Resurrection - Shaken Not Stirred

A person of Christian persuasion walks into a bar, to find God as the bartender. After perusing the martini menu, the person asks God what God recommends.  God replies: a Resurrection – shaken not stirred.

This is the 7th week of Easter, an Easter where we have walked with the disciples in their grief, and lived through a season of grief ourselves. If you were to describe this season – would you say we have been stirred or shaken?

The disciples were certainly shaken, first by Jesus’ death, followed by a strange 40 days:
After being laid in the tomb the women come to anoint the body and it is gone, the tomb is found empty; we hear that Jesus walks with followers along the road to Emmaus (unrecognized), then recognized in the breaking of bread, at which point Jesus vanishes; only to appear behind closed doors and just as quickly disappear.  There is breakfast on the beach with Jesus. And finally Jesus is with them on the Mount of Olives, and then poof, gone into the heavens.
All of this shakes their understanding of death and life and spirit and life-after; of belief, of what is possible. They are shaken with questions never before contemplated and implications of resurrection to faith and life and next steps.

Beyond resurrection Jesus has turned everything upside down:
Their idea of kingdom – shaken
Their hopes and dreams of living as an unoccupied people – shaken
Their idea of power - shaken
Their understanding of God’s relationship with the world – shaken
Their meaning and purpose of life – shaken

Until recently the Canadian church -and the wider community- had settled into a life of being comfortably stirred - with just enough action, social change, and loving our neighbour to feel that we had furthered the kingdom in some way. We were resurrection followers in as much as we retold resurrection stories and talked of Jesus as our friend.
Resurrection for us was a pale representation of experiences and stories passed down through the generations from the Apostles. Power, glory, healing, passion, community living/commonwealth all shadows of the resurrection in the hands of the Apostles.
But now, we have been shaken – everything has been upended. We have been forced to celebrate Easter – experience resurrection- in a season of grief.

Lutheran pastor and author Walter Wangerin wrote a book called, “Mourning into Dancing.” In it he uses story to walk with people through grief. Along the journey he declares that one of the stages of grief is resurrection. The assertion is that resurrection is part of grief – grows in grief. Resurrection is not a leaving behind of what was, where everything is recreated new and shiny, and all is good and normal and happy.
Resurrection is a lingering residue of memories, sorrow, endings, suffering, pain. Resurrection is not a rebound from ashes, mires, laments, tears, and losses, rather; robust resurrection embodies the laments and tears and losses, that produce the change that has been effected in our lives because of grief.
Embodying grief is embracing being shaken not stirred; a resurrection with relevance.

American theologian, William Willimon, in commentary on Acts wrote: “Luke’s ‘history’ is the story of that new reality which has turned the world upside down, relativized all existing relationships, and enabled believers to live as people ‘between the times’ --- between the end of an old age held by the powers of death and evil and a new age where the future is still to be fully realized, still open-ended to the movements of the Spirit.” 

I see the present church in a space, not so unlike that of the accounts of the early church.
A new reality has been thrust upon us – we have been shaken- and come to find out we have been
adaptable, agile, quickly responsive, creatively innovate, and open to new possibilities. As Willimon said we are ‘between times’... “the future is still to be fully realized, still open-ended to the movements of the Spirit.”

We have spent 7 weeks moving in new ways;  my favourite being a dancing offering plate and Tim’s dancing at the end of live-stream worship on Facebook.  Lots of people have sent notes hoping that the dancing continues when we start meeting face-to-face.
In Wangerin’s book that I mentioned earlier, he ends with a story of a woman named Gloria who tells him to end his book with dancing. Grief blossomed resurrection for her, when she remembered  that the one she mourned, danced; in dancing his face lit up, in dancing he laughed, in dancing he drew close to the people he loved and drew in those who were strangers. Dancing changed him from the inside out --- whether moving to laments, the blues, a sad-sad-song, or to jives, two-steps, and waltzes.  When she took to dancing her grief, she no longer felt alone, and her heart was lifted, and she felt joy.
Maybe we have fallen in love with Tim’s dancing because it is a visual expression of the joy we hope for, joy we feel in the moment, a way to feel the grief -- and turn our mourning into dancing. In other words, dancing has been an experience of resurrection --- a moment full of hope, promise, possibility, joy.

This past week I had a number of days where I went for multiple walks or runs. I was unsettled, antsy, bored-but-not-really, had lots of energy and was overtired at the same time. My body had finally embodied the cumulative grief of the past weeks. One friend on Facebook called this embodiment of grief the ‘Coronacoaster,’ the ups and downs, the tears, the smiles, the mix up of not knowing how one feels. The good news is that through the embodiment of grief, the rollercoaster slows down, resurrection blossoms.

You are all in the comfort of your own homes. I am going to ask you to try something. I would like you to stand and put your one arm around the imaginary waist of a dancing partner, and your other hand out to the side to hold your imaginary partner’s hand. You are in a waltzing position. There is music playing in your head and you are leading. Now imagine that your waltzing partner is grief. Now take a minute and go for a waltz around the room you are in.
.....
 Do you feel shaken? Shaken, where grief feels like resurrection is a possibility? Grief that is accompanied with a smile or a giggle or joy? Shaken where mourning has lifted, dissipated to make room for the movement of the Spirit?

Easter is seven weeks of hearing stories of resurrection – experiences that shook the core of the disciples’ beliefs, faith, lives, actions, understandings, purpose, ideals, values, and so on. Easter is being confronted with the unbelievable and the unproveable.  Easter is spending days praying together, grieving, and opening up to be ready for what embodying grief will resurrect.
With each step of each new day resurrection is shaking perceptions and turning mourning into dancing.  

We are a week from Pentecost -the coming of the Holy Spirit- who waltzes in on wind, and foxtrots through flames, and toe-taps a rapture of tongues. The Apostles’ feet will dance out of ‘between times’ and in the glory of resurrection that comes through profound grief – change the world.

This week put on your dancing shoes. Embody grief by dancing how you feel, and come ready next Sunday to have the Holy Spirit as your dancing partner. Be forewarned the bartender is serving only one kind of drink  ........  You will be shaken not stirred.