“Color My World”
We are an Easter people. We live on the after side of the resurrection. It colors our understanding of God, of our faith, and of the world. The resurrection colors our perception of life.
Colors our perception. . . Reading and praying through the last 3 chapters of Mark this week, I was reminded of a movie I first saw about 15 years ago—titled “Pleasantville.” Most of the movie is set in a small town in the 1950s. Existing in a kind of TV Land, the town and its inhabitants are more like the characters and settings from “Father Knows Best” and “Leave it to Beaver” rather than real people and places. This part of the movie is filmed in black and white. But as the townspeople experience passion— passion for learning, passion for justice, passion for art, passion in relationships—as the townspeople experience passion, color begins to break in to the movie in bits and pieces—first in the petals of a rose, next in blossoms on a bush, and finally in certain people. They have flesh-colored skin as opposed to shades of gray that you see in black and white movies. Watching the movie, I am caught up in the beauty of the colors beginning to fill the scenes. But my reaction is not shared by the townspeople of Pleasantville. Seeing color for the 1st time, watching it pop out here and there—and not knowing what it is, why it is appearing, or where it is coming from, they react with fear. Some overcome their fear of this unexpected, new phenomena and tentatively embrace the passion that has unleashed this color. But others do not. Lashing out at the unknown, they try to silence it, to destroy it.
Remembering that movie, I began to frame my own mental movie of the events from Good Friday to that 1st Easter/ Resurrection Sunday. Like the cinematographers of “Pleasantville,” I would begin my film in black and white—not due to a lack of passion. For, Jesus is passionate when he speaks from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.”[1] The small group of faithful women disciples are passionate, too. Standing at a distance, standing in solidarity with their beloved rabbi, these women’s hearts are breaking. I would begin my film in black and white because watching an ashen-faced Jesus dying on the cross and seeing these women shivering in a cold, gray rain reflects the overwhelming despair on that 1st Good Friday. At the end of the day, shades of gray paint the pictures of his dead body removed from the cross, quickly wrapped in a linen cloth, and placed in a sealed tomb. A final black screen proclaims death’s victory over life, the victory of evil over good, the victory of nothingness over purpose.
Very early on the first day of the week opens the next scene. In the gray dawn we see 3 of the women from Good Friday, dressed in gray, walking along a dusty gray road. They come to complete a funeral.[2] Looking ahead, they can barely see the rocky gray crevice where the tomb is. Our camera moves from beside them to in front of them and we, the audience, see what they do not see behind them. The early morning sky is not completely gray, for there are splashes of muted blues and purples in the sky above where the sun is beginning to peek over the horizon. After all, we, the audience, are an Easter people. We live on the after side of the resurrection. We already know something they do not yet know.
The women arrive at the tomb. Continuing to function in the old world, “a world of predictable cause and effect [where] stones placed over tombs on Friday will [still] be there on Sunday,”[3] these women are momentarily taken aback. As they enter the dark tomb, they are surprised again, this time by the contrast between the bright white clothes of the strange young man sitting there and the dark walls of the tomb. But, wait a minute—the tomb walls are not black or even charcoal-colored; they are indigo. Do not be afraid, says the young man. You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified one. He has been raised. He is not here. Color is breaking out here and there in the scene. Rays of light from the rising sun at their backs filter into the tomb and light it with muted purples and blues, muted fuschias and pinks—colors of the dawn that we had seen breaking out behind them as the women had approached the tomb.
You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified one. Jesus, the one who by healing, overpowered illness; the one who by feeding, overpowered hunger; the one who by restoring, overpowered separation; Jesus the powerful one is now Jesus, the crucified one. He has taken on suffering with us and for us. He has been raised. He is not here. Jesus, the crucified one is now Jesus the ultimate victor. The women are afraid because everything has been turned upside down.
Go, tell his disciples that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you. And now the tomb is bursting with light and color. The women had come to the tomb to complete a funeral, not to celebrate a resurrection.[4] They are overcome by the unexpected. Fleeing from the tomb, they run out into the bright yellow light of the sun shining down on the tan-colored sandy paths winding through leafy green foliage of the garden. It is not only a new day, but a new world into which they flee.
Of course they are afraid. If something as inevitable as death is no longer certain, then “the world has changed dramatically ... If stones are rolled away without human effort, if Jesus really is raised from the dead, what other human assumptions about”[5] power and weakness, about wisdom and folly, will also prove to be false? “If the very power of death has been overcome, what other kinds of power and domination will [also] be overthrown? What other kinds of disturbances will God work in the world and in our lives?”[6] “The women are frightened because they grasp the full implications of Jesus’ resurrection.[7]
And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. The women may have said nothing to anyone—at first. They were, after all, overcome by the unexpected. But, they ultimately did share the good news—Christ is alive! He goes before us to Galilee. There we will see him . . . just as he said. The women did share the good news. How else would we have Mark’s account here, or Matthew’s, Luke’s or John’s? What else would explain that this story has been told for over 2000 years? What else would explain how we have heard this story before? The women did share the good news.
Jesus is going ahead of you “Jesus is loose in the world . . . he goes ahead of us into the future to meet us there and claim us, not on our own terms, but on his.”[8] Jesus is loose in the world, breaking into our lives here and there, like the color breaking into the movie in bits and pieces. “There is no escaping him, no containing him, no forgetting him. Business as usual is no longer safe because Jesus goes ahead of us to call us to discipleship again and again.”[9]
We are an Easter people. We live on the after side of the resurrection. We have heard the story before; we have told it before; and we will proclaim it again. “Christ’s resurrection is not a onetime event in the past . . . primarily about”[10] an empty tomb. Instead, it is about the living Christ who continues to encounter us in the world. It is about the living Christ who continues to call us to discipleship. It is about the living Christ whose good news we continue to proclaim.[11] Christ is risen! He is risen indeed. Alleluia! Amen.
[1] Mark 15: 34 NRSV
[2] M. Eugene Boring & Fred B. Craddock. The People’s New Testament Commentary. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004. p. 171.
[3] Roger E. Van Harn. The Lectionary Commentary: Theological Exegesis for Sunday’s Texts—The Third Readings, the Gospels. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1965?. p. 283
[4] M. Eugene Boring & Fred B. Craddock. The People’s New Testament Commentary. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004. p. 171
[5] Van Harn, 284.
[6] Van Harn, 284.
[8] Van Harn, 284.
[9] Van Harn, 284
[10] Van Harn, 284.
[11] Van Harn, 284.
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