SunApr242011
Scripture: MATTHEW 28:1-10 THE FEDERATED CHURCH, UCC
“Other” and “feet.” “Other” and “feet.” “He’s gone mad,” you say. “What in the world is he talking about?” And my answer to you is: that’s the gospel for today. Or at least part of it.
The magic of most stories is in their details. Think of Miss Gulch pedaling her bike through the tornado in The Wizard of Oz. Or remember, in the second Toy Story, when, as they leave on a trip, Mrs. Potato Head reassures her husband that she’s packed his “angry eyes”? These are the sparks that make a story come alive.
The Easter stories are no exception. They, too, are full of details that give the stories their character. You may know that there are four different versions of what happens to Jesus after he dies, and in many ways, they’re similar. All of them mention some followers of Jesus visiting the tomb, with a small group of women being, in every case, the first. All of them mention some mysterious figure(s) at the tomb. And strikingly, none of them say anything at all about the resurrection itself. They only report an empty tomb and eventual reappearances of Jesus. Resurrection is the climax of the tale, but all of the gospel accounts are noticeably reticent in describing what happens to Jesus. For all of them, it’s not really the specifics of the resurrection that matter, but the effects of that resurrection. What does this astounding moment mean, for us, for the world? That’s the unifying theme of all the stories.
As similar as the stories are, though, they’re also distinctly different. In John’s gospel, the one we usually hear on Easter, two male disciples race to the tomb (20:4). In Mark’s, the women who arrive first run away in fear and don’t tell anybody anything about what they’ve seen (16:8). In Luke’s story, the women return to the other disciples and do tell about what they’ve seen, but nobody believes them (24:11). And here in Matthew, we hear, among many distinctive details, “other” and “feet.” And it’s in large measure such particulars that make the story.
“After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb” (28:1). Who in the world is this “other” Mary? And why isn’t she identified more precisely? Well, it turns out she has been mentioned earlier, where she is described simply as “the mother of James and Joseph” (Mt. 27:56). She is one of the faithful few women who have witnessed Jesus’ hanging on the cross, but the only way she’s identified is as the mother of two sons.
She’s the “other” Mary, the one who accompanies Mary Magdalene. And for some, I imagine, that word “other” is freighted. In a variety of ways, I suspect many of us have had the experience of being the other. When my mother left her position as a local church pastor to work for the United Church of Christ, the church she was serving threw her a big party on her last Sunday there. And when my brother and I arrived at church that morning, the greeter, who knew my brother as a well-known local sportscaster, greeted us. “Hi, Tim,” she said brightly and energetically. And then she turned to me and said, in a considerably flatter way, “And you must be the other son.”
I don’t think I knew, at that moment, that it hurt me. But later on that day, my brother and I got into a huge and inexplicable fight, while we were moving furniture. And it was only hours after the fight, as I reflected on the whole day, that I put together that I felt like a nobody. This was at a point in my life when I really didn’t have much of a sense of identity. So being the “other” son simply came like a dagger into my lost and confused life.
My guess is that some of you have, at one time or another, felt like the “other.” Maybe you grew up with a special needs sibling who took the lion’s share of your parents’ attention. Or you came late to this country, or to the place you work, and you’ve always felt like an outsider. Or you married into a family who never fully embraced you, and you’ve always felt like a fifth wheel. Or, in school, when teams are being picked, you always get picked last. You know what it’s like to feel like the “other.”
What Matthew’s story affirms in capital letters is that, whether you’re the more well-known Mary Magdalene or the “other” Mary, the one without the high profile, the one who seems not to get the glory, you both are part of the Easter tableau. You, too, are encouraged go to the tomb. And you, too, are visited by the presence of the risen Christ. The fact that the more well-known Mary and the other Mary are treated equally means that no one is ruled out of the grace offered by God, that new life is God’s gift to everyone. In a world as fractious as ours, this is the best possible news. The resurrection truth is: God plays no favorites. Or, as we say in the United Church of Christ, “Whoever you are, and wherever you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.” Famous Mary or anonymous Mary, you belong.
So whether we’re the in crowd or the “other,” we’re all part of the company of God’s people. The other notable word we’ll pick up on this morning is “feet.” In certainly one of the odder details of the story, Matthew says that, once the Jesus who had died reappeared, the two women “came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him” (28:9). Really? Shook hands with him I could understand. Touched him on the face maybe. Hugged him even. But took hold of his feet? Just take a moment to picture it. Why in the world does Matthew share this bizarre touch?
Well, to be honest, I have no earthly idea! But there is something evocative about that image, something that hints at where the resurrection takes us. The fact that feet are often, at least in warm weather, on display disguises the fact that they are also an extremely private and intimate part of the body. Who, after all, ever touches your feet? A spouse or partner, maybe—although in some relationships that would be the death knell! A shoe salesperson, perhaps, or a massage therapist, or a parent with an infant. Other than that, for most of us, no one ever touches our feet. So when the two Marys hold onto Jesus’ feet, it’s an act of great intimacy. It shows how trusting and connected to Jesus they are. The resurrected Christ is one with whom we are intimately wrapped up.
