JAMIE'S COLUMN, APRIL 2007

Marilynne Robinson, a member of a United Church of Christ church in Iowa, is widely regarded as one of America's best contemporary writers. She has written essays and book reviews for Harper's, Paris Review, and The New York Times Book Review. This summer Ms. Robinson will be a part of the General Synod event called Synod in the City, which will be held on Saturday, June 23, in various parts of Hartford. The General Synod of the United Church of Christ will be meeting in Hartford June 22-26. Her most recent book, Gilead, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

I really enjoyed her first book, Housekeeping, better than Gilead, but they are both masterfully written. Toward the end of Housekeeping she writes a very moving passage about the importance of memory and how it may help us understand and experience the resurrection of Jesus.

Memory is the sense of loss, and loss pulls us after it. God Himself was pulled after us into the vortex we made when we fell, or so the story goes. And while He was on earth He mended families. He gave Lazarus back to his mother, and to the centurion he gave his daughter again. He even restored the severed ear of the soldier who came to arrest Him—a fact that allows us to hope the resurrection will reflect a considerable attention to detail. Yet this was no more than tinkering. Being man He felt the pull of death, and being God He must have wondered more than we do what it would be like. He is known to have walked upon water, but He was not born to drown. And when He did die it was sad—such a young man, so full of promise, and His mother wept and His friends could not believe the loss, and the story spread everywhere and the mourning would not be comforted, until He was so sharply lacked and so powerfully remember that his friends felt Him beside them as they walked along the road, and saw someone cooking fish on the shore and knew it to be Him, and sat down to supper with Him, all wounded as He was.

When I read those words for the first time I was stunned by them. I had never thought about the resurrection of Jesus like that before—as the inevitable consequence of so powerfully missing and remembering the force of Jesus' presence, power, and personality so much, that it's like he is still alive and standing with us today. I also like what Marilynne Robinson said about Jesus healing the soldier's severed ear. Remember the scene at Jesus' arrest in Gethsemane when Peter takes a sword and cut's off one of the high priest slaves? Jesus rebukes Peter and heals the wound (Luke 22:51) Ms. Robinson says that incident allows us to hope the resurrection will reflect a considerable attention to detail.

Memory she says is a powerful force. When we remember a person, or their words or teachings, or their presence over and over again in our mind and heart, they become a part of us. I believe that resurrection of Jesus is about much more than memory. But our remembering it, and celebrating it, and rejoicing in it every year at Easter brings the story to life in our lives. When we re-member the story of the resurrection of Jesus—when we put it all back together in our minds and memories—we become the living witness to the resurrection the world today.

I invite you to join us as we remember--piece the story of Jesus' final days back together again--in the services of worship in our church during Holy Week. And join us as well for the celebration of His glorious resurrection on Easter morning!

In God's peace,

Jamie