing.

While Everly was so sick, Hugh Delle played down her own health issues, always claiming that "everything is fine."  Yet it was not fine, and long hospital stays, times of being near death, and the ever-present yet hidden matter of her chronic heart failure made it impossible for the rest of us to ignore her tenuous condition.  One of the pitfalls of living with one's parents is that too often adult child and aging parent revert to patterns of relationship that hark back to the child's adolescence.  In my own way, I sometimes reacted resentfully or critically toward Mom, especially about her health.  It frustrated me that she could not openly accept that her shortness of breath represented an underlying health issue to confront directly.  I could confess a whole range of my shortcomings of kindness in communicating with her, but let it suffice to say that our closeness included both harmonious times and painful times.  I suspect that is true for many of us.

After I moved back to Durham in August 2014, our time together was drastically cut back.  I had hoped to be able to continue a cycle of long stays in Texas with Mom and Dad, but as my faculty responsibilities returned to normal and my community involvement increased, I found it harder than I had expected to get away for more than a couple of weeks at a time.  Consequently, each visit met me with evidence of advancing health issues and change, and not much time to try to deal with the newness.  Mom became less able to do the things she wanted to do.  We would discuss options for making things better, and we added some support and help. 

For the most part, she continued to treat symptoms as passing acute illness rather than declining abilities.  In retrospect, I can't be sure whether her approach of proceeding as if things are fine while continuing to seek medical answers led to any different results than if she had done as I imagined her doing and aggressively pursued solutions to her heart failure.  As her heart grew progressively weaker, it may not have mattered whether she had been more aggressively attentive to that problem.  So probably part of the disagreement we had was about how to handle the grief of her decline. 

She preferred not to accept the idea that she was in rapid decline and hope that things would reverse and improve.  That's not such a bad approach, in that she could without much effort keep herself in a fairly happy condition at least part of each day.  Maybe she saw my perspective of admitting the progress of the chronic condition and dealing with it "head on" as a form of giving up hope.  I can't begrudge her her own way of facing challenges, of dealing with the grief of her declining health.

One result of her way of facing down the struggle was that most of us did not see the rapid decline she was in for the last eight months.  Only W. D. and Lydia were very aware of it.  After graduating form Baylor, Lydia had moved in the room where Everly and I had lived.  She was job hunting, and interviews were slow to get started.  She was glad to be able to offer some care for her grandparents, and she became increasingly concerned for the advancing pain and weakness Hugh Delle was displaying.  Remotely, the rest of us did not get the full impact of the night and day pain and struggle she was having.  Hugh Delle could usually muster up her happy and hopeful self for a phone call.  Sometimes she let us in on the harder parts of her life.

When the doctors began to tell Mom, at the beginning of 2016, that her heart condition was so far advanced that she should not expect it to improve, the seriousness of the condition became clear to all of us.  Jerene made the first trip down to see her.  At the end of a hospital stay for tests and decisions about next steps, it became clear that all the interventions that the doctors had considered were too risky for Hugh Delle's weakened condition.  They thought she probably had a limited time for her heart to continue working.  Already heart monitors revealed that her heart had brought her near death, and sometime in the next few weeks or months it would finally give out.

As we made the decision to bring her home and begin hospice care, I was able to go and stay for a while, with the cooperation of my employer and students.  I went back to teaching my North Carolina classes from Texas for an indefinite time.  Mom was glad to have her two kids home, and we helped organize her medications and treatments with the expectation that she and Dad would continue the routines with assistance from the hospice team and their fellow church members.  Almost as soon as we would make decisions and get the house in order, Mom's situation would change.  Spending many hours sleeping, she would sometimes become alert and join us for meals, only to get fatigued and go back to sleeping soon after.  Every few days, the obvious changes made clear to us that she was growing weaker and losing ground.

Eventually, she became confined to bed.  She did not have the strength or muscle control to help us get her up and move her around.  She stopped wanting to eat.  She was less and less able to communicate.  Her niece and nephew, Pat and Tim, both came to stay and help care for her.  All of my children made their way to Texas to be with their MeeMaw.  They sang to her, sat with her, talked with her, did everything they could, as she held on for her last days.  She lived to see her 86th birthday.  She was no longer very communicative, and she was not really eating.  The best we could do was touch her mouth with a little bit of cake and icing.  We read the scriptures, sang to her, and prayed with her.  On her last Sunday, we shared communion around her bed and offered prayers.  The next day, she died, surrounded by us.

