HOMILY: "المسيح قام! (Al-Masīḥ qām!)"

Easter Sunday, April 5, 2026

John 20:1-18

1.

Mary Magdalene (Kelly Latimore)

Last Spring, as many of you know, I took a deep breath and sat down with a tattooist, in a little shop in Jerusalem. That would be a tattooist, as in an artist whose specialty is tattoos.  On human skin.  Just to be clear.  Sixty-three years down the road for me, and I’d never considered it or even been tempted.  Needles make me kind of queasy.  But something about last year, something about last year’s sabbatical, something about the moment and the place: I decided it was my time.

And there, in the Old City, I was directed to a little shop on a little lane, run by Palestinian brothers whose family have passed it along, from generation to generation for hundreds of years.  (Some of their designs, in fact, are four, five hundred years old.  Simple designs.  Like Christ on the cross.  Or the Holy Family.  And it’s stunning, really, to watch a young person in 2025 or 2026 sitting for a tattoo that’s been etched into human bodies for hundreds of years as a sign of devotion and hope.)

But instead, I chose just a couple of words that day, in Arabic, المسيح قام! (Al-Masīḥ qām!)—words that say, right to left, “Christ is risen.” المسيح قام! (Al-Masīḥ qām!).  And as the tattooist worked his magic on my forearm, and I turned away so as not to faint, I was struck by the idea that one day I would take this tattoo, and these very words, to my grave.  No turning back now.  المسيح قام! (Al-Masīḥ qām!)  “Christ is risen.”  And then I quickly thought of the amazing Palestinian Christians whose faith so inspires my own: friends like Zoughbi Zoughbi and his son Tareq at Wi’am in Bethlehem, and Omar Haramy and Laureen Abu Akleh at Sabeel in Jerusalem, and Father Issa Thalijeh who serves as parish priest at the Church of the Nativity on Manger Square.  I remembered each of them, their faces, their testimonies and stories.  And there in the shop, I invited them once again into my heart, and now into my own skin.  I remembered their kindness in the midst of so much suffering.  And most of all, their fierce and loving faith.  المسيح قام! (Al-Masīḥ qām!)…

2.

In our story—which is something like a tattoo, really, a kind of tattoo in words and images, that’s been passed along from generation to generation, for thousands of years—in our story Mary Magdalene is standing just outside the Jesus’ tomb, crying.  Crying.  Weeping.  Grieving.  She has watched her friend suffer.  She has watched masked agents of empire mock his faith and crucify him in public and even split and distribute his clothing for sport.  And now, early on the first day of the week, arriving early to avoid making even more trouble, she finds that even this—even this simple act of remembrance—is forbidden.  

She had run fast—you’ll remember—she had run fast to find friends, to share this madness with them, to bear this indignity somehow, together.  But they’ve now run for cover.  And Mary Magdalene stands alone.  Outside the tomb.  Weeping.  For one whose love had freed in her a long-forgotten sense of wonder and joy.  Weeping.  For one whose teaching had offered her a pathway to service and leadership in the movement.  Weeping.  For a friend whose hands had washed her feet, whose arms had lifted her from despair, whose fingers had blessed bread and broken bread and turned simple meals into holy feasts.  

Friends, there is no Easter apart from this ‘kairos’ moment.  Mary’s weeping in the garden.  There is no awakening to joy, no reconciliation in love, no holy hallelujah, apart from this moment.  “Grief,” Walter Brueggemann writes, “is an element of aliveness, and the answer to the denial the world/market demands of us.  Grief,” he writes, “is an index of our humanity.  It is proof of the presence of our relatedness to each other.”

Mary Magdalene’s broken heart is the first sign, then, the first salty sign of Jesus’ resurrection, and hers and ours as well.  It’s an index of our humanity.  Proof of the presence of our relatedness, our connection, our solidarity with one we continue to love gratefully, and powerfully, and yes, fiercely.  Grief is, after all, an element of aliveness.  I felt that aliveness—and Mary’s broken heart—on campus last month with students crying out for gun control and sanity in their dormitories and lecture halls.  I felt it in a hospital just last week where a doctor simply and bravely broke down, just broke down, after losing a patient.  And I felt it again and again in Palestine last Spring—where old women shook their fingers in the faces of armed Israeli soldiers.  And young poets in dark cafes breathed fire and hope, invoking a future beyond genocide and apartheid and occupation.

  

Sometimes—as you know—our grief is about loss; it’s about relationships we’ve treasured and turned over to mystery and eternity.  And it comes in waves, surging without notice.  Words then are hard to come by, but the pain is real; it’s physical, even overwhelming.  

Sometimes our grief is about transition, and the turning from one life to another, from old dreams to new dreams, even from one worldview to another.  Transitions can be remarkably beautiful and brutally hard; they can be sacred and important and terribly painful.  And there’s grief in all of that.  Of course, there is.  

And sometimes, sometimes our grief is about disappointment, or even anger and rage, for empires that dehumanize our neighbors, and tyrants who demoralize our democracy, and zealots who turn to war without ever counting the cost, and mask their thoughtlessness in the language of faith.

