This will not be the sermon I preach on Sunday but it is the sermon I think intended by the Gospel writers.
In First Century Rome, it was not a question of whether you believed in the resurrection of Jesus. The question was, “Whose resurrection did you believe in or give loyalty to (a better translation of the Greek word for “faith”, pistis)?” For the most widely known resurrection was the resurrection of Julius Caesar.
Resurrection was about authority. To whom did God or the gods accord authority? And what activity, life, or religious practice conferred that authority? Caesar kept the Pax Romana through military victories, economic domination, and violence. In turn, the gods ordained the status quo with Rome as victor and the peoples under Caesar’s feet.
In the earliest canonical gospel, Mark, Jesus is an exorcist. The author of Mark writes a story of how to make meaning of tremendous trauma and loss. Exorcisms were necessary because the Roman narrative, one of colonizing violence, got on the skin of people, got under their skin and into their bones and bloodstream, and pretty soon overtook the narrative of their own people. This was the unclean spirit or demon possession. It was a narrative of colonizing violence. They housed the oppressor.
The Gospel of Mark is such a shock to modern sensibilities that it rarely is told in literature or cinema. Toni Morrison’s Beloved is one of only re-tellings of the Gospel of Mark that I have read or seen.
Among the Lunda-Luvale people of the former Rhodesia, the most commonly known demon was named bindele. Bindele literally meant European. Or, better put, European colonizer. This colonization represented the regular violence of occupation and colonization. As the colonizing narrative takes hold, the person lives in the land of death, prone to self-harm. You are as the colonizer sees you. You are not your own. You are not in your right mind.
When colonization is successful and complete, the people colonized picture themselves as damaged, deformed, less than whole, disfigured, sinful, and not worthy of redemption.
In the Jewish resurrection tradition, Jesus cannot be the only one resurrected. As early Christian tradition relates, Jesus first goes to hell to liberate the captive. Resurrection begins an historic jail-break. Then Jesus draws to himself all of humankind (hopefully the tradition evolves to include all of creation) and the resurrection points to overcoming the violence of civilization and kin and the imperial and colonizing violence.
Today, we do not often see the resurrection story told because the story tellers and mythmakers in television, cinema, and literature are not invested in the revolution. And the revolution shall not be televised. But in this age of re-telling some of the horrors of United States history from the point of view of those who have been historically brutalized, enslaved, and colonized, some stories of resurrection have emerged.
The Ghost Dance, made illegal by the United States government, was a form of practicing resurrection. The ancestors show up, join hands with their siblings and cousins, and show them that the status quo does not have to be. There is another way. The time of the buffalo may very well return. In that imagination, what is possible becomes open and resurrection is accomplished.
In the TV series, Lovecraft Country, the “Holy Ghost” episode, Leti buys a home for cheap as a halfway home for those African-American folk who need safe haven from the regular violence of racism. Leti got the home cheap because it is haunted by two distinct entities. The first entity was a mean and cruel white doctor, Hiram, who did regular, grotesque experiments on the bodies of African American people. The second entity were those African American people, Leti’s ancestors, who were violently and cruelly experimented on by this doctor. They linger looking for resurrection healing.
Atticus and Leti call a medium in to exorcise the spirits who remain there. The medium sacrifices a goat and puts its blood on the foreheads of Atticus and Leti to protect them. They then all go to the basement to join in a chant to rid the house of its spirits. When they end the chant, they begin breathing a sigh of relief, wondering if they have been successful.
But then the sprinkler system kicks on and washes the goat’s blood from their foreheads. They have lost their protection. Hiram’s spirit kills the medium and begins throwing Atticus to and fro before possession him. He comes after Leti now, telling her, “Get the fuck out of my house, bitch!”
In beautiful artistry, Shirley Caesar’s Satan, We’re Gonna Tear Your Kingdom Down begins playing. Leti, calls forward the ancestors, the eight African-American people who Hiram experimented on. Leti calls forward their resurrection to join hands around the circle, and they first arrive in their deformed and disfigured incarnations.
As they join in the chant the medium taught Leti, however, they also join hands in the circle and begin returning to their rightful bodies. Hiram releases Atticus who falls to the floor. Now we see Hiram in the middle of the circle, the resurrection casting him out as the exorcism occurs. Leti ends it by screaming, “Get . . . the . . . fuck . . . out of my house!” It is a powerful scene that carries with it the full meaning of the resurrection.
The scene reminds us. Do you believe in the resurrection of Hiram? Or do you believe in the resurrection of African-American ancestors who stand to fight, join the circle, and cast out the violence, death, and enslavement of a whole people? Whose resurrection do you give your loyalty to?
This countercultural resurrection is fierce and full of grit. It begins with a jail-break, join hands with all of creation, and fulfills the organizing, planning, and plotting of a God who engages domination, violence, occupation, colonization, and death with unarmed truth and unconditional love.
As a person of faith, I do not want to know if you believe in the resurrection of the dead. I want to know whose resurrection you give your loyalty to. And are you willing to fight for it with the ferocity and grit it requires? Will the circle go unbroken? The ancestors await their own healing. Let the jailbreak begin!
Sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins, Christ is risen!