Running Order

Welcome

Welcome to Dead Man Rising.

Today we invite you to respond to the mystery of the resurrection. Like Christ’s followers we invite you to stand, run, touch, eat, fear, worship and doubt. To know and to feel within your own body what it means to bear witness to resurrection.

Along with gospel stories this space features the poems “Food for Risen Bodies” by Michael Symmons Roberts.

He explains that the poems “take this other-worldly physicality as their starting-point, imagining what the first meal in a resurrected world might be, and how it might be conducted. What would they eat, drink, smoke, talk about?”

This installation was created by , an ecumenical covenanted community supported by the Baptist Union of Victoria.

After the formal readings feel free to interact with stations at your own leisure.

Many thanks to the Dancing Dog Café, St Matt’s Long Gully, Christop, Talitha, Long and Minh, the Bendigo mob and as ever, Mark Pierson.

Reading 1: Mark 16:1-8 Stone

Who will roll away the stone?

Food for Risen Bodies-I (by Michael Symonns Roberts)

Stone

Immersion in water was traditionally used on Easter Sunday as an initiation symbol of rising up from the watery grave to new life with the risen Christ.

Consider your life and our world. We are weighed down by many things.
Pick up a stone. What insurmountable barriers stand in the way of hope?

Take time to feel the weight of the stone in your hand.
The resurrection is God’s ‘yes’ to the way of Jesus, affirming that suffering love is a force more powerful than the daunting powers of death.

“When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away.”

Let your stone “roll away” into the watery grave.

Baptism

Let your hand wash in the water for a time. Feel the water on your skin and running through your fingers.
If the way of Jesus is true then we too will rise again and live with Jesus in peace. All that is required is that we too lay down our lives for suffering humanity. We too must risk the way of the cross.
Use your moistened finger to make a sign of the cross upon your forehead as a symbol of baptism… of your own desire to die to your old life and rise to new ways of living with Christ.

Song: “Stone” James Laidler

Reading 2: Luke 24:13-43 Bread

What were you talking about upon the road? What things?

Food for Risen Bodies - IV (by Michael Symonns Roberts)

Bread

Following the political execution of their leader, Cleopas and his friend walk the road to Emmaus as refugees, fleeing the scene of death. What things fill you with despair, doubt and sorrow?

View the images at the head of the table. Consider those who walk the road as refugees this day.

Whisper grace for those have been silenced in Iraq, Zimbabwe, across Sudan and in other places of our world this day.

Know that the resurrected Christ walks with them and all who suffer, even if unrecognised…

Christian tradition suggests that at the feast of the resurrection those who suffer injustice are given places of honour.

Using the dinner knives, slit their stitched lips free.

What unexpected voices or stories might you hear to make our hearts burn within us.

The story suggests that we may recognize the presence of Christ through the offer of hospitality to strangers.

Break some bread and eat with them.

Make a donation to the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre in the urn provided or sign the petition as an act of hospitality.

Reading 3: Luke 24: 36 Fruit

Why are you fearful and why do you question in your hearts? Do you have anything to eat?

Food for Risen Bodies - III (by Michael Symonns Roberts)

Fruit

Like a ghostly apparition the risen Christ mysteriously re-appears, raising fear and troubled questions within his followers.
How do we deal with death? What happens to our bodies when we die? Numerous beliefs exist about the afterlife, our body and the spirit.
Many beliefs deny or seek liberation from the body, promoting the development of private spirituality, emphasising life after death for individuals.

However with invitations to touch, feel and eating before their eyes, the gospel demonstrates that resurrection does not involve the abandonment of the body…

The risen Christ shows a transformed physicality where continuity exists between the present life and the resurrected body.
Because of this hope the present time is shot through with significance. Our choices resonate through eternity.

Generations back...fruit was clad…childrens children waited.

Taste a seed from the pomegranate. Swallow or keep it with you as a symbol of the seeds you will choose to plant for future generations.

“Look at my hands and feet… Touch me and see”.

What beliefs do you hold about your own body?

Touch and eat the flesh of fruit reminding us of the holiness of the human body and wounds of Christ.