I was very worried about Dad and Jerene.  I knew how I had fallen apart with Everly's death, and I felt some kind of responsibility to try to hold them up in the immediate crisis of Mom's death.  So I was feeling the emotions of losing Mom very differently than I had expected.  Grief is a strange thing.  It is not well scripted, although liturgical and poetic scripting can be a great help in uncovering thoughts and feelings that are hiding just below the level of consciousness.  The funeral service, planned by Hugh Delle, was filled with beautiful tributes and familiar songs.  Mom was beloved, and many people came from near and far to honor her life.  That day was an emotional day for me, and the structured events served me well in drawing out my pain and ministering to me.

On Easter weekend, March 27, I was surprised by grief.  If you go through our family's photo collection, you would find that year after year, there are family pictures taken at church on Easter Sunday.  For many years, David, Naomi, and Lydia are wearing outfits sent to them by Hugh Delle.  Easters were family days.  Even if we could not regularly spend them with Hugh Delle and W. D., there was a kind of presence of the whole family.  As I walked into church on Easter Sunday I felt overwhelmed by the loss of my mother and my children's loss of their mother.  It was a very tearful weekend for me.

I was feeling a new kind of loss for the first time on that day.  It has recurred on most Sundays since that day.  I was trying to explain it this week to Ruth, Everly's sister, and to a friend and fellow minister.  The experience of no longer having my mother living in this world with me seems to have opened up a space of loneliness that I did not know before.  For a long time, when I went to church or to a restaurant or some other place familiar to me because of being there with Everly in the past, it was as if Everly's palpable absence was my companion.  Her absence somehow took on a kind of presence through memory and familiarity of her having been there so many times by my side. 

Yes, that is a form of loneliness, but in recent weeks the loneliness has changed.  I found myself in the foyer of the church wondering whether I would have anyone to sit by.  Now inside, of course, were pews full of people.  I know most of them and would, as an act of fellowship or ministry, gladly sit on any pew with any person.  There is a kind of joy and purposeful satisfaction in doing that.  But it was not that kind of question my mind was pressing on me.  The question came from a lack, an empty place, a need.  I was feeling the need to sit with someone to whom I am already beloved, someone whose presence already speaks to me of their care for me.  My first thought was to look and see if Willie and Joanne Jennings were at the service.  Because they were out of town  that day, I found myself looked around for others. 

The point is that with Mom's death, I am finding myself again in a new place in the world.  Even living far away from her for most of my adult life, there lurked in my consciousness her presence to me at all times.  The one who had nurtured me, believed in me, prayed for me, and done all that she could to seek the best for me is no longer in the land of the living.  Where does that leave me?  Without Mom, I am alone in a new way in the world.  She had borne on her tired shoulders all of the burden of Everly's struggle with cancer and our family's grief at her loss.  And now she who held us up is also gone, leaving me alone in a new way.  Of course I am not absolutely alone.  I have my family and friends.  My church and coworkers look out for me.  God has never deserted me.  Even so, God's presence mediated through my mother's love has been muted by her absence.  I will need to recognize new habits and different relationships in which God's love will be manifest in my life.  It took some time for that to soak in, and I'm just now figuring out how to describe it.

The Difference the Resurrection Makes

This sermon was first preached at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church on the Second Sunday of Easter, April 3, 2016.

Acts 5:27-32

When they had brought them, they had them stand before the council. The high priest questioned them, saying, “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you are determined to bring this man’s blood on us.”

But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than any human authority. The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.”

The Difference the Resurrection Makes

         Today is the second Sunday of Easter.  We celebrated that high holy day last Sunday with joy, enthusiasm, humility, and gratitude.  We considered what it is to be eighth day disciples.  We gloried in the appearances and words of Jesus to his followers who had felt lonely and hopeless.  In the marvelous gift of Jesus’ resurrection, it begins to dawn on us that somehow, in innumerable ways, everything is different. 

