Resurrection at Manna House

This time after Easter and before Pentecost seems like a long stretch. My Easter joy, not very strong to begin with, has faded. But there are still Easter songs to be sung and Sunday readings that tell the triumphant tale of the spread of the Gospel following Jesus’ resurrection. Sure, there are bumps along the way, but angels spring people out of prison, conversions are happening all over the place, and apostles are going around healing people. At one level it all seems a bit too easy.

            I guess I’m still stuck at the empty tomb, at least as we have it from the oldest manuscripts of Mark’s Gospel. Like the women, who see the stone rolled away, I'd much rather flee and say “nothing to anyone” because, like them, I am “too frightened” (Mark 16:8). Resurrection? Jesus executed by Roman imperial power is alive? What does it mean? What are the consequences for how I live if Jesus’ resurrection is true?

            Then Monday rolls around and I see dead men going into the showers at Manna House. I think of a homeless man I read about who yelled out in a fight, “You can’t kill me! I’m already fucking dead!” I see the despair in our guest’s faces because being on the streets is a road to early death. Many guests hide it most mornings. As Kathleen says, “They give us their best.” But it lurks there. Sometimes it comes out in harsh words toward another guest or one of us volunteers. Sometimes it comes out more directly as one guest told me recently, “I don’t see much point in going on. I’m about all gone.” 

            I think about the guests who have died during the nearly 19 years that Manna House has been open. This past week was the one-week anniversary of Brad Winchester’s death. Meanwhile, I get a text from a chaplain at the VA who tells me James Sutton has died. I used to greet him, “James Sutton, he ain’t no mutton.” He’d roll his eyes.

            Resurrection? I don’t feel very hopeful. Homelessness. The slaughter of the people in Gaza. Terrorist attacks. Ukraine. Sudan. Climate change. I can easily see how death seems more powerful than life. 

            A lot hinges on the word “seems.” I start to wonder if I have to go looking for resurrection. The women at the tomb of Jesus were looking. Later the disciples on the road to Emmaus were looking and listening.

            A man came out of the showers at Manna House. He had gone in with face down, shoulders dejected, quiet. Now his face shone. He stood tall. And he gave witness, “I feel alive again!”

            I know it is not much. Given where he is headed for the rest of the day, and what he is up against every day, this moment is brief. The structures of poverty and racism, the culture of hatred toward the poor, and the misplaced priorities of government budgets all remain in place. Yet, this little revelation gives hope of the possibility of a larger liberation, of resurrection.

            Yes, it is not much, but it is something. Enough to hear the truth in what Daniel Berrigan wrote: “We are people of the resurrection,” and “we have longed to taste the resurrection. We have longed to welcome its thunders and quakes, and to echo its great gifts. We want to test the resurrection in our bones. We want to see if we might live in hope instead of in the … twilight thicket of cultural despair in which standing implies many are lost.”

            So, I’ll go again to Manna House, acting on and testing this hope of resurrection, looking for signs of resurrection, and learning from guests who resist death.