The Other Resurrections
When We Don't Get Our Miracle
Dear Friends,
Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
The Lord is Risen, indeed! Alleluia!
We get to keep saying it.
As many of you know, disability and access are at the heart of my work. Sometimes it fades into the quiet background. I fall into my excitement about new picture books and deep dives into liturgy. I cover a lot of ground around here.
That being said, this morning I untangled myself from the next of pillows that support my joints while I sleep, took a pile of medications and supplements, and am now reclined again with a heating pad, nursing mysterious abdominal pain. It’s Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome awareness month (among many others) and I am acutely aware, thanks.
In scripture, miraculous healings are a point of wonder for all of us, but they can also be uniquely difficult when situated beside our own physical fragility. In my work with the Godly Play Foundation’s Equity Audit, this is one of the areas where I focus my attention. It demands the question, what are we really claiming here? What is being healed?
In the Greatest Parable, the blind man who seeks healing from Jesus is met with a healing that allows him to “truly see” – implying a sight beyond physical sight. In Jesus and the Women, though, we see a lot of nebulous healing – Lazarus and a child both raised from the dead, an assortment of illnesses healed. And now this week, our lectionary readings bring us Tabitha/Dorcas.
What is notable about Tabitha’s story is that, though she is brought back to life much like Lazarus, this happens at the hands of Peter, not Jesus. Jesus has gone ahead of them and left them to do their work and yet, after falling ill and dying, Tabitha lives again! How is this possible? And, how are these other resurrections different from the one Jesus experiences?
Being Raised – And Being Let Down
Jesus takes people who have died and brings them back to life. The apostles do the same after Jesus has left them. But we understand these resurrections to be a one-time event that do ultimately end in death again. They overcome a moment, rather than mortality and time itself. Only Jesus can do that.
And only Jesus can do that because of what he tells the disciples in this week’s Gospel as they seek greater clarity about who he is. Yes, he tells them, I am the Messiah – I tell you and show you that and yet you still doubt. But critically he also explains, “The Father and I are one.”
How does that work? Much like the question of how these healings and resurrections work, this is beyond the ways we can physically interact with and comprehend the world. We’re broaching Trinity conversations here (and we’re only a little over a month from Trinity Sunday – get your heresies ready). We’re trying to work out a metaphysics that is incongruent with the world we know.
My fourth graders have been caught up by some of these questions for the last many months. And some of my answers are simply about orthodoxy. But some of it is wonder. I wonder what Jesus meant when he said “The Father and I are one?”
I wonder how Tabitha felt when she discovered she had been raised?
I wonder how the people around Tabitha felt when she eventually died for good?
I wonder if seeing people raised once made their death later easier or harder?
I wonder a lot how we experience these stories of temporary resurrection or miraculous healing from our personal experiences with illness and death?
How do we tell these stories – to children and to adults – in light of our personal experiences of sickness and loss? What do we need to prepare ourselves for? What questions? What compounding of pain?
Maybe we need Kate Bowler’s blessings about illness or about grief. Maybe we need her more historical writing about how we arrived at various iterations of the prosperity gospel and its expansion into health.
Maybe it’s all about lament. We might need Elizabeth Ashman Riley’s Rage Prayers, like the one for terrible anniversaries. Or to be assured that we can talk to God like that (You Can Talk to God Like That by Abby Norman).
Especially in the midst of Easter when we are offered so much rejoicing, we don’t have to relinquish our need for grief and lament. Indeed, that complicated combination probably expresses much of what Jesus’s followers experienced during that first Easter season. There Lord had died. He had come back – but changed. He was telling them that he wasn’t here for good, that it was going to be their turn to lead this work.
Any time we come close to a story about healing in the Bible, I think w also need to be ready to come close to grief and lament, anger and disappointment. Yes, these are stories about God’s power and about possibility. About joy and grace. And they can also highlight the absence of those transformations in our lives.
