Widow’s Wailing (Rob Gieselmann, June 9, 2007)

Mamie had one son. From the moment Emmett was born, Mamie sensed something special – a destiny, a purpose for
his life. She held these thoughts, close to her heart, but they were strong.

When Emmett was fourteen, Mamie sent him to her relatives in Mississippi. She worried, of-course. Mississippi
in the 1950s was nothing like Chicago. She dismissed her fears as overprotection, but her fears were
well-founded.

One day, Emmett went with buddies over to Bryant’s Grocery for a soda. When Emmett saw the pretty – and white –
Carolyn Bryant, the store-owner’s young wife, he whistled at her. She was, of-course, offended. Negroes don’t
whistle at whites in Mississippi and get away with it.

Carolyn’s husband wanted retribution. So later, in the middle of the night, he nabbed Emmett, beat him, and
threw him with a fan around his neck into the river.

It is said that when they told Mamie that her son had been murdered, she went into her bedroom, shut the door,
fell to her knees on the old wooden floor, and wailed.

Her friends heard her wail for only a minute; the house grew silent. She grew silent, as she realized what she
had to do. Emmett, you see, had not been born in vein, he had been born for a purpose. And she would see to
that purpose.

Mississippi had wanted to bury Emmett in a pine box, in an unmarked grave. But Mamie said, No. Bring him home.
He was horribly disfigured, so the Chicago mortuary agreed to bring him home, but only if his casket remained
shut.

When he got home, Mamie wanted to see him. They told her, No, you don’t want to. She persisted, they pried the
casket open for her, and then she demanded that the casket remain open for all the world to see.

All the world did see, in 1955, the horror of racism and injustice in macabre bodily form. Emmett Till, as you
know, deeply affected the psyche of a nation. Emmett Till was resurrected, but not in the good, old-fashioned
way, after three days, but in the civil form of rights guaranteed and protected for others.

***
Two widows understand the despair Mamie expressed on caloused knees, on wooden planks, behind locked doors.

Two women, two children lost, two futures, two destinies, evaporated as wisps, as morning fog. These women like
Mamie wailed. One of them even blamed God, as she spat at the prophet: What have you against me, O man of God?
Nevermind that God had saved her once already, multiplying her grain and oil endlessly through the drought.

God had been good to her, but blaming God is easy. And God can take it. But God’s beauty is this: God walks
past death with resurrection in hand.

The second widow wailed, as they carried her son’s embalmed corpse in procession to the tomb. Jesus had to do
something. Like I said, God walks past death with resurrection in hand. Not to have acted, in the face of raw
despair, now that would have been something.

But Jesus observed this woman with acute grief and commanded the corpse, Rise Up!

What about Jesus’ own mother, Mary? Wasn’t Jesus moved by her acute grief? Why did he not halt the madness of
his own execution? Jesus in horrible pain his body heaving upward with each dying breath, with each attempt to
pull oxygen to the lungs. Standing next to Jesus’ best friend, John, Mary watched him die -- her son, who like
Emmett, was destined from birth for great things.

To this grieving woman, Jesus says simply, Woman, behold your Son, and to John, Behold, your mother.

We don’t know what Mary said, but wouldn’t any mother have said, John’s not my Son! You are! “Behold your son.”
Sounds like a shell game, trading one son for another. As though a child can be replaced by just anyone!
Substitution isn’t resurrection.

But when Jesus walks past your funeral, there is resurrection. Jesus can’t walk past and not shout, Arise!

And yet, don’t we most often treat Jesus, and God, as mere companions – and not as the life-infusers they really
are?

Paul tells us plainly: there is power in the Gospel, in the Good News of God in Christ. God is with us.
Tangibly. There is real power there, for you. Resurrection power.

But we act like resurrection is mere restoration. Resurrection is not restoration, it is transformation.

Whereas restoration returns you to some prior state, resurrection changes you. As Jesus said, Unless a grain of
wheat fall to the ground and die, it shall not live. The grain changes, becomes a living organism.

I know Mamie wanted to hold her child again, and Mary hers. But they knew that wasn’t going to happen. They
opened instead the door to resurrection.

Is faith mere tea and crumpets, a sweet comfort in the midst of a hard life? Or is it high octane jet fuel,
dynamite to blasts apart the rock-shell around your heart?

Faith opens the door to possibility. Gospel power -- the power of possibility, the power to become new – Ask
Jesus to do that for you, to transform your life: Ask him!

Surely you remember the story of Helen Keller, born deaf and blind? She could not communicate with any other
living creature. If you and I had been praying for her when she was a child, we would have asked God to heal
her. But God had far more in mind for her. Healing her would have been for her only, but resurrecting her meant
instead life for thousands upon thousands of others.

She wrote, “a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hands that clutched at emptiness, and my heart
leaped up with the rapture of living. I do not know the meaning of darkness, but I have learned the overcoming of
it.”

Indeed, Mary and Mamie were forced against their wills to sacrifice their sons. Neither would have chosen death
as destiny for their two children. But these deaths yielded life. Not just a happy ending – death is never
happy, by the way – nor is it ever God’s plan, a paradox because death oddly yields to life.

The power of God washed their lives clean with meaning – with purpose that elevated even their lives over
physical death. That power, that power is ours in Christ. That power is our destiny.

And so, here you are, looking for life, for some part of you to be raised from the dead. Like I said, ask – Ask
with the raw desperation of a widow wailing.

Jesus with resurrection in hand is walking past, and cannot, cannot pass without commanding, Arise!
 

Amen.

Copyright 2007