So Mary Magdalene, indeed, she’s one of us.  Standing outside the ransacked tomb, crying.  Traumatized by violence in the streets.  Her world, her life, her community divided and diminished all over again.  She too struggles to find words for prayer.  She too wonders if faith will ever make sense again.  She too suspects that all his talk of love, all his musing on mercy, was just fantasy, illusion, even hope betrayed.  She’s one of us.

And then, through her tears, through the salty rivers in her swollen eyes, Mary sees a gardener.  At least, she thinks so.  A gardener.  And this is her ‘kairos’ moment.  This is where Easter splits open the hard rock of despair and reveals light and hope and new worlds of possibility.  Because the gardener knows her name.  It turns out that the gardener knows her name.  And now he speaks her name.  The gardener is Jesus, who was crucified by empire, who was mocked by soldiers, who was betrayed by friends: Jesus who says now: “Mary.”  Which is to say, “I know you.”  Which is to say, “Love lives again.”  المسيح قام! (Al-Masīḥ qām!)…Christ is risen.

EASTER SUNDAY: "Christ Rising"

IN THE MEMPHIS SKY: "Pride"

WITNESS: "Moral/Immoral Economy"

HOMILY: "This Week Will Change Us"

Sunday, March 29, 2026

Luke 19 (Palm Sunday)

Brennan Whaley singing Spencer LaJoye's "Plowshare Prayer"

1.

Brennan, it seems you and I have been talking about that song and your singing it here for months. And I for one am so glad that it worked out this way: that you sing it for the church, and to the church today, on Palm Sunday. Because it strikes me, it really strikes me, that your particular interpretation of that Plowshare Prayer is as close as we’re ever going to get to the “Hosannas” of that first Palm Sunday. You have—in such a beautiful way—liberated those first “Hosannas” from the dusty pages of scripture, and given them to us fresh.

What you’ve given us, Brennan, is something like the song of a people shattered by cruelty, but believing again in the generosity of God; a people exhausted by war, but now greeting this Prince of Peace with palms and praise. And not cheap praise: but purposeful praise, the kind of praise that reorders our footsteps and reimagines the future. What you’ve given us, Brennan, is something like the cry of a crowd, encouraged to dream again, newly awakened by grace, and welcoming their Beloved and his nonviolent, open and affirming, apartheid-free rebellion.

So I wonder, then, if we might take--all of us--just a piece of that prayer and recite it together. As our own Palm Sunday “Hosanna!”  Brennan’s offered it as a gift to us, even as our gospel this morning. So let’s make it our own. And let’s do it now according to the simple call and response tradition. You don’t even need your bulletins. In fact, go ahead and put them down. I’ll read a line, and you’ll repeat it. Just a piece of this remarkable, tender, Christ-like prayer. A crowd, newly awakened by grace, encouraged to dream again.

Amen on behalf of the last and the least
On behalf of the anxious, depressed and unseen
Amen for the workers, the hungry, the houseless
Amen for the lonely and recently spouseless

Amen for the queers and their closeted peers
Amen for the bullied who hold in their tears
Amen for the mothers of little Black sons
Amen for the kids who grow up scared of guns

Amen for the addicts, ashamed and hungover
Amen for the calloused, the wizened, the sober
Amen for the ones who want life to be over
Amen for the leaders who lose their composure

And amen for the parents who just lost their baby
Amen for the chronically ill and disabled
Amen for the children down at the border
Amen for the victims of our law and order

2.

In many gospel accounts, the disciples greet Jesus with cries of “Hosanna!” as he reaches the Mount of Olives on the gimpy donkey and looks across the Kidron Valley to Jerusalem itself. “Hosanna!” “Hosanna!” Or, “Save us!” Or, “Deliver us!” “Hosanna!”

And their cries vocalize their ancestors’ passion for liberation, the great Hebrew yearning for freedom from Pharaoh’s oppression and empire’s violence. From despair itself. It seems clear that the Festival of Passover is at hand and their every prayer, every hope, every liturgy is tuned now to God’s promise of deliverance. “Hosanna!”

"A Brave & Quiet Heart" (J. MacKenzie)

What this plowshare prayer offers, then, is a fresh take, even a revolutionary take, on deliverance and liberation. What it means for you and me to claim the freedom Jesus offers in his teaching and in his life and (yes) in his sacrifice. To claim it for ourselves, and for one another. No longer need we be shackled to images of God that bully some of us without mercy and render others unimportant or unseen. No longer need we be suffocated by fears—stoked by 21st century Pharaohs, by the way—fears of people who look different or pray different or talk different or dream different dreams. No longer need we be tethered to violence and war as the true means of safety and security.

“I was a stranger,” Jesus says, “and you cherished my company.” “I was broken and wounded,” Jesus says, “and you made a place for me.” “I was at the end of my rope,” Jesus says, “and you pulled me close.” “I was forsaken by family,” Jesus says, “and you became my family.” Free from fear.  Free from violence.  Free from cruelty.  