Twenty centuries ago, Mary, Thomas, and their friends, came to realize that their concept of God’s power had been too small.  They searched their memories for words Jesus had spoken, deeds Jesus had done.  They realized how much they had misunderstood what had happened when they were with him.  In those last weeks of his life, those last days, even those last hours, he had pressed hard to explain to them why he had come.  He had corrected and clarified what kind of leader he was.  He had demonstrated and described the kind of community of ministry he wanted them to be.  He had poured himself out in words and acts of love that for them had in many ways seemed like any other day with any special friend. 

But it turned out, against their state of denial, that it was not like all other times.  At this time, on this day, those who plotted against him would not be denied.  The day Jesus’ enemies would arrest and execute him had exploded upon them.  They had kept telling themselves and Jesus that it was not going to happen.  Some had worried, but on the whole, all they could see ahead was a rising tide of Jesus’ triumph over the powerful elites, the wealthy oppressors, the religious snobs, and the Roman invaders.  Jesus was going to sweep it all away.  They had heard the preachers.  They had listened to their moms and dads tell the stories of the Messiah’s coming.  Some had read the prophetic writings.  They remembered how Moses and Miriam had led the people out of Egypt.  This is what they saw coming. 

It was not what came. 

They had misunderstood the message.  They had misunderstood the stories.  They had misunderstood the Messiah.  They had misunderstood their friend.  In a whirlwind of events, Jesus had been arrested.  His followers were confused, disorganized, afraid, unready.  As each hour passed, their disbelief only grew.  How could this be happening?  They saw him verbally attacked.  They saw him beaten and tortured.  They saw the conflicting interests of the powerful battle over what to do with him.  And finally, they saw him exhausted, abandoned, struggling to say a few last words, to show a few more moments of love, until he could bear no more, and he died.  A spectacle of violent power was brought down on this good man, and it did not stop until he was crushed.  Less than a day before, they had talked, eaten together, and shared treasured moments.  Now it was all swept away.

So when Mary and Thomas, a week apart, faced the realization that Jesus was now living, though he had been dead, they were mentally and emotionally overwhelmed.  What could it all mean?  Their friend who had been their hope had been brutally killed by the state, but now now he was present with them, talking to them, touching them.  That just does not happen.  We would call it “mind-blowing.”  It was not something they would get a good handle on in a few minutes.  It was going to take some time.  This resurrection, more intense and amazing than Jairus’s daughter or even Lazarus coming from the tomb, shook the foundations of reality.  And if this was the destiny of their friend Jesus, then he must be far more than they had ever imagined him to be.  Who was this Jesus they had followed?

The New Testament tells us that Jesus appeared to many people over a period of many days—not just on that Sunday morning; not just eight days later.  He appeared to a couple of friends on the road.  He showed up by the shore where people were fishing.  He met them in Galilee.  Jesus, the Word became flesh who dwelt among them, who moved in their neighborhood, was back at it again.  He hung with them and talked things through.  He made sure they understood the time they had spent walking and talking with him was only the prelude.  Now was to be the beginning of a world-changing movement.  Now, they would have to take up the task of doing greater works than he had done.  They would have to reorganize their lives around loving one another.  They would have to be ready for their men and women to rise up and lead, from young to old, toward a better world, a more just social order, a beloved community.

So although we are still in the season of Easter, and not yet at Pentecost, the lectionary has brought us this text from the book of Acts.  It is about the work of Peter and other apostles who were going about in Jerusalem preaching and doing mighty works.  Masses of people were following the way of Jesus.  The priests and rulers who thought they had gotten rid of the Jesus problem were frustrated and angry.  They tried arresting and threatening them, to no avail.  They tried putting the apostles in jail, but the prison could not hold them.  After the conversation in this text, the Council would have them beaten to try to scare some sense into them.  That was not going to work either.

Peter, we recall, had tried to start a war at Jesus’ arrest, had hung out on the fringes, had denied Jesus, and had run away brokenhearted.  Most of the other disciples had scattered, hidden, disappeared when Jesus was threatened.  Any who saw or heard the events did so from afar, from the shadows, from hiding places of their fear.  So how is it that they were so different in Acts 5?  They had come to realize that the resurrection changes everything. 

In their time with the resurrected Jesus, They had

remembered, recentered,

ruminated, meditated,

reconsidered, reconfigured,

contemplated, explicated,

reassessed, praised and blessed,

retold, grown bold,

understood, gazed upon the Highest Good

—God’s goodness revealed in Jesus Christ, their Messiah, their Savior, the Risen Lord, the Great Physician, the Liberator of the poor, the Ever-loving Friend.  With new focus on the depth of reality and of truth, they were changed.

