I want to speak to the moms, wives, sisters, and daughters this Lenten season. According to the 2021 CDC study of the mental health of our teens, 60% of teen girls are experiencing persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness. We are in a crisis.
What does Resurrection Sunday have to do with that? As you already know, Resurrection Sunday is the amazing story of how Jesus paid the full price and purchased eternity in Heaven for unworthy troubled people like us.
As good as that is, Resurrection Sunday is so much more. Ever since Adam and Eve foolishly tried to get rid of their guilt, nakedness, and shame (maybe we could say their sadness and hopelessness?) by hiding behind a flimsy fig leaf, generations of humans have been brought into this groaning planet with a feeling of deeply entrenched loneliness, lack of enoughness and fear of disconnectedness. It seems that no fig leaf, ancient or modern does a thing to remove the stigma.
Social media seems to make matters worse. Relationships? Some helpful, some not. Still the inner sense of disfigurement (Anne Lamott) lingers. Experiments in sexual identities promise relief, but such choices don’t have the power to scratch that primordial itch. They just don’t.
Are you tracking me?
Brené Brown captures it pretty well.
“Connection is critical because we all have the basic need to feel accepted and to believe that we belong and are valued for who we are. Shame unravels our connection to others. In fact, I often refer to shame as the fear of disconnection—the fear of being perceived as flawed and unworthy of acceptance or belonging. Shame keeps us from telling our own stories and prevents us from listening to others tell their stories. We silence our voices and keep our secrets out of the fear of disconnection.”
So back to Resurrection Sunday. We will dig into it more. Resurrection Sunday is Jesus telling the story of our shame, disconnectedness and fears. Resurrection Sunday is also Jesus powerfully unraveling our shame and reconnecting us to an intimate relationship with God that our soul was made for.
It is hard to look at the sufferings of Jesus. Hard to listen to. But this is what God does. There is an aspect of the DNA of God that we most often translate as ‘compassion’. It is what the Prodigal Father experiences as he sees his son limp home in brokenness and shame. It is what bubbles up out of the Good Samaritan when he sees that traveler broken and alone on the hot Judean wilderness road with no rescuer. It is what Jesus internally emotes as he looks over Jerusalem from the hillside of the Mount of Olives—on his way to suffer and die for her.
The Greek word is splagchnizomai. Literally it is a twisting of the intestines. Don’t get distracted by that. It is what God feels when he looks down and sees his creation drowning in loneliness, shame, and helplessness. Splagchnizomai is more than a feeling. It moves God (I am speaking humanly) to the person, to embrace them and rescue them and raise them back to honor.
This is the backdrop of Resurrection Sunday. Resurrection Sunday is the beginning of the amazing story of the removal of our silent shame and fear of disconnectedness. Isn’t that the essence of what the people cried out as Jesus entered Jerusalem at the beginning of Holy Week? “Hosanna” means “Save us, God!”
May this Resurrection Sunday find us released from our tomb of inner emotional disfigurement and dancing again in the adoring arms of God.
