There are rumors going around about this thing called resurrection. It keeps coming up and it won’t go away.
As if it matters, as if it changes something.
The world falls apart, that’s the rule, the norm, and we fight over the scraps, clinging and yelling. Them’s the rules of the game!
As if God would be involved in this mess, as if God changes anything.
Rumors of resurrection, that’s all they are, yet they keep coming back, and the world persists day after day, and then there are those who don’t follow the rules, who seem to be playing a different game as things fall apart.
Pay no attention to such fringe delusions. Close your eyes and ears and hearts. Get up and walk out. Don’t let them trouble you.
As if they mattered. As if they changed anything…
Visions of God in the mess of the world. That is what we hear today in the scripture. The messier it is the greater the glory shines through. Moses, Elijah, Jesus, what a bloody crazy world they lived in, everything hanging by a thread.
It drove the ancient heretics crazy, it still does, the idea of God being so involved, so intimate in our mess, all this pain we want to escape and lash out against, how could God meet us there? That’s why the heretics always leave the Church, they aren’t kicked out, they leave because it’s too messy and complicated and unresolved, all this glory leaking through our imperfections! Yuck! Heretics like things to be all spiritual and tidy and clean.
We always have a hammock in the yard. It’s a Hardaway thing.
As a young child I used to swing in that thing so high, and I would sing at the top of my lungs, and when I swung back, and I faced the ground, I could hear the song bounce back from the ground, a quivering rapid echo.
I would sing swing low sweet chariot, except I didn’t know the story of Elijah and the fiery chariot, nor did I know the words to the song, I thought it was swing low sweet cheerio, which caused no end of confusion for me at seminary…swing low sweet cheerio….
I can still feel the song shaking and bouncing off the bare hard ground.
Elijah and Moses with Jesus on the mountain, glory, words to pay attention, and words to say nothing until after the cross, until after the resurrection, until the mess gets really messy.
God’s song echoes through the earth and through the lives of God’s people, always there, always shaking us deep inside when things fall apart. The messier the more glory leaks out!
What keeps us going?
A vision of the world yelling and screaming to get a few scraps while it lasts? Who yells the most wins, I suppose. Drown out anything contrary that changes the game.
Or a vision of resurrection, of God being involved so deeply in our fears and pains and angers and desires that it is disturbingly intimate, this glory of God that insists on being known in our imperfections and failures and suffering.
Will we reveal God pulling the world back together, showing our necked and raw need for God?
It is easier to leave and find someone to yell at.
What keeps us going?
Finding someone to yell at?
Or the song, that we can’t quite get the words right, will we sing the song, even if the words aren’t right, will we sing of rumors of resurrection, that God is known in weakness, that glory shines through the mess of our lives, that God changes things.
Swing low sweet cheerio…