Christos Anesti! Alethos Anesti! Alleluia!
In November, 2008, I was told that I was no longer required at the place where I worked. That as of July 1, 2009, I would be out of a job. Truth be told, I had seen it coming. For a long time. I had been looking for a position in a similar field since 2006, but to no avail. So when the axe fell,there wasn’t much of a career back up plan in place.
I cannot begin to describe how breaking the next few months were. Being expected to walk in to a place that, for all intents and purposes, had rejected me and pretend that everything was fine when it wasn’t produced an incredible amount of anxiety. I had so identified with the job-I even lived right next door-that I could not conceive of myself outside it. And now, it was gone. Where was I? I was lost.
In the midst of all that struggle, the Watoto children’s choir came to campus to sing. Perhaps you’ve heard of them. Watoto is a village for children orphaned by HIV/AIDS in Uganda. A village where they are raised, educated, taught a trade, and rescued from a life of poverty and premature death.
The children of Watoto are children who have seen death full in the face. They are children who have far more right than I-newly looking at an extended period of unemployment-to be angry at the world of adults, whose mistakes and sins had visited consequences upon them for no fault of their own. Far more angry than I-who had over identified with a job—with the world in general for giving them the rawest of deals. Far more angry than I-lost in my feelings of self-pity-with God whose plan, if he had one at all, seemed to have left them long behind.
And yet, they were happy. They sang. And when they sang the joy radiated from their faces and through their words. This is the refrain of one song they sang to us: I am not forgotten. I am not forgotten. I am not forgotten. God knows my name. He knows my name.
They were still the orphans of HIV/AIDS. They were still struggling toreach a level of prosperity that is well beneath what most of us enjoy. Nothing in their objective status had changed because of that song. But God knew their name. And that was enough.
And I knew then that God knew my name too.
Did I get a job the next day? No. I was out of work for over a year. Did my struggles end? No. I still had to get up and go back day after day until the school year was over. And once it was over, I had to get up and not go back. Both the going and the not going were very, very hard. Nothing was objectively made easier by hearing those orphaned children singing that song. But God knew my name. And I knew that God knew. And that madea difference.
Job losses, deaths of loved ones, serious illness-all of us can point to significant anxiety producing events in our lives. What makes them loom so large that they impinge upon our relationships with our families, our friends?
Well, with all this newfound time on my hands, I began to reflect and read about anxiety. One book I re-read was by the Lutheran theologian Ted Peters. It was called, Sin: Radical Evil in Soul and Society. It is Peters’ conviction-and I think he is right-that the significant lifealtering events produce anxiety because they force us more than other events to confront our mortality. They force us to confront the fact that we will die. And not only will we die, but the world will continue on as though we had never been.
I don’t know that that is true in every case. But it was certainly true in mine. Losing my job forced me to confront my own replace-ability. Walking into school and seeing the place get along without me set in front of me the inconsequential nature of my being. It placed before me the fact that the last such departure would be permanent and while a few would miss me, I would be forgotten quickly and the world would continue on.
No doubt that’s exactly what the disciples were thinking on that first Easter morning. The one on whom their hopes and dreams had rested; the one whom they had been convinced was David’s heir, the promised one, who would remove Rome and restore the glory of Israel had been crushed. He was dead. And from death, there was no coming back.
Few would miss him. His disciples would, of course. But now they had to think about who would put food on the table. Now that had to wonder whether the blood-vengeance of the Jewish elite and the Roman governor had been sated or whether it would come looking for them. Would Matthew go back to collecting taxes? Peter and Andrew, James and John-back to their nets? Would Simon the Zealot, having been deceived by this revolutionary Jesus, find another around whom to hang his hopes for political liberation? All these questions would push the memory of Jesus even amongst those closest to him to the margins. They had to forget now and get on with life.
His family would miss him-even if they were a little embarrassed by his eccentricity. Even if they had desperately wanted him to just come home, take up the family business, and settle down to a quiet life. Even if they did not understand just what he was doing tramping around the Galilee with a rag tag few dozen young men and women, many with their own questionable pasts. They would miss him. But the death that claimed him would eventually claim them too. And soon, he would recede into themists of time and be forgotten.
And the anxiety provoked by his death-even it would soften over time. Until the day when his disciples and his family whether felled by disease or age or the unnatural interventions of the powerful, they each joined the one they named Messiah on the far side of forgetfulness, swallowed up in the anonymity of time.
And then, Mary-Mary who loved him more than the rest-burst into the grief heavy room with her announcement: “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we do not know where they have laid him!”
And Mary with Peter and John and maybe some of the rest ran back to the tomb to see just what was going on. What were they thinking? Could they not leave him alone? Could they not leave us alone? They won. Caiaphas, you and your goons had your way. Pilate, you washed your hands and let your soldiers be as sadistic as they wished. You won. Why can’t you let him be in his grave and us be to face whatever future we can rebuild.
They were lost. And the fact that they were lost must have weighed on them as they ran to the grave to see what further humiliation had to be heaped upon them before the whole depressing affair could be put behind them.
John got there first and looked in; Peter, being Peter, pushed past him and went right into the cave. They saw. John even believed. But his belief didn’t go all the way to understanding. And having seen, they went home. They went back to their brooding. They went back to trying to make sense of their lives.
But one did not.
Mary-first to find the tomb empty. Mary stayed behind and wept. Mary could not yet move on. Mary was still lost. Lost -lost in the loss of her Lord. And she wept.
Not willing to accept that yet another humiliation had been heaped upon her and her Lord, she looked into the tomb. But it was empty no longer. Two white-robed messengers, now sitting on the corpse-bed, asked her why she wept. “They have taken away my Lord,” she sobbed. He is lost and so am I. And she turned and saw one whom she thought was the gardener. And he asked her the same question: “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?”
“Sir,” whatever respect and courage she has left is now summoned, “if you have taken him, tell me where he is and I will tend to him.” If I must be lost, if I must be undone, if I must go the way of my Lord into the qrave, then at least let me go with him, be lost with him, be undone beside him.
And Jesus said to her, “Mary.”
The risen Christ remembered her name. The One who had indeed gone ahead of her into death remembered! Not only was he not forgotten, but neither was she. Her name on his lips, his risen lips. “Mary.”
Death was no longer the great barrier.
Mary
Death as no longer the final resting place of all to be forgotten.
Mary.
Life had won.
Mary.
Death had been defeated.
Mary.
In the uttering of her name, the Risen One found his first apostle. His first messenger. Not only did he restore her to herself, but he commissioned her to proclaim the good news. Go and tell my brothers, he says, Mary, you are not lost; Mary you are found. Mary, your life is not wasted; Mary you have a job to do.
Mary, of course, is not the only name he remembers and presents before his father. When Peter’s last act was to deny his Lord, the Lord remembered his name too. When Stephen so identified with his Lord that he made Jesus’ dying prayers his own, the Lord remembered and stood to welcome his faithful witness.
And when we who have been united to him are about to be undone by the fear of death, The Risen One remembers our name. He remembers our name and he speaks it. And in speaking it, he refuses the last word that death hopes to write over our lives. In speaking it, he promises that life-his risen life given to us by his Spirit in bread and wine-that life will have the last word.
I am not forgotten. I am not forgotten. I am not forgotten. God knows my name. He knows my name.