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Since it is spring, I am again considering if it is time to and how to make friends with the local Crow population. Crows are clever and bring you things if you treat them well and let you pet them. And I want a crow friend. Of course, it does come with concerns because crows are clever, use tools, and learn faces. And what if after attracting some crows close to this building, because here is where I would be making friends with them, what if I do something to upset them or you do something to upset them? Crows learn faces. And when they’re upset, they don’t just avoid the faces that are now their enemies. They teach their whole murder the faces to be upset with and then they scream at you or possibly dive bomb you in a Hitchcockian kind of way. The average lifespan of the American crow is 7 to 8 years with some in the wild or in captivity can live between 15 and 30. Scientists who study and work with crows have found they can hold grudges for 17 years, which says to me a crow can hold a grudge for the rest of its life and the life of the murder, having taught younger crows to watch out and respond to certain faces. In the real world, folks have found the only way to escape the harassment of the local crows is to move.
When scientists introduced the smell of cherries to the mice which they loved and immediately follow it with a mild electric shock, these mice became fearful of the smell of cherries. They had litters of mice who were never given the experience of cherry smells by the scientists, then those mice had pups of their own. Then that third generation of mice would smell of cherries, more sensitive and fearful, even without given a shock. Something about the experience of the shock changed the very the mice two generations later.
So psychologists wondered if we carry in our beings, our bodies, memories and they think we do, particularly traumatic ones. These change the makeup of our body that it lives in our genes in a way that the trauma, or our response to trauma can be passed down to generations after us.
Memory is amazing. And there is still so much that we don’t understand about how memory works and why and where. So much of it remains a mystery.
I like to think that there is room on that mystery for something more than trauma. That maybe positive memories can live in bones and bodies and be passed down to generations. Like when you return to the land of our foremothers and fathers, whether it’s across an ocean or across a border and you feel a kinship toward the land and the people, even as you have never met them. Those experiences seem hard to replicate in an experiment.
But it’s important, How do we remember? Why do we remember? What we remember.
And remembering and memory is central to our stories this week. In a moment of fear and uncertainty and anticipatory grief, Jesus invited the disciples to remember him whenever they would eat bread and drink wine–which was undoubtedly was every day. Every day they were to remember Jesus, remember the stories, remember the lessons.
Stop and remember.
On the cross, the criminal next to Jesus asked Jesus to remember him.
Don’t forget.
And here, at the tomb, the be-dazzled men told them women to remember what Jesus had said and taught them. To think deeply, remember all the pieces, and put them back together, that they might understand all those things Jesus had said before, those things the disciples never seemed to understand.
Our Gospel story, our reading for today from Luke, there has been a resurrection, they we don’t see it happen, just the aftermath of it. And we don’t see Jesus in this part of the story we read, not in the tomb, not in the garden, not mysteriously showing back up in the tomb alive after the women spoke to the be-dazzled men, not when Peter gets there and looks in.
They were told to remember. Not just to think about it, but to think deeply. To take all the pieces, all the stories, all the thoughts, all the teachings, all the parables, all the healings, all the late nights and quiet times of prayer, and think deeply about all of it, in light of the empty tomb. There is an empty tomb.
It was an act of faith for the women to back to the room, to tell the story, to start to tell the story in light of all that Jesus had said to these men who were going to call it all women’s nonsense.
It’s a little quieter of a Resurrection. It comes slowly to the big reveal of Jesus which we’ll get next week. But we pick the happiest of music, and wear our nicest clothes, and decorate in flowers and pastels, shout and celebrate, with confetti cannons and glitter,
Our ideas about resurrection are closer to “Go Tell it on the Mountain,” which, yes, is an Christmas song, but that we need to go DO something. We want to go, do, act, participate, and we get a little judgy of the disciples for not moving from the place where Jesus had left them. Get up! do something! Be useful!
We don’t know how much time passes in the most of Luke, it seem months or years maybe.
But the telling slows down toward the end. Then we make it to Jerusalem and those few days take chapters, and then Jesus arrest, trial, crucifixion. The women made spices and oils to anoint Jesus’ body and before they could finish, they stopped for Sabbath as was there custom tradition and covenant.
