Part 1
When I was in seminary, I worked as a waiter at an Olive Garden Restaurant. On one particularly slow night there, I was standing at the side-bar with a few other waiters and waitresses. I stood there chatting and occasionally checking my tables – which showed no sign of leaving any time soon.
In the four years I worked there during seminary, the side-bar (a small space at the entrance to the kitchen with coffee makers, a small refrigerator, glasses, cups, lemon slices, and other necessities of the waiter’s trade) became a kind of sacred ground. It was in this small space (big enough for 5 average sized people to stand and have a wall or counter to lean on) where I was questioned about pretty nearly any and every topic imaginable where religion was involved. No matter that the discussion was about Hindu traditions, or Native American Creation Stories—if it was about religion, I was in seminary, and so, must know all about it. It could become very frustrating sometimes.
On this particular day, it was about two weeks after Easter and I was tired—Exhausted! I was tired from endless reading for classes, and having worked three straight days of double shifts, I just wanted the shift to end so I could go home and sleep until I had to get up and drag myself back to the library to read. I was getting a coffee for one of my tables when out of nowhere, one of the waitresses (let’s call her Sue) says, “What I don’t get is how you cannot get the creeps at the whole Jesus thing anyway? Some dead guy shows up and says, “Hey! I’m back! I got tired of decomposing for the last three days so I came back!” Sue shudders. “Creepy. That’s all I can say. Creepy.”
There was a stunned silence at the side bar since the comment was in no way connected to the current conversation. I tensed. I deliberately kept my back turned and attempted to immerse myself in pouring the perfect cup of coffee. I grabbed a few creamers and fairly ran out to my table. You see, if I was lucky, very lucky, the conversation would have moved on while I was away. I was tired. I had reading to do and several papers on the go. The last thing I wanted was to be asked an unending series of questions about theology. So, I loitered at my tables engaging my increasingly annoyed guests in pointless chatter in the hopes of avoiding the inevitable inquisition I would endure when I returned to the side-bar.
When I could annoy my guests no longer, I left the tables and went back to the side-bar with the thought of going right into the kitchen to find something, anything, in need of cleaning. Unfortunately, there was now a group of 6 or 7 people talking (remember it was a slow night) and as I got close I heard someone say, “Here he is now.” What could I do?
The question was simple. In my absence it had boiled down to: “What is one to make of the absolute strangeness of the idea that Jesus was raised from the dead”? As one waiter put it, “it sounds like the movie Night of the Living Dead with a happy ending”. Sue could only repeat her refrain that it was just “way Creepy”.
I talked about the gift of forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life in Christ. I talked about the idea of Christ as the final sacrifice. I explained about the broken-ness of humanity and our essential separation from God being both symbolized and, in some theological systems, actually realized in physical death – as we humans understand death anyway. I talked about the unending love of God that is so vast that it caused God to become human so that God, through Christ, could know our suffering – even to death on the cross. And more importantly, I explained, this act of love lets us know that God understands our pain, and provided a sure path to transcend that pain. I even went so far as to explain how Greco-Roman culture impacted the earliest understandings of the Christ (although I did this in the hope of changing the topic to history and thus getting myself off the hot seat. Of course, it did not work). This question and answer period went on all night. Atypically, the topic never shifted.
Between trips to tables, breaks, cleaning counters, and topping off ketchup bottles, I was grilled with question after question, and presented with thought after thought about the strangeness of the resurrection. I was challenged over and over (uncharacteristically, I might add, for this group was usually very open minded) about my own faith in such an absurd notion as the resurrection. This went on for the whole shift, nearly 4 hours. And through all of it, there was Sue, adding only her simple refrain, that the whole idea was “Creepy!”
Finally, I lost it. I started low, and slowly gathered steam and volume until I was actually shouting at the people gathered at the side bar: “Look! Try and understand this. Faith in God is based on the experience of God’s Love. The defining moment of that Love is the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. My faith in God through Jesus, the Christ, is not based on the resuscitation – of – a – CORPSE”! I stormed off leaving behind a group of waiters and waitresses who were stunned into silence.
As I stomped passed a table that was close to the side-bar, I heard a woman ask her friend (whose fork was paused halfway to her mouth) “Did I just hear that waiter come out of the kitchen yelling something about a corpse”? I checked my step and turned back to look at the woman. I opened my mouth to say something, but so many thoughts were rushing around my brain that none of them had even the slightest chance of finding my mouth. The woman looked at me a bit like a rabbit in the headlights. Her friend’s fork remained poised between her half-eaten dinner and her mouth and she was now looking at it suspiciously.
After a moment I closed my mouth, turned away, and continued my stomp out to my tables. My guests had finally left and the manager had closed my station. As I slammed the dirty plates into a bus tub, I noticed the women who had heard me shouting about corpses were walking quickly out of the restaurant. They weren’t carrying To-Go boxes.
A few hours later, I was sitting in the lounge of another restaurant. It was one of two restaurants that were open later than the Olive Garden and often the staff of the Olive Garden would go to one or the other after work. I was sitting in the back corner of the lounge in the less popular of the two restaurants. Even though I was dead tired, I was too wound up to sleep. So there I sat facing the wall nursing a glass of wine and brooding about the night. After a while I sensed that someone was standing behind me. I looked over my shoulder, and Sue was standing there looking much like a person waiting for the principal to finish writing a suspension slip before beginning to explain to you why you are being suspended.
I took a deep breath and motioned for Sue to sit down. After a few moments she gathered herself and said, “It IS Creepy, you know”.
“Sue, it is only creepy,” I answered, “because no one has ever explained to you what the resurrection means. I tried tonight, but did not do a good job. If you want, I will try again.”
Sue looked at the table and after a long pause said “I want to believe. I think I even did once. I just find some of this stuff too weird anymore. How do you understand what the resurrection means when you don’t even really get what it is?”
I said nothing. I just waited. Sue just looked at me for a while and then said, “So how much time will it take for you to explain this stuff to me?”
I reached over the table and squeezed her hand. I smiled, probably for the first time since I left the Olive Garden. “I don’t know how long it will take, Sue,” I said. “That really depends on you. Let’s start by you telling me what you think now – besides that it’s “creepy” – and we will take it from there?”
Sue nodded and started to tell me her story.
(To be continued next month.)