What a difference the resurrection made!  In chapter 4, when instructed not to be preaching and carrying on about Jesus, they answered, “Whether it is right in God’s sight to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; for we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.”  After some more time of living in the glow of resurrection glory, and after a partial night spent in jail, their confession became even more precise.  This time, when chastised for continuing to teach in Jesus’ name, they answered, “We must obey God rather than any human authority.” 

What a powerful witness!  What insight into the truth they now had!  But if we are to understand what their statement means, we have to remind ourselves of some of their previous misunderstandings of Jesus.  Now, it was becoming clear.  But when he was alive, they were just about clueless.  Since the resurrection, the Holy Spirit had drawn them again and again to Jesus’ words and deeds.  New light had dawned upon their eyes, their ears, and their minds.  The resurrection had made all the difference.

Think back to the time Jesus began to tell his disciples that he was expecting his enemies to capture and kill him.  Peter said, “No.  That’s never going to happen.”  He told Jesus not to be giving in to that negativity, not to speak that into the world.  He thought by keeping a positive outlook and making the most of the resources at hand, Jesus could never have to suffer such a terrible end.  But, Jesus, who himself was not fond at all of getting tortured and killed, had to push back on Peter’s tempting proposal.  He told Satan to leave him alone.  He didn’t call Peter, “Satan.” 

He spoke up to the tempter.  Sure it sounds good to maybe plan for weapons to face up to weapons.  Sure the multitudes were on his side and could be persuaded to take up arms.  But Jesus had come to realize that he could not win against the violent powers of the world by taking up violence as his own means.  A victory of love has to come through loving people, no matter how wrong and harsh they might become.  So Jesus rebuked that idea and reaffirmed his faithfulness to God.  He would not settle for a short-sighted human strategy.  He would not take the path of the world.  He would be faithful to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly into the face of his enemy, loving the enemy even to the point of being killed by the enemy.  So he realized he would have to try again later to explain to his buddies and compatriots what the coming days were going to bring.

Peter really was not hearing it.  He did not even for a moment think that Jesus would be the victim of state-sponsored murder.  He was sure, if it came to a fight, they could win it.  So even at the last moment, in the garden, he grabbed his sword and tried to start the revolution.  Jesus had to rebuke him one more time.  That is the world’s way.  The world depends on swords and other weapons of violence.  Violence breeds violence, in an ever-downward spiral of destruction.  Jesus was not going to be one more link in an eternal chain of violence.  He explained again that the way of the sword is the way of destruction.  One who lives by the sword ultimately dies by the sword.  That is the world’s way.  That will not be Jesus’ way.  Jesus will obey God rather than any human authority or power, even the power of violence. 

Let’s take a look at a second way their understanding of Jesus was changed.  Since Jesus had risen, Peter had been mulling those words over.  He had been rehashing the events of those crucial days.  The resurrection made the difference.  He was realizing that what Jesus came to do was so much greater, so much more extensive, so much more revolutionary than he had ever imagined.

Before Peter drew his sword, another conversation had caused a rumble of anger and trouble among the disciples.  James and John, the Sons of Thunder, probably did not get their nickname from being pushovers and passive.  As they walked along, they had pulled Jesus aside.  The events were exciting.  Crowds were proclaiming Jesus to be the Messiah.  They, like Peter, believed the war to end all wars was about to break out.  They were sick of the Romans putting their boots on the throats of the Jews.  They were ready to put their feet on some Roman necks.  Since they were so sure Jesus was about to give them that opportunity, they started thinking about who would have what status in the New World Order.  They asked Jesus whether they could be his vice-regents when he became King.  He was always talking about a Kingdom, so there had to be a hierarchy and some people in charge of everything.  They had been tight with him from the beginning, so why shouldn’t they get some recognition, some power, some position to shape the vision of the future? 

They must have pressed their point so loudly that everyone overheard their request.  People started fussing and griping.  Jesus must have rolled his eyes and let out a big sigh…  They just did not get it.  No matter how much he had tried to show them what he came to do, they kept thinking it was something completely different.  Seeing, they did not see.  Hearing, they did not understand.  So he set out again to explain.

