Day 40: Whose Good News?

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body.

While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.”

Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.

Luke 24:1-11

The apostles did not believe those who brought them news of the empty tomb. To some, the Messiah was predicted to be a political leader, a singular hero, liberation through the only means that liberation could come. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. And no one had a blueprint for what would come next.

To tell the story of liberation through torture and assassination is profane.
To gift the story to messengers who were unlikely to be believed is profane.
To birth the universal story in the confines of a time and a place is profane.
To queer the nature of God and become earth-bound is profane.
To warp the boundaries of death and life, despair and hope, is profane.

And so, Christian, we Easter anew and eternally when we hold tight the simultaneous joy and responsibilities of resurrection.

Whose good news - whose revelation of God - do you not believe?
Whose words seem to you like an idle tale?
Whose vision seems too improbable, too radical, too unwieldy, too unlike earth, too much like heaven?

What visions of your own seem too good to be true?
What love and resurrection do you deny yourself?
What gospel lies subjugated in you?

Whose good news - or version of good news - is too scandalous, too profane, too dazzling to believe?

The good news for the immigrant?
The good news for LGBTQ persons?
The good news for those experiencing addiction?
The good news for those with chronic illness?
The good news for Black and brown Americans?
The good news for our ancestors?
The good news for our youth?
The good news for you?

This song was created by Ophelia Hu Kinney with the voices of five parents; each of them is either the parent of an LGBTQ PAAC child and/or an LGBTQ PAAC parent.