To whom it may concern: I wanted to share this article with you on this Sunday afternoon. Since I won't make it to church today, I was looking around online for a glimpse of inspiration and spiritual nourishment, and I found it in this article written by Dr. Penny Nixon the former senior pastor at MCCSF in San Francisco where I attend church. Dr Nixon wrote this letter for Easter, however the message is just as relevant for today as it is for tomorrow and will be forever. I hope as you read it you feel as connected to it's truths as I did when I read it for the first time.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
In case you hadn't seen it yet, here's a piece I wrote about resurrection that was published in the San Mateo County Times:Resurrection for All of Us
Last year’s resurrection won’t work for this year’s Easter. I’m not sure when the expiration date was, but all I know is that it lost its potency somewhere along the way. Today it is all too easy to look around us and lose sight of the Easter message of hope and renewal.
The “first” Easter didn’t happen in a historical vacuum. It wasn’t some Hallmark moment in a manicured garden with birds singing and rabbits cocking their heads. It happened in the midst of sorrow, despair and loss. The women who came to visit the tomb were not enveloped in a beatific glow. They came with swollen eyes and tired bodies, a visage of grief. The crosses were still casting their shadows in the background. Good Friday was a mere 36 hours behind them.
Today it still feels like a Good Friday world, where goodness is often crucified, and where violence has become our default solution. Many in our own community feel unsure about the future. Others worry endlessly whether they will be able to put food on the table and whether their rent or mortgage check will bounce. Still others wake up every day wondering whether they will be handed a pink slip. And many, particularly the uninsured and under-insured, live in anxiety that the next illness in their family will plunge them into unrelenting debt.
As people living in this nation, our economic security and sense of identity have been shaken profoundly. This is not news to anyone reading this. But the enduring message of Easter is that there is life beyond Good Friday.
So why has last year’s resurrection date expired? Because I have lost my faith? No. I do not doubt the power of resurrection that many Christians believed happened 2000 years ago. I am simply suggesting that if resurrection—that ability to rise from the ashes and live again—is not happening in our own life and community, then it is not yet real. The nature of resurrection is that it doesn’t just happen once, but again and again.
And do we ever need it this year.
The power to begin again, to retool, to re-invent ourselves. Resurrection is the greatest stimulus package imaginable. The power to become not who we were, but more than who we were. The ability to rise from the ashes and leave behind those aspects of ourselves that put us in disharmony with one another and with our brothers and sisters across the world.
How does it happen? We imagine it together. It happens in communities, all kinds of them. We stop thinking of ourselves first and concentrate on our interdependence. We break through the shackles of race, class and gender by intentionally crossing boundaries and working together to truly help each other. We practice acts of kindness and are the first to give the other the benefit of the doubt. We stop blaming and get to work. We are honest enough to admit that the old system just doesn’t work anymore, and we are brave enough to embrace new possibilities of a way forward. We refuse the easy out of cynicism and become champions of hope even when things look bleak. We believe that even the smallest act can make a difference.
Remember, resurrection happened in the dark of night, and then the dawn came. And, the new resurrection happening this year—it is for everyone. It doesn’t matter what tradition you’re from. Every faith tradition celebrates some concept of resurrection. It doesn’t matter what you call it. Call it spring. Call it renewal. Just be part of the new life, the new way trying to spring up like grass through the cement of our past. If we can imagine it, we can create it. So this Easter I am imagining resurrection—for all of us.
Rev. Dr. G. Penny Nixon
Senior Minister, Congregational Church of San Mateo