Reading 4: John 21:1-13 Fish

Children, have you caught anything to eat? Simon, Son of John, do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me?

Food for Risen Bodies - II (By Michael Symonns Roberts)

Fish

At death, Jesus was abandoned by his own followers who returned to business as usual. Now without malice the risen Christ stands on a beach offering them an abundant catch, a cooked breakfast and the chance to follow again.

Peter had earlier made himself comfortable in the house of death whilst Jesus suffered at the hands of the Roman Empire. He denied Jesus three times whilst ‘warming himself’ around a charcoal fire in the palace courtyard.

Now by contrast Jesus invites Simon Peter to warm and feed himself in the house of life, around his own charcoal fire, at the dawn of a new day…

Using his pre-discipleship name of Simon, the risen Jesus offers three opportunities to reconcile, reversing Peter’s three statements of denial with three expressions of agape (unconditional love) and fidelity.

Dip some fish in salt. As you taste remember the bitterness of an experience of denial and failure in your own life.

“Feed my lambs” (poetic Greek reference to martyrs)
The resurrection offers a new invitation and co-missioning.

Light a candle as a prayer

• for those who have died;
• for those whom you have failed or with whom you remain unreconciled;
• as hope for your new work.

Reading 5: John 20: 24-29 Touch

Have you come to believe because you have seen me?

Food for Risen Bodies - VI (by Michael Symonns Roberts)

Touch

How is it that you see the stories of resurrection?
• historical fact,
• inspiring metaphor
• a wishful projection of the powerless
• archetypal myth…others?

How is it that you come to know or trust something as being true?
Like Thomas acknowledge your doubts. Choose a quote with which you identify. Use it to touch Jesus’ side. Dip and hold.

“My Lord and my God”

For the first 300 years of Christianity the refusal to address the Roman Emperor by divine title, “My Lord and My God” resulted in execution. Even though people had not seen Jesus, their experience of him as God meant they were routinely martyred for refusing the Empire.

The resurrection proclaims Jesus as King over all the systems and powers of this world including “conventional wisdom”.

Express your allegiance or ongoing doubt by placing your quote upon the central stones or on the crown of thorns above. Know you are loved regardless.

Reading 6: John 20:19-22 Breath

He breathed upon them…

Food for Risen Bodies - V (by Michael Symonns Roberts)

Breath

In the creation stories of Genesis the Spirit blows across the waters and God breathes life into the first human bodies.
Now far from the Spirit’s breath of Genesis we find ourselves living in a time of de-creation. When the suns rising reminds us as much of drought and global warming as it does of the risen Christ.

“Peace be with you”

In the midst of a spirit of fear and the many spirits of the age, Christ breathes upon his disciples in order to release his own Spirit into the world and to enable people to function from a new reference point.

The significance of Jesus resurrection is not simply that it opens up hope for life after death for individuals but that the new creation has begun.

The apostle Paul taught that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with what will be revealed when the creation is liberated from its bondage.
He describes the whole creation as groaning as in the pains of childbirth right to the present time.

“ ’Later, later’...and went straight for the cigarettes”

What is it that you groan for?

Is it possible to imagine a universe where entropy, corruption and suffering is not the final word? How do you feel about the story’s suggestion that the Spirit gives you the power to loose or to bind?

Burn some incense as a prayer of hope. You may long to smoke outside!

Paul concludes that in our weakness the Spirit prays and breathes hope for us with sighs too deep for words.

Interactive Time/Meal

Background Songs:

See his body broken in the shadows of my mind. Can you see the ripple fading from the stone that’s fallen in. Stone, Solid Stone.
James Laidler

Life slips through the cracks, looking for now…
Life is brushing up against you,
worlds within worlds,
the no space between me and you,
between all of God and all of us.
The see through,
seen through,
fat with life…..
Life is waking again and knowing, with thanks, you are waking again.”

Martin Wroe

Just like a bird, that sings up the sun
in a dawn so very dark. Such is my faith for you. All the worlds darkness can’t swallow up, this single spark.
Such is my love for you.

Nick Cave

Reading 7: Food for Risen Bodies VI

Song: “Feeling Good” Nina Simone