He told them that in the world, people who are rulers tend to become tyrants.  They want to “lord over” others.  They like to dominate, control, and master people.  The world sees power as something that those on top press down upon everyone else.  Worldly power is power over others.  Then Jesus told them, “It must not be this way among you.”  Don’t accept the ways of the world.  Don’t obey the world’s existing patterns of domination.  God has another way, and I’ve been trying to show it to you.  Whoever wants to be great must become a servant.  Leadership is serving.  Leadership is working for the good of others, not just trying to keep everything good for oneself.  Servant leadership is what I have shown you.  It will be the way you should also live and lead.  Power in Jesus’ kingdom is not power over, but power with one another.  We care for one another.  Loving one another, we aim only to outdo one another in service, not for acclaim, but to see love blossom and expand far and wide.

Maybe a few of the disciples felt embarrassed.  Maybe they listened enough to have their consciences pricked.  Probably some of them kept grumbling about James’s and John’s arrogance.  Probably some were mad at themselves for not asking Jesus first.  Whatever way they reacted to Jesus’ correction of their view of the Kingdom, they clearly did not absorb the lesson.  According to Matthew and Mark, this conversation happened not long before Jesus rode a donkey colt into Jerusalem, surrounded by cheering crowds who believed he would save them by coming to be the heir of David, their greatest king, a mighty warrior.  The disciples probably quickly forgot about the servant leader idea.  They started tasting the defeat of the Romans as they imagined this mass of people from the countryside and the streets forming itself into an army for battle.

So a few days later, Jesus was showing them exactly what he meant at their Passover meal.  He undressed down to the scant clothing of a servant and began to wash their feet.  They were alarmed, shocked, and upset.  He had rank in their cohort, so he should not be doing that.  Peter fussed with him.  They had not understood how to lead through service, and Jesus had to show them.  He washed their feet, one by one.  It did not diminish him.  Rather he grew in their hearts that evening.

Even with that dramatic lesson and explanation, they still struggled to get the point.  Luke tells us a dispute about who was greatest came up after the meal.  Jesus one more time talked over with them about how worldly thinking views power.  The leader, in God’s world, is one who serves.  Rather than greatness coming from size, strength, or any other means of domination, the greatest should appear as a child appears--one who would obviously not be a threat to others.  Even though we think of the one who gets served by others as the greatest, Jesus reminds them that he came among them as one who serves.  The way of the world is not the way of God.  Jesus says that he came to obey God, not human conceptions of greatness and power.  How hard a lesson this was for them to learn!  And no doubt they did not learn it at that time. 

But what a difference the resurrection made!  Now, in the temple and before the ruling priests, Peter and the other apostles were not arguing about who was in charge, who was greater, or who was going to get put down.  They didn’t tell the ones who arrested them, “You can’t do this!  Don’t you know who I am?  Are you trying to get yourself in trouble?”  They went to prison and waited to see what God would do.  If God had brought Jesus from the prison house of death and the grave, then God might very well bring them out of the jail.  On this occasion, that is what happened. 

Rather than being overcome by fear and anxiety, they found themselves changed by the resurrection.  They walked out of the prison with instructions to get back to their public teaching.  God’s messenger told them to get back to delivering the message of following Jesus into a life that goes against the grain of the world.  So they started at daybreak to disobey the ruling authorities.  Leading and serving people, healing the beggars, lifting up the kicked aside and thrown away people, serving them and elevating their lives toward Jesus’ Kingdom—this was to be their way.  They did not rush to the Sanhedrin and command the Sadducees to kneel before them.  They did not gather a crowd with clubs and swords to force the rulers to submit.  They simply ignored the worldly powers and their forms of domination.  They kept telling people that Jesus had shown them a new way to live.  They kept building a contrast society, a beloved community.  The resurrection had made a difference.

One last moment in the final day of Jesus’ life deserves our attention as we think about the difference the resurrection makes.  Jesus went on trial not only before the high priests, but also before Pilate.  Pilate took him into his chambers to interrogate him and consider his judgments.  At one point, he did exactly what Jesus said he would do.  He roared, “Don’t you know who I am and what power I have?  I can crush you if I decide to do so!”  He spoke as a tyrant.  He lorded over Jesus.  Jesus, who came as a servant, was unperturbed.  When asked if he was a king, Jesus said that his kingdom was not of this world. 

