5th week of Easter
For our Easter reflections, Call To Action has asked a variety of people of the LBGTQ continuum to write about how they experience the Risen Christ in their lives. How do you experience the Risen Christ in yours?
What are images of Easter and Resurrection?
Empty tomb…Mary Magdalene’s determination…butterflies…lilies…a patient angel…confused disciples…breaking bread…displaced tombstone…disheveled linens…hope
Easter Sunday. A day of many questions and confusion within a hope-filled community. We don’t know exactly what happened that night and moment, we can’t begin to imagination what folks were experiencing and feeling. As we reflect over the snippets shared in the gospels, we immerse ourselves in the fear and excitement of the moment. People did not know what was going to happen next or what to do next or what to say next. After many doubts, they celebrated the resurrection not only of the Risen Christ but the resurrection that erupted within them as individuals and as an emerging tribe what will be known by their love. Though the future was not clear and would never be clear, they began to understand the transfiguration of the moment and the calling to live into wholeness, adopt and reclaim language, and ultimately to embody the resurrection of their beingness.
As a trans and queer person of color, as a person of faith, as a person who struggles with the challenges of living in a world enmeshed and divided by binaries, the story of resurrection speaks to me on many different levels as it is a story of transition. Like transition, the Resurrection is the beginning of a journey of living into wholeness, a journey of affirming who one always was, and a journey of discovering and/or rediscovering new aspects of who we are.
Transition is not about medical procedures, changing one’s name, adapting the ways a person dresses, or wrestling with the dynamics of what it means to pass or whether one wants to even pass. These are just some of the aspects of transition; however, transition is ultimately about living into you and that living means different things to different people, it is filled with fear and questions, determination and doubts, hope and wholeness, risks and affirmation.
We stare into the tombs of our pasts, we come to recognize that who we were, who we forced to be, who the world expected us to be is no longer there and perhaps was never there—who we are was hidden and it took the passion of struggle to reveal ourselves to the world with humble fierceness. The bandages that covered wounds of societal and even self-inflicted violence are discarded to reveal us in our fullness and in our dazzling light.
Resurrection is not about changing who one is, like transition, it is about affirming who one is, who we have always been, and who we will always be—as Jesus revealed (and re-revealed and re-re-revealed) to the emerging Christian tribe, we reveal who we are to our tribes, communities, families, and the world. The Resurrection did not change Jesus into something new but simply affirmed who he always was. Jesus came out of the closet what was the tomb. We as trans people do the same….we affirm who we are, some times privately and some times publically and some times both, coming out of the tombs of closets, binaries, and imposed expectations. After our journeys of crucifixion, mindful that each journey is different, we emerge as wholeful resilient selves and souls.
Much like the apostles who ran into an empty tomb, we wrestle with many questions and doubts and disbeliefs imposed on a body they expect to be there, the body they predetermined should be there, but instead encounter a body that sacred through its scars and a body that is whole despite several attempts by others to break it. But, also like the apostles, we too have our Mary Magdalenes in our lives who advocate with us sharing our voices, often not being acknowledged or listened to—accomplices who continue to rant with us as we share who we are to and with the world in our sacred and sassy mystery of us.
The Resurrection is a transition, a transition that will never end as living into our beingness is a never ending transition. One does not complete transition, one does not finish resurrecting—it is an ongoing adventure of struggle and resilience, of ups and downs, of tears of pain and tears of celebration. The Resurrection that is transition Biblically sparked and continues to spark the emergence and revealing of imperfectly fierce believers who affirm the good news of who they are in their messy wholeness.
Much like the Christian tribe grappling with the possibilities of the future, we don’t always know what will come next but we are ready to take on the world with our scars as living badges of honor and resilience. Emergence, affirmation, creation, resurrection, and transition are journeys of isness not wasness, journeys of both/andedness mixed with either/orness and neitherness. Who we are not only as trans people but simply and revolutionary as people is dynamic and messy, deconstructive and reconstructive, struggle filled and celebrationful, confusing and inspiring. Amen, blessed be.