Maybe there is a child in your circle who is blind or has cerebral palsy. Maybe they have a sick parent or their grandparent died recently. Maybe you yourself are tender from your own diagnosis or the loss of someone close to you. We don’t have to push past those things to embrace the joy of Tabitha’s return to life. And, we don’t have to tie up how such miracles led to wider belief with our own faith. We can know a God who holds our lament at least as well as one that transforms the cause of it. In fact, I think we may need to for our own well-being, as well as for those of all ages who we come alongside.
We can declare him risen! We can await our own resurrection! And we can be in grief now, just as we are in the lives we are living.
A Prayer for This Week
God of the cross, of the tomb, of new life ascending, you show us the full scope of what life can hold for us – nurturing and love, confidence and wonder, betrayal and anger, grief and persistence. Come beside us when the miracle – the good insurance, the life-changing surgery, the successful pregnancy – arrives for someone else but not for us, and help us to inhabit our emotions as they come, letting them move us toward right action in the world. Your love for us does not live in the miracle, but in your presence through all things and the grace that will accompany us beyond any ending. Amen.
Resource Round-Up
What’s on the calendar, friends? A few highlights from what I’ve been thinking about and upcoming dates –
Pentecost (June 8): Pentecost is after Memorial Day this year, so you may be working against the tides of attendance. That being said, there are lots of ways to make this feast day special. You might:
Throw a Church Birthday Party! We often refer to Pentecost as the birthday of the church because it is when we were given the Holy Spirit and the Disciples were transformed into the Apostles. You might mark this day with a birthday cake (ideally with red cake or frosting), with gifts to particular ministries (I keep a ministry wishlist for my children’s program), or with service projects like prepping birthday packs for a local food pantry.
Have A Campfire Service. I just pitched a campfire compline to my rector as a general summer activity, but Pentecost would be a perfect kick-off for that given the fire themes. Gather around the flames and offer up prayers. You. might even write prayers on Flying Wish Paper and set them alight as part of your service. Plus, the fire is already there so you might as well make s’mores.
St. Columbkille (June 9): Columbkille (Anglicized as Columba) is remembered on June 9. Godly Play has a story for this saint which I’ll be sharing at a service of our local Episcopal mission – likely with some adjustments from my friend, colleague, and one of the priests serving said mission, Mtr. Emily Garcia, who has addressed this Anglicization.
Nativity of St. John the Baptist (June 24): My church kids and I threw a birthday party for John the Baptist last year with dirt cups (one of my personal all-time favorite treats) and birthday cupcakes featuring little bee toppers – honoring his legacy of eating locusts and honey in the wilderness. You might prefer to make honey cakes or maybe you’re feeling bold – locusts are pretty big but there are plenty of less intimidating edible insects.
Other ways to celebrate John might, like Pentecost, also include fire. There are stories around the world tying John to light – his nativity falls at the summer solstice and the shortening days are tied to his statement about Jesus, “He must increase and I must decrease.”
Finally, you might mark this day with a diaper drive or community baby shower, honoring Elizabeth’s unexpected pregnancy. Filling the shelves of a local diaper pantry can support families in more ways than you can imagine. Learn more from the National Diaper Bank Network!
Other recent notes:
NYT is starting a new project called “Believing” to address the national search for belief and belonging.
I’m a few weeks late, but the Atlantic not only wrote about Quaker understandings of parenting, but also checked in with friend-of-the-newsletter Melinda Wenner Bradley along the way.
This newsletter got its start focusing on families at home and small churches – and rural church communities definitely fall into that space. Well, check out this new Lilly grant funded project serving rural communities, including a conference for rural churches at the University of the Ozarks.
That’s all for now, dear humans. Let us rejoice despite pain, rejoice even where the pain is getting worse, leaving a scar, carving tracks through our bodies. In other words, in Anne Lamott’s words, Hallelujah Anyway.
Peace,
Bird