HANDS OF HEALING

Rev. Emily Meyer invites us to co-create the New Heaven and New Earth with God.

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Hymn suggestions:

Christ Has Risen While Earth Slumbers - ACS #938

Let Us Enter In - ACS #985

Dear Friends,

Each segment pairs a particular verse or group of verses with one of the ten ‘Fingers on the Hand of Healing’, as described by Dr. Cynthia Moe-Lobeda in Building a Moral Economy: Pathways for People of Courage.[1]

Find just one or two or three of these “fingers” that speak to you, your congregation, and/or your context as you proclaim Resurrection!

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Yep. It’s Easter.

But celebrating New Life right now feels grossly negligent, tragically disingenuous, even horribly macabre.

As a nation and a planet, we seem to be walking inexorably toward death and the tomb; an endless, relentless Lenten journey stretches before us. We are mired in the chrysalis’ goo with not even a glimmer of imagination.[2] And no promise of New Life will reverse the damage and the loss that we grieve along the way.

Yet, our texts call us to rejoice in resurrection.

They prod us out of our losses and griefs by shifting our focus to other possibilities.

Paul warns us in First Corinthians to let go of Empire’s divisive, self-centered narrative of, ‘Me first’, or worse, ‘Me only’: ‘If for this life only we have hoped in Christ,’ then ‘we are of all people most to be pitied’. Empire - the ‘rulers, authorities and powers’, i.e., oligarchs, billionaires, and extraction economies - wants us to focus on and be distracted by - and feel helpless despair about - our own self-interests. Paul urges us to look beyond singularity to the big picture: navel gazing disempowers solidarity and deprives us of the fullness of God’s promised New Life.

Christ’s resurrection is rippling out to ‘destroy Empire’.

Aliveness in Christ is a group experience - a whole-creation reality.

This is an example of what Dr. Cynthia Moe-Lobeda calls, ‘Changing the Story’ (pg. 213-242): ‘Change the Story’ of the future by changing the stories we listen to, tell ourselves, and accept as normative, in the here and now.

Changing the story is one finger on the hands of healing,

Others of Dr. Moe-Lobeda’s Fingers on the Hands of Healing follow beautifully with Isaiah’s prophetic vision of God’s New Heaven and New Earth.

Vs. 17: “I am about to create a New Heaven and a New Earth.”

Build the New (pg. 129-138)

In the ELCA we say, ‘God’s Work. Our Hands.’ to describe our role as God’s co-creators in this project of a New Heaven and New Earth. We are agents of Christ’s Resurrection Life.

• Where/how are your people living into the New Heaven and New Earth?

• Where/how else are people called to build the New in your homes, building, and/or community?

Vs. 21: ‘Build houses and inhabit them / plant vineyards and eat their fruit.’

Live Lightly (pg. 139-146)

In the New Heaven and New Earth, basic needs are met but extraction and over-consumption are not part of the equation.

We are invited to enjoy and be content with the safety and comfort of a well-built home and the decadence of ripe fruit in season. Nowhere in Isaiah’s description - or any biblical vision of God’s preferred future - does God say, ‘Use it all up.’ Or, ‘Drill, baby, drill.’

In fact, Jesus clearly denounces building up storage units for unnecessary largesse.

Enjoy comfortable shelter and delicious abundance - and live lightly.

• Where/how are your people living lightly, already?

• Where/how are people called to ease up on consumption and participation in the extractive economy?

Vs. 22: ‘They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat…’

Change the Rules (pg. 147-156)

God opposes injustice. God opposes uncompensated labor. Plain and simple. No more using peoples’ time, energy, skill, and effort to enrich the already rich and further impoverish the already poor. People who build get to live in well-built homes. People who plant get to eat good  food. Worker’s rights and economic equity are part of the New Heaven and New Earth.

• Where/how are your people changing the rules, already?

• Where/how are people called to change the rules in your context?

Vs. 23 [This is related to vs. 22]: ‘They shall not labor in vain… for they are blessed by God.’

Move the Money (pg. 157-170)

Key to ensuring just labor laws and equitable work environments is moving the money.

Moving money from banks, investments, and/or purchasing power away from corporations who extract, pollute, and treat the land and/or laborers unjustly is a key way to live into/build the New Heaven and New Earth.

• Where/how are your people ensuring money is used as a blessing?

• Where/how are people called to ‘move’ personal/congregational funds?

Resist the Wrong (I add: Embrace the Good)

Vs. 25: ‘The wolf and the lamb shall lie down…. But the serpent - its food shall be dust’

I never like to demonize a part of creation - and serpents get more than their share of bad raps.[3]

Yet while my inner feminist rejects this demonization[4], I cannot help but recall the metaphor of the Northern Green Anaconda mentioned in my April 6 sermon,[5] which is:

-       the biggest serpent in the world;

-       a constrictor, i.e., it hugs its prey to death and swallows prey whole;

-       a carnivore that eats fish, boars, jaguars, even adult bulls;

-       one of the most dangerous animals on the planet and without natural predators.[6]

We can associate just about any mega-corporation or extractive conglomerate, or institutions and systems, with the Northern Green Anaconda. Resisting the wrong can feel futile, but resist we must. And resist collectively: the only threat to the Northern Green Anaconda is human fear. The only threat to mega-corporations and billionaire greed is collective human resistance.