The other notable characteristic of feet, of course, is that they are vehicles of movement. They’re what get us from place to place. When the women grab Jesus’ feet, they are preventing him from moving. They evidently want to keep him there with them. They don’t want to let him go.
It’s completely understandable, of course. If you saw Jesus, wouldn’t you do everything you could to keep him there—keep him talking, offer him a bite to eat, tell him what a cool guy he is? When the two Marys grab his feet, they aren’t so odd.
And Jesus is too nice and polite to tell them to let go. What he does instead is give them a task, or what we in the church might call a mission: he sends them to tell the other disciples about this incredible encounter. Jesus knows that both his feet and their feet have to be on the move. Being stagnant is not an option. The only real option is to go, and to be free, and to live the fearless life Jesus invites us to live.
If the two Marys are to have any real wholeness, they will have to let go of Jesus. They will have to allow the Christ-wonder its own mysterious freedom, to come and go as it pleases. They will have to get on with the work they have to do. And they will have to let go of some of their crutches if they’re going to flourish.
The same is true for us. Holding on to some imagined security blanket is seldom the answer. So often we hold on to what we think will give us happiness, and it’s not really what we needed after all. Our preoccupations keep us from a truly vital life.
I heard the writer Anne Lamott interviewed the other day. She was asked what Easter meant to her and she told the story of a shopping trip she took with her best friend Pam a number of years ago. Pam was dying at the time. “We were in Macy’s. I was modeling a short dress for her that I thought my boyfriend would like. But then I asked whether it made me look big in the hips, and Pammy said, as clear and kind as a woman can be, ‘Annie? You really don’t have that kind of time.’ And—slide trombone, bells, rim shot—I got it, deep in my being. . . .
“So I kept thinking, How much longer am I going to think about my hair [and a dress] more often than about things in the world that matter?” (Traveling Mercies, p. 235). To whatever extent she’s worshiped hip size and appearance, she has to let go of those figurative feet.
Friday, there was a story in the Plain Dealer about a very good local football player, Ryan Anderson, who’s just discovered he has cancer in his femur. He knows he no longer has the luxury of focusing on football. He has to fight this cancer with everything he has. If he’s going to move on, he has to let go of those feet, those football feet to which he’s clung (http://www.cleveland.com/hssports/blog/index.ssf/2011/04/kent_roosevelt_junior_ryan_and.html).
They’re not unusual, these two. They’ve just awoken to the urgency of their lives, their need to spend them in ways that honor the brevity and sanctity of these few short years we have here. And that means, to some extent, letting go of lesser ways of doing things, lesser priorities, the various sorts of “feet” to which they’ve clung. It’s certainly not that football and shopping are bad. It’s just that, all too easily, they and their kindred hobbies can take over and keep us from what matters most. We can too easily hold on to hobbies and habits that suck the life out of us.
The leading light in the positive psychology movement, Martin Seligman, remembers that when his daughter Nikki was five, “she asked her father why, since she had so successfully learned to stop whining, he couldn’t quit being such a grouch. At that moment, Seligman writes, he understood that the source of his parental grumpiness was his unwavering focus on correcting his children’s weaknesses rather than on building up their strengths” (Whole Living, May 2011, p. 98). That moment was revelatory to him. It was a spiritual makeover, a kind of resurrection.
From a Christian perspective, we say this was God shaking his foundations so that something new and beautiful and good could happen. He let go of the “feet” he had thought were sacred—constantly correcting his children—and discovered a new way.
So God’s raising of Jesus reminds us that there is no “other” in God’s world. It invites us into an intimacy with God in which all is embraced. And it nudges us to let go of lesser things in order to fly with God. No Easter Day is complete, though, without a reminder that what we celebrate fundamentally today is a power that triumphs over even the grave.
Michael Jinkins has written a book of letters to his young adult children. In one of them, he says to his daughter, “You once asked me, ‘What happens when we die?’ I think I would have to say now, ‘We let go.’
“. . . At its heart, faith is a matter of learning to let go, to entrust ourselves to God. When we die, we really do let go. This is what philosopher Emmanuel Levinas means when he . . . writes: ‘When death is here, I am no longer here, not just because I am nothingness, but because I am unable to grasp.’ [And we hear, here, the echoes of the grasping of the feet.]
“Like a tiny infant, unable to hold on even to her mother’s finger, unable to grasp and pull ourselves, we let go when death is here, and in letting go we are tacitly entrusting all we are to God for whatever may come.
“I look for a new creation, which is just another way to say, I look for the resurrection of the dead.” (Called to Be Human, p. 101).
With the resurrection, not only is the “other” included and embraced. Not only are we led into a new intimacy with God. Not only are we invited to let go of lesser preoccupations and concerns. But above all, with the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we are assured once again that “eye has not seen nor ear heard . . . what God has prepared for those who love God” (I Cor. 2:9)—in life, and in death. The resurrection is God’s way of saying, “I love you, and I hold you, now and always.” Christ is risen. And let the people say: Christ is risen, indeed!