And it seems the story pauses there with them.
We don’t know what they did for the next day, the hours
I imagine that had slept the day before when Jesus was arrested. Maybe like just passed out and exhaustion and grief. Maybe they spent the next waking hours. Just staring and silence. Hopefully someone had prepared food for the Sabbath so that they could eat, but maybe they weren’t hungry. I always think the women didn’t sleep that night. The second night while they waited for the sun to rise. Well they are care, their grief, grief and their love for Jesus size. Had them waiting for that first glimmer of sunrise to Russia out the door with what they had made to reach Jesus to care for his body because that was all they had left of him. They rise early in the morning, they find the tomb empty, they find the bedazzled men who ask them why they are looking for the living among the dead. Because he died sirs! and here is where dead bodies go!
And the bedazzled men have a call, to remember. It wasn’t go to Galilee. It wasn’t go tell the disciples. They said remember. There was nothing more they needed to do or hear or know. They already had everything they needed. They already knew what they needed to know. Had seen what they needed to see. Heard what they needed to hear. Experienced with they needed to experience. The world was different now, in this moment, the world was more than it seemed to them when they got up that morning, and they needed to remember how they got there.
And in my head every one of them has one of those moments from a movie or scenes from the past or the previous 2 hours of the movie flash through their head really quickly until they get their memory back or until they realize they are in love or until they have made sense of all of the things they have seen and heard and learned of Jesus and from Jesus to this very moment.
And they did go and they did tell the disciples and the other followers and supporters of Jesus what they had seen and heard and remembered of all that they had seen and heard. And of Jesus promising to be resurrected on the third day and believing and understanding least enough to run back until the story. And the disciple’s response was the women be womening and speaking nonsense.
Now, if you were here last week, I reminded us that the world is not as it should be, not as it was created to be, and not as it will be, and that we need to do something in that reality, we need to make steps toward the kingdom of God that is peace.
And me? I want to hasten that world, that peace, I want to be a person of action. I had a conversation with a colleague I really respect who said she in conversations with a Madison congregation and the Wisconsin council of Churches for a faithful response, because while we support the protests that have been going on, we don’t always support the language, we don’t always support the methods and tactics. What is a response in based in our faith? And that question doesn’t seem urgent, because the world is not as it should be.
But the world is more than it seems. In the light of the resurrection, there is more than we can see in the darkness of our nights, our days, our times, whatever that darkness might be.
I think everything just flashing through their minds and totally understanding would be so cool. I don’t think that’s what happened. I think they started telling stories as they walked back of what they experienced and what they saw of their favorite stories that Jesus told. Mary telling stories of Jesus’ childhood and Mary telling stories of how Jesus set her free. And when the men called their words nonsense, they told stories, and remembered when he said he’d be back. Remember when he said he’d raise on the third day, remember when he knew he would suffer. They remembered and told their stories again.
How the church would survive going forward, and through schisms and reforms and lack of reforming and generations, empires and oppression and power, was to remember, to tell the stories, to fall back onto traditions, to worship together, to do the rituals.
That is how we remember, we who weren’t there. That is how we remember Christ, how we remember disciples who were like us when we don’t understand. How we remember women who were leaders in their community and trusted in their stories so much that they were not deterred when someone called it nonsense. It’s how we remember to be good neighbors, to celebrate with the rocks, to search for the lost, to widen the table, to feed, to heal, to free.
It’s how we know the world is not as it should be, but it is more than it seems. There is new life, there is hope, there is resurrection. And to see it, to really see it, sometimes we have to stop, notice, reflect, remember, share bread and stories, even look for eggs.
Sometimes breathing in the spirit, remembering what we already know, sharing with each other what each of us knows, calls us back into the life of Christ and lets us trust the story, trust each other, trust in God, and trust the next steps when it comes.
The world is not as it seems, there is so much more going on that has to do with life emerging, with even winning victory over death, and if we are too busy doing we might not see what is already there, we might not know what is already in us. remember. go back, go back, go back and remember. read and tell the stories, be in the traditions, worship together, do the rituals, gather at this table and around the font, and the pieces will come together, we will understand the world that God has already made and is revealing in the resurrection, and we can do that. That is a good step.