Emerging Women

By Ann Catherine Pittman

I read all four resurrection stories last night in an attempt to understand what it means to start over. I started off reading the first and second chapter in Matthew: the story of Joseph, Mary and the baby’s trek to Egypt. That’s starting over, I thought. A new culture a new language, but it wasn’t what I was looking for. So I headed toward the back of the book.

Matthew’s resurrection story is short and has the treasured Great Commission. Mark’s is even shorter unless you count the longer ending complete with snake-handling, but most scholars don’t, so I skipped that part. Luke has the great story of the two travelers who get the whole biblical story from Moses to the Prophets to the Messiah retold and interpreted for them by none other than Jesus himself… man I would have like to be a fly on the headdress of one of those guys. And then, I turned to John. Like the others you’ve got the women at the tomb, but also the race of Peter and “the loved one.” There’s the breathing on the disciples incident, and of course the famous “I’ll believe it when I see it” story compliments of Thomas’ doubt. But to end the book: an outing at sea.

After the crucifixion and the appearances of Jesus, the disciples return to doing what they know how to do best. Like a kid who finishes Summer Camp and then has to go back to school in August, the disciples return from their journey with Jesus and head to their fishing boats. I suppose Luke went back to his hospital clinic and Matthew went back to the IRS office, but Peter, James, John and Andrew joined back up with their partners and went back out to sea.

With New Year’s Eve, we too come off the high of Christmas. Usually it’s a time when everyone is a little bit nicer, a little more giving, and a little more repentant. From Christmas we move straight into the New Year when our culture offers us an opportunity to take our repentance and really “do” repentance by making resolutions. We even change numbers on the calendar, a constant reminder that we have really started something new.

Two Thousand and Ten
Twenty Ten
Two Oh One Oh

It’s not 2009, it’s 2010. And for our culture it’s a time to start over, start fresh.

Similarly, that’s what the disciples faced after Jesus’ ghostly appearances. What now?

“Well, I guess we go back to work.”

And that’s what happens to us too. We have an encounter with Christ and then we have to go back to work. Our lives don’t change as radically as we feel they should. We don’t get new parents or a new city to live in or a new job or a new body. What changes is within us. When the external parts of our world keep on going and we’re standing there wide-eyed and gape-mouthed having seen Jesus alive and at work, at some point we have to push our jaw back into place and go on with our lives.

And that means going back to work.

“Cast your nets on the other side,” Jesus called to them. Returning to work after an encounter with Jesus can mean doing things a little differently.

“Come have breakfast with me,” Jesus invited them. Taking a break in our busy lives for communion with Jesus can be necessary for nourishment.

“What is that to you what I do with your friend’s life?” Jesus asked of Peter. Following Jesus doesn’t mean making comparisons between you and others in your community, neither does it mean passing judgment on them.

It’s pretty easy to spiritualize this text as I’ve just done. And it’s pretty easy to just leave it alone. But the disciples had to carry on just like you and I carry on. So how did they do it? How do they live normal lives, changed by their encounter with the risen Christ?

And that’s what New Years reminds me of: my conversion, or rather, my continual process of conversion. This time of the year reminds me what it means to start over in our hearts and minds, but carry on living in the same world as before.

And so I leave you with a question (just in case resolving to go to the gym every day weren’t enough of a burden).

How will we start over… now that we’ve had breakfast with God?

Rev. Ann Pittman is the Minister to Young Adults and of Creative Discipleship at First Baptist Church in Austin, Texas. She is a writer, singer and mother of two cats and a dog. She blogs at www.anncpittman.blogspot.com.

A very Happy Thanksgiving to all of our US readers! I pray this holiday weekend finds you well. Amidst the baking and the family time, I invite you to share here about your family traditions and what you are thankful for. It is always encouraging to hear the stories from our community.

And believe it or not, this Sunday marks the start of the season of Advent in the Western church. Here at Emerging Women we want to focus our posts during this time on the idea of incarnation. What are the practical implications of incarnation in our lives. What does God becoming flesh mean for your faith? How can we celebrate and be present in incarnation each and every day? How does incarnation turn our world upside down? I invite you to share your thoughts in the form of a reflection, or a poem, or a photograph (or whatever medium you desire). We have already received a few beautiful submissions, but would really like to hear from as many members of this community as possible this season. These posts can be whatever length you want them to be, we just want to hear your thoughts. So please send them along to emergingwomen@gmail.com.

Enjoy the holiday, and I look forward to hearing your reflections.

- Julie Clawson

It’s December. There exists a strange phenomenon that during the month of December women bloggers disappear. The men continue blogging like it is any other month, but there is a distinct drop-off in new posts or comments by women. So instead of trying to pull together an anemic weekly round-up over the next few weeks, I’ve decided to just take a “holiday hiatus.” Life is busy and women bear the brunt of that busyness. We adjust and re-emerge as thinking and blogging beings sometime in January after the cookies have been frosted and eaten, the marathon of “special services” run, and the joyous but stressful family gatherings a mere memory.

So today I want to give the opportunity for anyone looking for a short internet sanity break to share whatever they want about the craziness of the holidays. Feel free to vent, boast, complain, share ideas, encourage… say whatever needs to be said.

To remind and inspire us as to the orgins of this day -

Happy and blessed Easter to all.

It’s Good Friday, the darkness before the dawn for the Christian church. The day that the Catholic Church feels most vulnerable, with every tabernacle bare of the Blessed Sacrament and Christ’s comforting presence.