Be careful here, or you will miss his point as pitifully as the disciples did.  You might already be thinking that Jesus means his kingdom is in heaven, not on the earth.  You might think he means it is invisible and spiritual, not visible and material.  You might think that, but it would not be what he said.  Rather than take Jesus’ phrase “not of this world” to mean “not of the earth,” we do better to hear him say that his kingdom is not a worldly kingdom.  It is not a domination system like the kingdoms of the world.  It is not a structure that depends on violence to gain power.  That’s why he goes on to say that his followers are not fighting to keep him from being arrested.  That’s not the way he fights.  That’s not the way he wins.  Jesus wins because love wins.  Jesus wins because peace defeats war.  Jesus wins because enemies must be turned into friends.  That is why his kingdom is not a worldly kingdom.

Now although Jesus had been taken into the governor’s courts for this conversation, someone must have reported what they said, because it ended up in the Bible.  Maybe there were some of his followers nearby who were able to listen.  Maybe Pilate enjoyed bragging and telling the story, and it got around to Jesus’ followers.  Maybe they had to wait and hear about it after they could quiz the resurrected Jesus about what had happened on that day.  But someone told the story, and it was considered an important story to report in the gospels.  It was a clarifying story.  Placed alongside so many other things Jesus had said, it helped to put the puzzle together.  God has a way for us to live.  The power of love is a very different kind of power than the world.  Human authorities will prefer force and violence as means of domination.  But Jesus shows humans a better way to live.  It is not Pilate’s way.  It’s not the world’s way.  It is God’s way. 

What a difference the resurrection made!  There, fresh out of prison and living in the Jesus way, not the worldly way, Peter and the apostles were again brought before the ruling authorities.  They were asked why they did not obey the previous admonition to cease and desist from all their Jesus rabble rousing.  They were accused of slandering the rulers.  But Peter and the apostles could see that this domination must not be the way they must live.  Peter and the Apostles had been changed.  There were united to Christ in the resurrection.  They answered, “We must obey God rather than any human authority.”  Not a question this time, but a bold affirmation came from their mouths. 

“We must” began their statement.  Out of the chaotic mass of human social existence, Jesus has called together a new community.   We are united in him to be a body, a living organism.  We are a community with a mandate to follow Jesus. 

“We must obey God.”  It is not up to us to figure out how to gain power through domination.  Jesus, who came to us from God, showed us a better way, and that is the way we have to go.  

“Rather than any human authority.”  We know that you all are religious and political leaders.  We know you have put yourselves in charge and the Romans have let you do that.  But we don’t need to live in a world where people put themselves in charge over others.  We live in a different reality. 

It is the reality constituted when “The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus.”  The resurrection has changed everything.  We now see that everything is different.  So we don’t live by human self-serving politics.  Our politics is the politics of Jesus, of serving, of loving our neighbor, of loving even our enemies.  We will keep on living that way, even if you use your domination power to try to stop us.

In this new confidence they began to preach a sermon to the chief priests.  They announced the resurrection.  They told about Jesus’ execution, hanging on a tree.  They proclaimed that the Resurrected One has been exalted as the Leader, a serving leader who saves the endangered and lost.  They tell them that the reason they can say all this is because they remember what Jesus did and said.  “We are witnesses.”  We have been thinking all this through.  Now we understand what a difference the resurrection makes.  God’s Spirit testifies with us that the resurrection has changed everything.  It’s not your world any longer.  It’s a different world from where you come from.  It’s the world reborn in the resurrection.

The apostle Paul would later write to the Corinthians that because of the resurrection, we no longer look at people from a human point of view.  He says that we used to look at Jesus that way—a crackpot, a con artist, a troublemaker, a pain in the neck, an impediment to our ambitions.  But we don’t see Jesus that way any more.  We see the world through the eyes of a loving God.  We look upon the world from the perspective of the bent knee of a serving Savior.  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.  The old has passed away.  Behold, all has become new.  It is because of the life, the teaching, the servant way, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus that all has been made new.

The resurrection makes the difference.  Whatever ways that you have found yourself captive to powers of this world, the resurrection has made the difference.  We no longer have to try to gain power over others.  We may join with others to build power with one another for our mutual good, for the common good.  The resurrection makes the difference.  We can unite around the good that God has planned for the human race and for all creation.  We don’t have to give in to being divided, sorted, ranked, stacked, appraised, or crunched.  The resurrection changes everything.  We can unite in beloved community.  We can live this life God has called us to live because of the difference the resurrection makes.  Amen.

