Resurrection

Today, no talk of sin, no lengthy screeds about injustice. Today is Easter, a day to contemplate and anticipate resurrection.

Well, how about less talk of sin and injustice. It would be difficult to fully contemplate and anticipate resurrection without considering sin and injustice, for destruction is the context for resurrection.

One of the key expository histories in Christianity is the life, ministry, capture, torture, death, descent into hell, and subsequent resurrection of Jesus Christ. Though sectarian arguing over the details and meanings and what if's and maybe's have divided Christians for centuries, the story continues to resonate, to be told year after year.

Over those years, and from sect to sect, Christ's descent into hell has varied in significance and meaning, ranging from a hastely chanted phrase in a statement of faith, to a rich story of freeing the patriarchs from the outermost realms of hell.

Recently, I read post to post all the way through a long, and at times tedious, argument about the factuality of Christ's resurrection, triggered by an essay about the value of the event as metaphor. Over and over again, people did their best to frame it as an either/or scenario. Either the resurrection is factual, or it is metaphorical.

As if something cannot be both at once.

In this life, despite what any theologian or layperson or clergy or scientist declares, we humans cannot actual prove beyond even a reasonable doubt, that the resurrection was or was not factual. That would require time-travel. The best we can do is opine based on what we know and believe.

Understandably, that will create a wide variety of opinions.

All sides really ends up relying on faith, and to me, that is as it should be.

But with factuality unprovable, unfalsifiable, untestable on this side of the grave, there is an aspect of the resurrection story that we can experience.

The metaphorical.

People can create hell in life for themselves. Ask anyone who has racked up $50,000 or more in credit card debt while trying to making ends meet on middle-class salary in a consumerist society. Ask anyone who made bad decision after bad decision after bad decision.

People can stumble into hell in life, much as Dante got lost in the dark woods. Ask anyone with an addiction.

The ebb and flow of life, good ol' entropy, blast it, can certainly create hell in life. Just ask anyone living with chronic diseases, cancer, AIDS, Lyme disease, and so on. Ask anyone who lost their home and employment to Katrina.

And people are extremely good at making hell in life for others. My last three posts have touched on the hell in life that some people have inflicted on other people, from instruments of torture, to kids being threatened at gunpoint by other kids at school.

Of the many kinds of hell in life, that is the most preventable, and thus, to me, the most horrible. We cannot control plate tectonics to prevent tsunami and earthquakes. We cannot pre-cure disease before they strike and destroy. But we can each of us chose whether or not we oppress and destroy others.

Sadly, no, horrifyingly, there are people today who are deliberately creating hell in life for others to endure. And there are people who are, like Christ is said to have done, passing through hell in life, or who have passed through hell in life, on their way to a resurrection in life.


I set out to find you examples of resurrections in this life, on this side of the undiscovered country. I've heard many over the years, but I didn't want to tell other people's stories for them. I found this first:

"On December 17, 1997, when our son Adam told us he was gay, our world was turned upside down. We were absolutely devastated. We desperately needed someone to comfort us, to assure us that our son, our family would be okay. But we were too embarrassed and scared to admit this secret to anyone, to reach out for comfort."

How much that sounds like the reaction of someone grieving a deceased loved one. I mean no criticism there, not in the slightest. In a very real sense, when a child comes out to his/her parents, one understanding of that child dies, and a new one, hopefully, is reborn.

Resurrected.

I strongly encourage you to read the entire account of Jeff and Patti's son, Adam. Yes, it may wring you from ego to id, but it has an Easter of its own. What follows are some particular passages that wrung me.

"His popularity pretty much ended by the fourth grade when sports became important in the social fabric of the school. Because Adam wanted no part of sports, he hadn't cultivated relationships with other boys, which come naturally by being part of a team. If he were invited to parties, he now started to show signs of being ill at ease and not being included with the other boys. He just didn't seem to fit in because they always gravitated toward sports related activities. Seeing our son being treated as a social misfit was a painful thing to watch. "

"At the local fall fair, Adam was to meet a girl who was interested in him. She was the daughter of the minister of a very large Baptist church. - - - Anyway, without much fanfare, the relationship was over with the Royal family's Princess. - - -Then came the unsettling part. For some unknown reason, she started telling her friends that Adam was gay. Here is a 12 year old girl, clueless about homosexuality, spreading a rumor. This was years before Adam came to grips with his own sexuality so she was just being malicious. She enlisted all those in her sphere of influence, especially those in her youth group at church, to help make Adam's life a living hell. She was very successful."

