I’ve been thinking about Mary Magdalene’s words in John
20:13 where she says, “They have taken my Lord away and I do not know where
they have laid him.”
The curse and blessing of living in a city is that you are
constantly around people. It is a challenge to find a corner of the city in
which you will not see someone you know, hear a horn honk or a plane flying
overhead, or accidentally bump into someone on a crowded sidewalk. It is hard
to be alone. It is easy to be lonely.
But as I’m around other people, I hear them say things that
betray how they feel about God and the church and faith. Last night I listened
to the story of a young gay man whose church left him in a place of profound
pain and rejection. I wish that these were isolated incidents but we’re wise
enough to know that this is not the case. And if it’s not a member of the LGBTQ
community then it’s a person of color who discovered that while in Christ there
may not be Greek nor Jew, slave nor free, there is among Christ’s followers a
clear distinction between black and white. We subjugate women and tell them
that because they do not have a penis they cannot stand behind a pulpit. We
tell the poor that even though Jesus loves them, they need to stop being lazy
and get a job like everyone else.
A charitable read of the situation might suggest that people
do these things with good intentions. We’re just trying to read the Bible
faithfully word for word, letter by letter. We’re just trying to listen to the
Spirit. We’re just trying not to judge anyone, because that’s God’s job. We’re
just trying to hate the sin and love the sinner.
Yet while all of our “just trying” might make us sincere,
Stanley Hauerwas reminds us that sometimes this just shows how little sincerity
has to do with Christianity.
Ann Lamott has said, “You can be sure that you’ve created
God in your own image when God starts hating all of the people you do.”
And oh the people we've tried to make God hate.
Of course, we would never admit this because we don’t
consider it to be hateful at all. This is just who God is and who God has
called us to be. It’s not our fault if Paul said that he wouldn’t allow a woman
to hold authority over him. We didn’t have anything to do with God creating
Adam and Eve and not Adam and Steve. Who can hold us responsible for 2
Thessalonians saying that he who does not work should not eat? “Surely, not I,
Lord?” we say without realizing who it is we’re starting to sound like.
In our zeal we have taken Jesus to a place where he does not
want to go and my fear is that when we stop to drop him off, we will
find ourselves standing there alone.
But God’s good news never fails. Whether we are weeping in
front of the garden tomb on Easter morning or militantly marching towards
Damascus to carry out what we perceive to be the “work of the Lord,” Jesus can
meet us in that place. Jesus can gently call us by name, knock us off the
donkey, blaze and banish our blindness and let us know that even though we may
not know where to find him, he knows where to find us. For both the
directionless and those who are all too confident in the directions they give,
God’s grace covers all.
If the tomb cannot hold Jesus, then surely no invention of
ours will be able to contain God’s wonderful work of resurrection.
Do not cry, Mary. We could not take your Lord away even if
we tried.
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