Many of us gather here today feeling weary.
Women among us are weary. They are weary of having to defend their bodies from predation. They are weary of being spoken at, spoken for and spoken over by people who call them liars and drunk little girls and then expect them to smilemore. They are weary of having their motives and their characters questioned simply because they have the temerity to say ‘enough’.
Youth among us are weary. They are weary of having to explain science to people who have the capacity to understand it but choose not to. They are weary of being told to go back to their classrooms while the earth that they will inherit is being destroyed to line the pockets of the few. They are weary of being gas-lit into believing that their battle to keep their heads above the poverty line is just a symptom of their unwillingness to work hard or spend less.
People of colour among us are weary. They are weary of having to remind the beneficiaries of their oppression that their people’s land and bodies and liberties were stolen. They are weary of having to argue that, far from being a thing of the past, racism is a masterful shapeshifter that thrives among us.They are weary of having the knee of oppression on their necks.
And the allies that walk beside all these groups are weary. Weary of being called trouble makers. Weary of being told to calm down. Weary of witnessing their friends in a perpetual state of grief and anger and suffering.
So many people are weary. I would like to pause to take a moment to acknowledge the weariness in your own hearts. I recognise it as real. I honour your struggles.
Social justice is weary work and this side of Easter is an appropriate time to reflect on this fact.
In literary terms, we think of Easter Sunday as the dénouement of the Christian story – the part after the climax when all the protagonists’ problems start to resolve.
In reality, where we find ourselves, a fortnight after the crucifixion, the problems for the early followers of Jesus were very far from resolved. Their friend had been captured, humiliated, tortured and executed for daring to challenge the status quo. They lived in devastating poverty. They feared for their own lives.
It took the early Christians a long time to recover. In fact, the lectionary reading we heard from the Gospel of John (which was written in about 90AD) was aimed at communities ofpeople who were scared to identify themselves as followers of Jesus.
The story begins by saying that Nicodemus came to Jesus by night, in the safety of the darkness. And Jesus teaches Nicodemus that the Kingdom of God can only be realised by being spiritually ‘born again’.
John tells this story as a way of spurring the early Christians to step out of the shadows and continue the work of Jesus in order to realise his vision of a new social order in which the last shall be first.
The name Nicodemus translates to “people’s victory”.
And that is exactly what the Easter story of Jesus’ resurrection was. It doesn’t matter whether you accept the resurrection as a literal truth or read it as a symbolic proclamation that the spirit of Jesus lived on in the hearts of those who received his message.
Either way, in the context of this sermon, the resurrection means the same thing. It means that the people are stronger than the structures of power which seek to oppress them.
According to the theologian Robin Meyers, the meaning of the resurrection is that:
“the ways of Rome did not have the last word. It means that as horrifying and powerful as state terrorism can be, built on fear and funded by the principalities and powers,violence is effective only in the short run. It can proficiently kill bodies, but it is ultimately impotent when it comes to slaying the spirit. What was utterly uncommon and turned human history on its axis was the claim that Jesus had been raised from the dead. It reset all the clocks in the Western world. Easter was God’s ‘yes’ to a peasant revolutionary, and God’s ‘no’ to the Roman Empire.”
And so it is that within less than a century of Jesus’ death, the words and deeds of an impoverished man who was a victim of the Roman Empire went on to breach the very walls of that Empire. And the rest, as they say, is history.
The lesson of Easter is that, while our bodies and minds may grow tired and weary from activism, nothing can destroy the spirit of humanity to fight for a world that is better and more inclusive and more just than the one in which we find ourselves.
We have, today, have become too willing to cede Christianity to those who wield it as a weapon to divide and exclude, tojudge and marginalise, to exploit and impoverish.
What I am here to tell you today is that Christianity belongs – has always belonged – to those who are oppressed and tothose who are tired and weary of fighting that oppression.
As Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons argues in his excellent book “Just Faith: Reclaiming Progressive Christianity”:
“The bold tradition of people following Jesus – to preach the good news that God is on the side of the vulnerableagainst the racist, sexist, and economic systems that limit human potential – continues to this day. This is not the invention of some new form of Christianity.”
It is no coincidence that the first to witness Jesus’ resurrection were women and people who were exploited and marginalised, and that the people marching in our streets today are women and people who are exploited and marginalised.
So, I say to you, find strength in Jesus, come together in discipleship, and live your life in the radical spirit of theChrist’s resurrection. You are strong. And you are not alone.
The Sotto Voce 