“Hosanna,” we cry. “Bring it on,” we cry. “Save us!”

What’s so stunning about Jesus’ ministry—then and now—is that Jesus builds a movement beyond lazy tolerance and simple acceptance. He’s about so much more than that. Jesus builds a community that doesn’t simply tolerate “the anxious, depressed and unseen,” but calls out their gifts (OK, our gifts) as the holy sacraments of God’s transforming grace. The holy sacraments of God’s transforming grace.

"Gethsemane"

This is an unmistakable theme in scripture itself. There is no kin-dom, no gospel, no movement without them—without the “hungry, the houseless, the recently spouseless”; without the “addicts, ashamed and hungover”; without the “calloused, the wizened, the sober”; without the “ones who want life to be over.” There is no kin-dom, no gospel, no movement without them. Pete Hegseth may think that human weakness is abhorrent and disastrous. He may think Christianity’s all about holy war and religious conquest and righteous whiteness. But Jesus confronts these myths over and over and over again. Turning the tables on pride and contempt. Touching the “untouchable” and blessing their many gifts. Refusing to take up a weapon. Any weapon. Ever.

The world will be transformed, Jesus insists; our communities will be healed, even redeemed, not by a phalanx of warriors, not by battlefield strategists and high-tech wizards blowing things up, but by the loving intentions of wounded human beings, by the prayerful compassion of broken-hearted brothers and sisters. And, if this sounds naive and unreasonable, he says, then so be it. The world will be transformed by forgiven people extending forgiveness to one another. By liberated communities insisting on liberation for all.

And isn’t that the message, Brennan, isn't that the promise of this plowshare prayer? That our frailty, our fragility, our vulnerability is itself an invitation to radical hope, to costly solidarity, to lovingkindness and mercy?  Blessed are the poor in spirit.

3.

Meeting Jesus on the Mount of OIives means meeting Jesus in his own intense vulnerability. Meeting Jesus on the Mount of Olives means meeting Jesus as he contemplates his own mortality and the consequences of costly solidarity in an empire where diversity, equity and inclusion are dirty words. And punishable. And meeting Jesus as he crosses the Kidron Valley means breaking bread with his sketchy friends and bearing witness, up close, as he rejects violence but bears its terrible cost.

This week, this Holy Week, will change us. It has to. Though we’ve walked this path three dozen times before, it will change us. Not because we’re deficient in some essential way. And not because we’re wretched and unworthy of love and spirit. Because this is the kind of blasphemy cooked up by theological bullies who’d rather rant than reconcile, who’d rather hound than heal. Who imagine Christianity as a war to defeat our many enemies and win back the human soul.

BECAUSE MUSIC: "Wondering Where the Lions Are"

NO KINGS: "March 28, 2026"

Portsmouth, NH

 

A MORAL PLEDGE: "Dear Governor Ayotte"

A Moral Pledge for a Fair Economy: 

Fund The People, Not War and the Rich

We, the undersigned faith leaders of New Hampshire, come together in this moment of moral crisis to speak a simple truth: our economy is out of balance, and it is hurting our people.

Right now, our nation is spending nearly $1 billion a day on war—over $20 billion so far, with $200 billion more requested—while here at home, families are struggling to afford health care, housing, child care, and energy. At the same time, the NH House of Representatives recently passed another corporate tax cut that will cost Granite Staters $26 million every year, shifting the burden onto working people who are already stretched thin.

This makes it clear that when it comes to funding our economy, it is not a question of resources. It is a question of values.

Our faith traditions call us to care for the poor, lift up the vulnerable, and build communities where everyone can live with dignity. Yet there is always money for war and tax breaks for the rich, and never enough for the people who need it most. This is a moral failure. Budgets are moral documents, and what we fund reveals who we value. We cannot stay silent while the rules are rigged to reward wealth and leave working families to carry the cost.

We respectfully call on you, Governor Ayotte and State Senators, to take a clear and public stand in this moment. We ask that you oppose this war and any additional war funding that diverts vital resources away from the people of New Hampshire. We also ask that you reject HB 155 and any policy that gives further tax breaks to wealthy corporations while working families struggle to afford basic necessities.

As Governor and State Senators, you have a responsibility to protect the well-being of all Granite Staters, especially those most at risk of being left behind. This is a moral decision. A just society is judged by how it treats those in need, not by the profits of corporations or the wealth of the powerful.

We urge you to stand with the people of New Hampshire and choose a path that invests in health care, housing, child care, and the dignity of every person.

Granite State Organizing Project

Signed by the Rev. Dave Grishaw-Jones 3/28/26

FAITH & THE COMMON GOOD: "Diversity Means Creativity"

ORGANIZE: "Apartheid Free"

Major news out of Washington State: Washington is the first U.S. state to have divested from Israeli genocide and apartheid, after the State's Treasurer sold its Caterpillar bonds, worth over $53 million. Caterpillar’s bulldozers have been used extensively during the Gaza genocide (and for decades) to destroy Palestinian lives, homes, and infrastructure.

Thank the Cut Ties to Apartheid coalition out of Washington State!