"Through all of this public pain and humiliation, Adam was constantly wounded and battered but he was never broken. I wonder how many of his classmates could go through that endurance test and come through it like Adam did.
Middle school was a living hell for all of us and we couldn't wait for it to be over. Our hope was that high school would provide a clean start with the students becoming more mature and less cruel. We must have been the most naive parents in the world."

"I started noticing a pulling away from us. He seemed to not be as open as he had in the past about the events of the day. In his eyes I could see a sadness that was bothersome to me. The eyes have always been a window to the soul for me. Especially, in my children. I kept asking him what was wrong. He would say everything was fine. I knew better. I wanted to believe that it was just normal teenage growing up, but I knew deep inside, there was more.
Then, on December 17, 1997, Adam told us he was gay. We don't want to relive those days ever again. They were the most desperate and darkest days I have yet to live. It was so hard to go on every day at work pretending to be okay when what I believed to be the truth about my son was now upside down."

It may sound overly-dramatic to anyone heterosexual, who hasn't been taken into the confidence of a GLBTQ person who they loved and who trusted them, but

realizing that you are not heterosexual, in this world that for all intents and purposes worships heterosexuality, is very much like dying. That's not just my experience, it is something that has been shared with me by gays and lesbians and transgendered people from every walk of life a person can meet in the U.S.

The life you were supposed to have, according to church and school and literature and movies and comics and cartoons and art and everything else - is dead.

In its place is a hell in life - no, not arguing Garland vs. Streisand. Something much, much worse.

A hell made of hate speech on tv, on the internet, in the pulpit, in the newspaper, in paperbacks and movies. A hell where the demons are your classmates, and Cerberus has the face of a certain preacher from Topeka Kansas. A hell where, if you survive to adulthood, and find someone to love an "abomination" like you, you still will not be able to protect your life with that person, you'll always be at best a second class citizen, the scapegoat of every disreputable politician with nothing meaningful to contribute to humanity but his or her own lust for authority over others.

And trust me, those of you readers who haven't walked this particular path - you know. Every remark, every condemnation, every insult - you know it is about you.

Hell in life.

We journey through, most of us. Not all of us get out of it alive, and few make the journey unscathed, unscarred. It helps to have a Virgil beside you, as Dante did. I had one, a friend who save my life in more ways that I could ever explain. Adam had one as well:

"We hoped Danielle could be the one to bring Adam out of what we thought was his sexual confusion. She was not. Instead of being the girl to bring him out of this confused state, she became the only person in whom he could confide.
Danielle was the only person he "came out" to for most of his high school years. She kept this secret for Adam and it gave him the freedom to have someone to talk to about his feelings. She also helped him understand our feelings. Her family knew too and that gave Adam a place of refuge to go to, when there was too much stress and awkwardness at home. Even though our love never wavered for Adam, we were struggling to understand him. That often made our home a place that was uncomfortable and unfamiliar to all of us. "

This next passage is something that should never, ever have needed to be said, not once, and yet, is true an uncountable number of times a day:

"But I also knew that I had to help Adam hold on to that love in his heart because he will not be reminded of God's love from most people."

I'm not cruel, I'm not going to hold back the Easter in this story, making you wait till I'm done meditating here to read it for yourself.

"Are you wondering, "Where is God's perfection in a child who is gay?" I believe that the perfection that God seeks is in the way people react to this child. "

And finally, having accepted that the tomb is indeed empty, that the death of a 'supposed to be' need have no sting:

"We were allowed to see that our love was purest when we released Adam to be who he was meant to be. Through our son, we were awakened to the fact that a change must take place in our hearts if we were to be made whole. For wholeness would come from our acceptance of Adam, not our judgment. "



There are resurrections possible for us in this life, metaphorical journeys through some kind of death to a resurection and a new life. There are accounts of very bigotted people who have been resurrected from the hell in life they made for themselves hating Jews, or people of color, or women, or gays and lesbians. There are accounts of people who have been resurrected from material oppression, and political oppression, and societal oppression. There are gay Christians.

Here is another account of a resurrection.

"Living without fear of losing the grace of God gives me great freedom to enter into debate on the profound moral issues of our time, recognizing that it’s the on-going conversation that’s most important. It even gives me the freedom to learn, to develop, and to change my mind as my faith grows."

The factuality of Christ's resurrection is untestable, it is a matter of faith. Seen as factual through the lens of faith, it is a powerful and healing promise. Seen as metaphor as well, it is a powerful and healing roadmap for our lives.

Happy Easter.