The wolf and lamb lying in peaceful mutuality and equity inspire us to embrace the good by collaborating with even unlikely partners (see below).

• Where/how are your people resisting anacondas and embracing the good, already?

• Where/how are people called to resist the wrong/embrace the good in new or deeper ways?

Which brings us to John 20.

Vss. 1-10

Build the Bigger We (pg. 177-192)

Mary Magdalene arrives at the tomb alone. Discovering the stone rolled away, she runs to find Simon Peter and ‘the beloved disciple’. She is concerned that ‘they’ have taken Jesus’ body from the tomb and that, ‘…we do not know where they have laid him.’

Perhaps she was not so alone after all.

As they run, I can’t help but see this scene from an otherwise long-forgotten movie, in which Peter shoves the beloved disciple aside as soon as he reaches the tomb. Building the Bigger We is complicated by stories of, ‘Me first’ (see above) and ‘purity’ or ‘idealism’ stories, which tempt us to push aside potential partners because we see them as competitors, or because they will not assimilate to or do not already align with every value and ideal we hold, or because we believe we have - or have to have - all the right answers and therefore neglect contributions of others (see Listen and Amplify, below).

• With what partners are your people already running toward the empty tomb?

• With whom are people called to work as co-creators of the New Heaven and New Earth?

Vs. 11 - ‘Mary stood weeping.’

Practice Awe, Lament, Holy Anger, Gratitude (pg. 193-204)

Grief is real.

When left alone, Mary stays in the garden and weeps.

We understand Mary's tears: her confusion, frustration, extraordinary loss; bewilderment, overwhelm, anger, helplessness, hopelessness.

The garden gives Mary the space she needs to weep.

Even as a New Heaven and New Earth are being created, we are losing much.

Even as we shift from a self-centered, ‘Me first’ inner narrative to a shared New Life story, we also need room to feel and express our feelings, especially the deep, enormous feelings of extreme loss and overwhelm in these days of chaos and perceived powerlessness.

We need gardens in which to weep.

AND gratitude and awe - gifts of the garden home God has already created - these also need to be experienced and practiced and shared.

When Mary is named and known and as she turns and identifies her Beloved, Jesus, risen from the dead, Mary’s heart is turned from anger and lament. We hear awe and gratitude in Mary’s, ‘Rabbouni’. That’s a powerful transition.

Life-changing. New Life - New Heaven and New Earth-bringing.

• Where/how are people experiencing and practicing awe, lament, holy anger, and gratitude?

Vs. 17 - ‘Do not hold onto me…Go tell the disciples.’

Listen and Amplify (pg. 205-212)

AND Drink the Spirit’s Courage (pg. 243-252)

Jesus’ first post-resurrection command is, ‘Don’t waste time holding onto me; go tell the story.’

So Mary drinks the Spirit’s courage, lets go of what she already knows, and goes.[7] 

She is the first to tell Jesus’ resurrection story.

And while Luke asserts that the disciples receive Mary's story as ‘an idle tale’ that ‘they did not believe’, clearly the disciples also let go of what they already know (Change the Story) and ultimately listen to and amplify Mary’s story, leaving the fear of the Upper Room (Drink the Spirit’s Courage) to travel with it around the known world.

What do we need to ‘let go’ so that we can better listen to and amplify local, regional, national, and global stories of the New Heaven and New Earth being created, all around us? How might listening to unexpected storytellers change Empire’s story - that the death machine of extraction is acceptable and deadly over-consumption is the way life is? How might amplifying unbelievable (‘idle’) stories of New Life - of sustainable, communal, joyful abundance - overwhelm the narrative that billionaire oligarchs/Empire/death always have the last word?

• Where/how are your people encouraged, empowered, and inspired?

• Where do we Drink the Spirit’s Courage?

Any and all of these “Ten Fingers on the Hands of Healing” enable us in our work of co-creating with God a New Heaven and New Earth.

This Easter, New Life may feel like a distant hope. But it is awakening. It is real.

Let these fingers point the way. Let these fingers on our hands bring healing.

We are co-creators of New Life!

Originally written by Rev. Emily P.L. Meyer for Green Blades Rising Preacher’s Roundtable.

ministrylab@unitedseminary.edu

Find more from Emily Meyer at www.theministrylab.org.

[1] Moe-Lobeda, Cynthia, Building a Moral Economy: Pathways for People of Courage; Fortress, Minneapolis; 2024.

[2] See April 6 reflections.

[3] Even my Google computer dictionary definition reads: ‘Serpent: a large snake: (The Serpent) a biblical name for Satan…’.

[4] Biblical derogations of the snake and equations with Satan likely originate in anti-Goddess propaganda. See Baring, Anne, & Jules Cashford. The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image; London, Arkana: 1991; 566.

[5] Find the original draft here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vThvEEKQ5-EI0bnK2qLEGKs55veHlBS07QPr-6pZRgopR8hjbPzfx8TgfoKnGbLxp1nzQ3QnSrhRCfJ/pub.

[6] https://www.rainforest-alliance.org/species/green-anaconda/; accessed 03.22.25

[7] Again, see the April 6, 2025 sermon for more on letting go in order to move into God’s preferred future: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vThvEEKQ5-EI0bnK2qLEGKs55veHlBS07QPr-6pZRgopR8hjbPzfx8TgfoKnGbLxp1nzQ3QnSrhRCfJ/pub