 

Bluebonnets for Easter

I've posted some pictures on Facebook from Good Friday and Holy Saturday, and I've made a series of comments about them which I am collecting here.  In the past, I have written about wildflowers and bluebonnets and their significance for Everly, our years together, and for our family (here and here, for instance).  We have been blessed with an abundance flowers at Everly's grave this year, and I wanted to share these pictures and reflections with those of you who have followed our story.

In winter 2013, we planted bluebonnets and paintbrush wildflowers on Everly Estes Broadway's gravesite in Salado. With pretty good rainfall, the plants emerged in the spring, but there were only a few scattered, small blooms. So we hoped for another year of root growth to bring us a better bouquet this year. Today Lydia made her way to Salado at the end of Holy Week, and we got a big surprise.

As the day waned on Good Friday, she found and sent us pictures of abundant bluebonnets all over the Broadway grave plot, and only on that part of the cemetery. A little foreshadowing of Easter on Good Friday for us who love Everly. 

Bluebonnets all over, with a few scattered paintbrush and behind the bench, several red Drummond's phlox visible in the corner of one photo. Everly will be loving these flowers. I always loved to bring her flowers.

 STEM moment: Everly will be loving to see a few atoms (possibly) of her carbon remains revitalized in this palate of color. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Dust to soil, soil to bluebonnets.

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W.D. (my dad) and Lydia have gone back to sit with Everly and place an Easter lily by her gravestone today on Holy Saturday. Last year on Easter the four of us took lilies to Everly's grave before sunrise. Later in the day we took pictures with bluebonnets as we had on our last Easter with Everly. This year we are scattered around in three states. Thank you sweet Lydia for these pictures.

Beyond my comprehension, in the complex relation of time and eternity, the mystery of Holy Saturday is a day of communion of our Lord with the dead. WD and Lydia stay there by this grave at the borderlands of this mystery, and we remember that this tomb and the Lord's tomb and so many more tombs cannot hold prisoner those who have been laid to rest.  

But on this day, Christ and those united to him (the church against whom even the gates of Hades may not prevail) participate in the liberation of "All of these [who] died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, God has prepared a city for them."

"There is a communion of the saints," as Rev Turner declared in Everly's eulogy, and like so many flowers clustered around WD's and Lydia's feet, there is a great cloud of witnesses, sitting vigil on this day, with all creation groaning in labor pains, awaiting redemption of our bodies. We hope for what we do not see and wait with patience. The Spirit helps us in our weakness and intercedes with sighs too deep for words. The Spirit intercedes for the saints according to God's good will and purpose for us. In this blessed, sweet communion, we await the mystery of resurrection, in hope.

Improvised Egg Hunt

This is a funny story I posted on facebook.  I thought some of you might like it.

We have a few plastic Easter eggs somewhere in a box, but I could not find them. So after lunch, I got 7 egg cartons (1.5 dozen each) full of golf balls my dad has found in his yard.

That makes 126 golf balls. I tossed them around the yard for an egg hunt for the young adult chirrens.

They groaned about having an egg hunt.  Lydia even made the excuse that she had homework to do.  What's up with that?  I mean, they are only 19 to 24 years old.  Surely they still like egg hunting. 

Everly said it was because there was no candy reward.  We made the strategic mistake of handing out all the candy at lunch time.  So we came up with an other reward.  That made sense.  The egg hunts back in the day usually had a few eggs with money in them.  We did a little math, grouping the factors 7 x 3 x 3 x 2 until we came up with a plan.

I announced a bounty of $1 for every three golf balls, and they flew out of the house to get their share of $42.  I got just what I wanted:   David, Naomi, Lydia, Megan, and Casie (Lydia's buddies from Baylor who live too far away to go home for the long weekend)  giggling and running around the yard like old times.

We tallied up the collections:  19, 22, 23, 27, and 33.  Of course, David has always taken on egg hunts as serious business, and he got the most.  I think it's time for him to go professional.  All but two golf balls got picked up.  We rounded up to the nearest dollar, then scrounged together dollar bills, dollar coins, quarters, fives, and tens.  Everybody got a nice payout. 

