Friends, welcome to The Book of Common Words, where we explore the Christian spirituality of being human through podcast, poetry, and prose about my life, art, and the Christian faith. I’m your writer, Aaron. This publication is 100% reader supported. Thanks for joining me in this exploration.
Miriam had stayed and stood at the tomb, weeping outside. Then, while she was weeping, she bent down to look into the tomb, and she saw two messengers in white sitting where Jesus’ body had been lying, one by the head and one by the feet.
“Ma’am,” they said to her, “Why are you weeping?”
“Because,” she said, “They took away my Lord, and I don’t know where they put him.” After she said this, she turned around, and she saw Jesus standing there, but she didn’t realize it was Jesus.
“Ma’am,” said Jesus, “Why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?”
Because she thought he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you carried him away, tell me where you put him, and I will take him.”
“Miriam,” Jesus said to her.
She turned around and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni (which means, ‘Teacher’)!”
Jesus told her, “Do not touch me because I haven’t gone up to the Father yet, but go to my Family and tell them I said, ‘I’m going up to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
Miriam the Tower went to bring the message to the students: “I have seen the Lord!” and she told them what he said.—John 20.11-18, Liberation and Inclusion Translation, translated by Brandon Johnson
Empire wants to kill you.
The oppressive systems and power dynamics we have in the world want your destruction. No matter how much you produce, how much you contribute to their success, how much control you think you have over them, the powers and principalities of this world want you dead. It’s in their nature to consume, to use up, to obliterate anything and everything as soon as it becomes useless to them.
This is the enemy we face. Not one of flesh and blood, but one of power and violence.
Indeed, violence is the ultimate tool that Empire has against us. Violence keeps us subordinate to the system because the system can harm us, can physically injure us, the system can kill us.
Death is the final gift of Empire to all under its control. Death helps Empire retain control and rule with an iron fist.
Living under the threat of death does something deep to us. It changes us, confines us, imprisons us. After all, death takes away hope. If we know what the result of our life is going to be, what our fate is, and that doom is death, we’re not going to hope for change, dream of something different. If death is the only place this one-way street leads, we have no vision of a better way.
Mary Magdline, Mary the Tower, knew this loss of hope. She knew all too well what death meant.
See, she knew Jesus, and Jesus gave her hope. Jesus gave her a vision of a better world, of an un-occupied homeland, of a life of freedom. Jesus even went as far as to give her a vision of a deathless world when he brought her brother Lazarus back from that death.
At that miracle, Jesus had said, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Mary believed.
Then came Jesus’ death. Not just any death. No, this was the death of insurrectionists, a death of humiliation and torture. Jesus was crucified by Roman law.
Mary saw her hope die. She saw hope gasp and slowly bleed out. She saw all her dreams of a better world breathe his last and die.
Empire won.
Empire took away hope, suppressed revolution, and sent a message with crucifixion: fall in line, keep the status quo, or this is going to be your future. Keep your head down and produce or we will torture and kill you.
See Empire rules by force. Empire keeps the peace with the fear of violence. Empire takes and takes and takes, displaying its dreadful power to anyone who dares to try and disrupt its peace by force.
Let me ask you, where do you feel the force of Empire the most? What are you afraid of losing that the powers of this world can take away?
Freedom?
Security?
Community?
Life?
The fear of losing these things keeps us bound to the world the way it is. When Empire inevitably takes away these things, we lose hope, we lose our ability to dream, we lose ourselves to despair.
This is what Mary faced at the crucifixion: a despair and a complete loss of hope.
All she could do was honor the body of the one in whom she had hoped.
Yet, even that seemed to be taken away.
Mary went to the tomb Jesus had been laid in to anoint the body and prepare it for burial… and all she found was an empty tomb. She saw Jesus die, and with that death, her hope of the kingdom of God. Now, even her chance to honor the one on whom she had placed her dreams was taken away.
The grief was too much, and it broke her.
I don’t know about you, but I have felt this kind of grief. It’s the grief of losing everything, of despair, of utter loss and aloneness. It is what breaks us, what shatters our hearts and steals from us our ability to resist anymore. This kind of grief over lost dreams and hopes and futures is the victory of Empire because it has finally worn us down till we cannot fight, cannot resist, cannot hope. When we lose the ability to imagine a better future, the Empire has won.
In moments like these, we experience nothing short of the absolute and the utter desolation of total death.
Death won. We lost. We are lost. There’s nothing else we can do, no recourse we can take, no hope to hold onto. Complete and utter despair is complete and utter death.
But Jesus.
Death and grief aren’t the end of the story. Even as they engulf her, hope is standing behind her. She can’t see hope for what it is, she mistakes it for a person who can maybe tell her where the dead body of her hope is.
“Mary.” Her name spoken with tenderness, with compassion, with love. Her name spoken with restoration, grace, with hope. Her name spoken by the one whom she thought she had lost.
Jesus comes into our grief, our desolation, our death, and calls us by name to come out of the grave Empire has placed is in. Jesus comes to us and whispers our name and calls us into resurrection.
Resurrection is the restoration of hopes and dreams. In that instant, all our fears that have come true and the death that crushes our spirit are removed. In that moment we find our true liberation because death, grief, fear, Empire doesn’t get the final word.
Resurrection isn’t the antidote to Empire. It’s not some sort of fix it up patchwork job. Resurrection isn’t the antithesis to Empire.
Resurrection is the victory over Empire. It is the dismantling of Empire. Resurrection steals and crushes the power of Empire. In resurrection we learn that Empire has no true power over us because the death it wants for us is not the final word.
Mary found hope when Jesus said her name.
Mary found new purpose when Jesus told her to go and tell the others of the resurrection.
Mary found life in the face of the one who is the resurrection.
Mary found hope, purpose, and life in her resurrection when Jesus spoke her name.
We too find new hope, renewed purpose, and effervescent life in our own resurrections.
Where you have had grief, hurt, fear, pain, these are the places you will find resurrection, find new hope, find life again.
Empire wants to kill us. Resurrection tells us that Empire doesn’t get what it wants. Empire can’t silence the truth because resurrection is the final word, not the crushing demand of Empire.
We believe in a new world, one of peace, justice, love. We know this world is not only possible but is inevitable because the basis of this world is in resurrection, something that Empire can’t conquer, no matter how violently it rages against it.
Empire has been defeated. Death has lost its icy grip. There is nothing to fear because, for once, we all live again.
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