After the joy and comfort of the Pesach Seder that marks Maundy Thursday, the altars are stripped bare, the Blessed Sacrament is moved to the altar of repose, and darkness, grief and vulnerability mark the Church until the candle of hope is lit, at the beginning of the Easter Vigil. The Catholic Church embodies these phases beautifully with the Triduum – essentially one liturgy over three days marking each part of the story and the emotions that ensue.

I go to Tenebrae (Latin, “darkness”) each morning of the Triduum, which is essentially Matins and Lauds, including the sung Lamentations of Jeremiah, psalms, readings, and an ending sequence that is spine-tingling. On Saturday, the Oratio Jeremiae is sung. It is a beautiful way to begin each day of the Triduum and focus on what lies ahead.

Today, Good Friday, is a day of brutality, grief, silence, numbness – and fear that the light of tomorrow’s Easter Vigil may not come. In a superb sermon today, the celebrant spoke of visiting Rwanda, how there are some events that are beyond words, that we must grieve, but offer the action (in Catholic terms, mass) that Jesus has given us: “Take, eat; this is my body, which will be given up for you.”

A few weeks ago, my friend Jan and I were discussing Christ’s words from the cross, as she was writing some meditations for some Lenten concerts she was organising. “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” took up most of the conversation, as we talked about Jesus’ emotions at that moment, and I said, in a flash of intuition:

“Jesus was angry. Jesus was angry at God.”

As I listened to today’s sermon, that conversation came back to me. We always talk about the grief of Good Friday, and well we should. But why is it that we always avoid the *anger* in those words of Jesus? We say, “See, he felt forsaken, so it’s ok for us to feel that way. He’s taken it on for us,” or we talk about his momentary doubt. But we never talk about what one author calls his “anguished reproach” of God, the fury unleashed in Jesus Christ Superstar’s Garden of Gethsemane:

I only want to say
If there is a way
Take this cup away from me
For I don’t want to taste its poison
Feel it burn me,
I have changed -
I’m not as sure as when we started
Then I was inspired…
Now I’m sad and tired
Listen, surely I’ve exceeded
Expectations
Tried for three years
Seems like thirty
Could you ask as much
From any other man?
…
Why, why should I die?
Oh, why should I die?
Can you show me now
That I would not be killed in vain?
Show me just a little
Of your omnipresent brain
Show me there’s a reason
For your wanting me to die
You’re far too keen on where and how
But not so hot on why
Alright I’ll die!
Just watch me die!

Many people were shocked by this portrayal of Jesus: we are so often presented with him as going meekly to his slaughter, and how like a lamb going to its shearing, opening not his mouth.

What, we expect this passionate man who had just upset the money changers’ tables in the temple to go to his death without opening his mouth? He did, and boy, *how* did he. That anger, that reproach is embodied in “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

As a society, as a world, we have huge problems with anger: we see its destructive capability – emotionally, physically, globally, and we try to push it away, down into our Shadow, where we don’t have to face it, hoping that the pressure of everything on top of it will turn it into some sort of diamond – we’ll even take cubic zirconia, thanks very much!

Instead, it blows as explosively and predictably as Old Faithful, the geyser in Yellowstone Park, spraying everyone and everything in its path.

We forget that, as Jesus shows us in JCS’s Gethsemane and on the cross, that an open, honest expression of anger can be controlled, *transformative* and often, the mark of an intimate relationship. Beneath Christ’s anger lie the very human emotions of doubt, fear, pain, and dare we say it – a sense of betrayal: “I have done everything you asked of me, why *this*?” And it is Jesus’ intimacy with God, His complete trust in God’s unconditional love, that allows him to speak so openly of his anger, fear and pain.

We forget that burying anger destroys relationships. What if Christ hadn’t expressed his anger and doubt to God? It would have put up a barrier between Him and God, as surely as it does in human relationships.

So why can’t we face Jesus’ anger with God? Perhaps because facing the fact that the Son of God was angry with the Father would force us to face the fact that *we* are angry with God – somewhere, somehow, to some degree. It would make us examine our relationship with God and force us to drop that barrier with God and let our relationship with Him transform us. And that’s scary. It’s easier to seek the mythical ‘perfect’ relationship that we imagine Jesus had with God, rather than the full, deep, passionate, authentic relationship He *did* have. It’s safer to approach an asymptote than to fully enter into a relationship as our true selves, willing to fall as deeply as it takes to live it properly.

What we must remember is that Jesus expresses his anger from the heart – not to lash out, not to manipulate, not sideways towards someone it isn’t really directed at – and that is why it is transformative: his hands and his heart are open, not clenched. He asks questions such as “Would what I’ve said and done matter anymore?”, and uses words such as “sad”, “tired” or “forsaken”. It’s between Him and His Father, and that’s where He works it through.

And so, He moves forward, towards acceptance and the greater intimacy with God that is His at Easter, uncertainly at first:

Then I was inspired
Now I’m sad and tired
After all, I’ve tried for three years
Seems like ninety
Why then am I scared
to finish what I started
What you started
I didn’t start it
God thy will is hard
But you hold every card
I will drink your cup of poison
Nail me to your cross and break me
Bleed me, beat me
Kill me, take me now
Before I change my mind

but later, with absolute trust after expressing His anger and sense of abandonment from the cross:

“It is finished. Father, into thine hands I commend my spirit.”

May being completely authentic and vulnerable in our relationship with God – from the joy and love to the rage, fear and doubt – give us the courage to do the same.

I’ll skip the Weekly Round-up for Holy Week.

I encourage everyone to post their reflections on this time. Good Friday, Easter… What significance does it have for you this year? What traditions do you follow? How are you celebrating?

If you would like to read a collection of reflections a number of bloggers are participating in about Holy Week, the stations of the cross, and the stations of the ressurection, I encourage you to visit the Via Crucis Gridblog 2007.