Further Reflection: Easter and Resurrection

Fourth in a Series

In worship on May 3, Carla asked a few church family members to share the meaning they were finding in Easter. She liked what was said enough to suggest we publish the reflections here. We’re posting one each day.

One rainy Wednesday a couple of years ago, I rode with my sister and my oldest son to Oxford, North Carolina. We wanted to see where my great great grandfather had lived and died, where he’d owned a fair amount of property, and where he had enslaved

more than 40 people. At the local library, we sifted through public records, looking for references to our ancestor - and the people he enslaved. Christopher had written a term paper on him the year before, and Kathy had found a classified ad for reading in

churches; it was written by a free man who decades earlier had been enslaved by my great great grandfather - and who was hoping to locate long-separated members of his family. 

I got back to Richmond that Wednesday in time for choir practice, which included our first session with the gospel singers Doug invited for the Richard Smallwood Good Friday. Doug asked one of our guests, Dale Heiskill, to have our closing prayer; it was powerful and beautiful - and that night I wondered how a Black person can pray for a white person.

So much about that Smallwood Good Friday service was remarkable to me, parts of it  a life-changer. The packed sanctuary. The shouts of affirmation, the applause and the swaying in the pews and arms raised to heaven - this was not GPPC’s Good Friday based on any of my decades here. And then -  and especially - the music - and the singers. The song “Calvary” helped me see - or at least it helped me stand very close to seeing - Jesus and his death through the lens of Black life in America. Roger Gench told us in Sunday school he was convinced God didn’t want Jesus to die. I know I’ve never wanted Jesus to die - and never been a fan of Good Friday. But that service and our guest singers - dressed in black with pearls - taught me about showing up when the worst things happen, when someone filled with goodness and humanity is nailed to a cross - or hung from a tree.

It’s been weeks since I wrote what I just read to you - and I’ve wondered how to bring it into the idea of Easter resurrection. We seem to inhabit a reality where Good Friday inequities are perpetual  - and the waiting time for Easter is much longer than 3 days. In my final minute I want to urge you to read an article on the Presbyterian Outlook website. It’s titled "Beyond Inclusion" by David Evans, and it begins with a James Baldwin query: “Do I really  want to be integrated into a burning house?” Evans writes

hopefully and practically of building an upper-case Beloved Community. He imagines “ours lawns [as] spaces of food sovereignty. [And our garages as] workshops where

neighbors could share tools and building plans. What if we [made] every porch a town hall and every house a community center? Can you imagine neighbors gathering for porch-sits, eating snacks and drinking refreshments, while they organized to transform their community? … What a wonderful world this could be!”

I think if a Black person can hold hope for this kind of resurrection - perhaps I can, too.

Alfred Walker