Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, Salome, and other women experienced the first Easter message, "He is risen!" Their journey to the tomb to perform a final act of love is rewarded with the great news of the Resurrection of Jesus: "So they left the tomb in a hurry, afraid and yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples" (Matthew 28:8).
The words "afraid and yet filled with joy" from the Matthean account of the Easter witness are readily applicable to my own faith experience of resurrection. I am certain that these women who went to share the message with the other disciples knew that their words would be received as "nonsense." ("Women's talk"; "You know how women are!") Yet the subsequent appearances of a resurrected Christ could only calm their fears and increase their joy.
These women had experienced Jesus in their daily lives as open to them, conversing with them in defiance of the cultural relationships between men and women, caring for them. His acts of healing and love, his parables of just relationships, his promises of presence and power through the Holy Spirit, his benediction of peace, his obedience to the will of God's purposes unto death - all these shaped their faith and kept them significantly active in the formation of the early Christian church and in the interpretation of its mission.
Through the centuries women of faith have experienced the combination of fear and joy as they have seen the Resurrection as applicable to their own claim to newness of life. In the midst of performing daily acts of love, women, believing in a living Christ, have moved beyond the limitations of life as defined by cultural, societal, and legal modes.
Women have claimed rebirth as designed by a purposeful Creator God and have shed their bondage with some degree of fear, while knowing at the same time great joy in the transition. Even when their message of new life and equality of all persons before a sovereign God is seen as nonsensical, women have found joy sufficient to sustain them when "back to the tomb" is the only response.
IN SEVERAL AREAS and times of my own life, I have moved out in trepidation and trembling. The joy I have found in times when I have dared to shed the old for the new has come from the willingness of sisters of faith to share the risk with me. The very nature of risk is uncertainty and great anticipation. It is faith in the unknown based on trust in a God whose steadfast love is from everlasting to everlasting and whose revelation of love in the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ affirms liberation from any condition of bondage.
I recall a significant moment during the process of episcopal elections in our denomination when the probability of electing a woman to the position of bishop appeared absolutely nil. Nevertheless, in our jurisdiction the clergywomen gathered for prayer each night. We experienced the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in our midst. It was an experience of renewal for each of us.
We saw our movement from the perspective of the nature of the church of Jesus Christ and its witness. It was far more than an individual "winning a race." Women of faith had reached out across the country, convincing men to join them in order to express the need for the church of a resurrected Christ to be absolutely and completely inclusive in all areas of its life in the world. This movement should acknowledge the call, gifts, and graces of all persons, regardless of sex, race, or culture, to serve with authenticity. We felt we were about the business of newness of Spirit, calling the church to renewal of witness.
A young male minister who had joined us on one evening is said to have reported, "Don't worry about the women. They are no problem. They are just having a prayer meeting."
It is because of such prayer meetings that I am now a bishop of the United Methodist Church. As a black woman, I long ago learned of the faith of a people enslaved, who dared to believe in a resurrected Jesus. They envisioned their own freedom in the promise of his words and claimed him as their own. In the midst of bondage, they sang on a Good Friday not "Were you there when they crucified their Lord" but "Were you there when they crucified my Lord"! That which "sometimes causes me to tremble" gives way to that which gives joy - resurrection joy, Easter joy - granting newness to the life of each day.
Like the women who witnessed the first Easter, we must continually tell the story, speaking truth with power, whether or not others hear it as nonsense. Because Christ is alive now, both in the present and in the life to come, we are called to fullness, wholeness, freedom. Praise God!
Leontine Kelly was a United Methodist bishop in the California-Nevada Conference when this article appeared.
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