For me and Everly, Hugh Delle and W. D., it was $42 very well spent.  Quoting a lyric from Michael Card:  "I would wander weary miles, and welcome ridicule, my child, to simply see the sunrise of your smile, to see the light behind your eyes, the happy thought that makes you fly."

The joy kept on giving.  W.D. came in the next morning having found one of the stray golf balls, and he was as happy as could be.

These few minutes of joyful play are not all that we did on Easter.  Earlier in the day, we worshiped at First Baptist Church, Austin, where I raised the eyebrows of the girls by singing loudly on all the harmony parts.  Roger Paynter preached an excellent sermon, almost slipping into a hoop, about the way that the greeting from Jesus to the Marys was one word that changed everything.  One good turn of phrase said, "He had us from 'Hello.'"  Out front of the sanctuary, church members had brought and placed flowers on the Easter Cross.

Good Friday Meditation

I was listening to the prayers and readings today at the Good Friday service, and I was reminded of the words of Jon Sobrino and others who speak of the poor being crucified every day. Jesus, a poor man who became a threat to the ruling powers, was executed on a Friday. Crucifixion is a method of execution. To crucify is to put someone on a cross in order to kill them. It was done to punish criminals and exterminate enemies of the regime. Maybe we would be clearer on what happened that day if we changed to the word execution.

The "Jews," by which the gospel writers mean the rulers and elders of the Jews, were aligned against him with the Romans who were always eager to keep conquered peoples in their place. (It is a misreading to take this text as an attack on all Jews. Jesus' defenders and his accusers were all Jews, and he himself was a Jew.) According to John 19, they had a back-and-forth exchange with Pilate about what to call Jesus. Pilate said he was their king. They answered, "We have no King but the Emperor." Both Pilate and the Jewish power elite--the Sanhedrin, the Chief Priests, the leaders of the Pharisees, the lackeys of the Idumean king--disavowed Jesus as King.

Yet the gospel goes on to say that Pilate had a sign made to post on the cross, which said "The King of the Jews." The Jewish leaders were angry about it, but Pilate would not change it. The sign prophesied what neither of them believed. Jesus was crowned King of the Jews, a covenant people. This covenant people, signified by the vine, was not welcoming all nations to be grafted into the vine of Israel. So if Jesus was not the king of the Roman and Jewish powers, then whose king was he?

Jesus was lifted up on that day as king of those who are poor and suffer. Those whose wealth and power he challenged had rejected him. He was lifted up as the one who resists the torture and oppression of the powers in the name of the ones who suffer. He was the second Adam who overcame the failings of humanity. He demonstrated God's love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, he died for us.

The atoning work of Jesus is sometimes portrayed as a metaphysical, otherworldly accomplishment. Jesus, it is said, came into the world to die. But a critical turn has been made in theological reflection in the last part of the twentieth century. A renewed conviction has emerged that Jesus came into the world to live. Above all, Jesus came into the world to save. Jesus' life was an atoning life. His death interrupted that life without defeating it. Even facing and enduring death, Jesus' life of doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly persevered.

Rather than an inevitability, Jesus' death was a contingent event in history. God's incarnation into the historical life of humanity did not somehow exist above or outside of history. Within real historical events, a real human being was caught up in the agendas of real people and real powers. The ruling parties of Jerusalem tortured and executed Jesus in a willful act of violence to terrorize his followers and to silence his voice. Jesus suffered execution in a willing act of submission and obedience to the law of love. He refused to join a violent system and perpetuate the chain of violent acts. He refused to renounce the Jubilee revolution he had proclaimed. Thus, he received the verdict of his hell-bent persecutors.

From the foundation of the world, God has willed that humanity's story be the extension of loving community in mutual submission one to another. Jesus, as the incarnation of the eternal Word, from the foundation of the world has willed this incarnation of loving servanthood, pouring himself out that creation may fulfill its destiny. This atoning work, his embodiment of the Reign of God in justice and love no less than his willing submission to execution and his victory over sin, death, and the grave on Easter, reaches to all of God's creatures, and especially to those who continue to be ground under the feet of oppressive power. For this reason, we call the remembrance of this terrible day Good. May the grace of Jesus' sacrifice bear you through to the celebration of his victory.