“Why do you believe in the resurrection? How do you know it
actually happened?”
It may seem like any person seeking to be a pastor should
know the answer to these off the top of their heads. But, as I sat in my annual
conversation with my district’s Committee on Ministry, I was caught off guard.
I had come prepared to answer a different question – “Do you believe in
resurrection?” I was ready to share how, “Yes, I believe in the resurrection of
the dead. Yes, I believe Jesus was raised from the dead and brought back to
life. Yes, I trust the accounts of Scripture that promise we will experience
bodily resurrection like Christ.”
Maybe what caught me off guard was not the question exactly,
but the words used and the intention behind them. Not “Do you believe,” but…Why? Not “Can you prove it,” but...How do you know?
I’ve been trying to answer those questions ever since. Years
later, and I still ask myself all the time “Why do I believe in the
resurrection? How do I know it’s real?”
I believe in the resurrection because I’ve seen resurrection
happen in my own life and in the world around me. For just thirty years of life
so far, I’ve seen a lot of death up close and personal. Not just death in the end
of individual human lives, but the death of institutions, of programs, of the
world as I used to know it.
On April 30, 2011, I graduated as part of the last
graduating class from Lambuth University. I still remember the day I got my
letter of acceptance and offer of full tuition scholarship to Lambuth. Opening
the envelope with shaky hands, I cried as I read over the words of the letter.
Not tears of joy or relief, but tears of grief. I didn’t want to go to Lambuth.
My mom had gone there for college. It was only an hour away from home. I had
some older friends who were students there, and I didn’t want them to think I was
just following them. I wanted my own experience, something new and exciting
that would grow and stretch me. So, I sat in my bedroom and cried because I knew
a full tuition scholarship meant that I should go, that I needed to go to
Lambuth for college. Ten minutes later, I dried my tears and emerged with my
mind made up—I’d do the right and responsible thing. I’d go to Lambuth.
Little did I know then, Lambuth would be exactly what I had
hoped for in a college experience and more! I would be stretched not only academically,
but also spiritually, by the professors I met there – Dr. Gene Davenport, Dr.
Cindy Wesley, Dr. Charles Mayo, Dr. Manning Garrett, Dr. Joy Austin, and Chaplain
Steven Fonville…just to name a few because I could never name them all. Yes, I
would run into those friends who were already students there, but I would also
meet so many more, new friends, cherished souls who would help me become who I was
meant to be and friends I would keep for a lifetime. I would grow as a person of
character through the friendships I formed with staff, administration, and
other students, as well as my decision to stay at Lambuth even after the school
was placed on accreditation probation and its financial unsustainability was
exposed publicly. I would forge a new bond and depth in my relationship with my
mom because now we shared Lambuth, but we each had our own unique experiences of
what it meant to us. I would learn what true loyalty and selfless servanthood
looked like as, during the darkest days at the end of Lambuth, staff and
faculty showed up for weeks on end without pay to teach, serve, and help
students like me. I would meet and fall in love with my future husband and make
the best decision of my life to say “YES!” when Adam asked me to marry him in front
of the Lambuth gates. I’d even learn how to pastor and grieve at the same time
as I walked through the unexpected death of a friend, Morgan, with my sorority sisters
and our campus.
On the day we remembered Morgan’s birthday for the second time
after she passed away, the Board of Directors decided and announced that
Lambuth University would close at the end of the academic year in 2011, I learned
what it felt like when an institution, a place that had bestowed upon me so
many gifts, a community that had given my life so much meaning and direction,
dies.
But, as the good story goes, God wasn’t done with Lambuth
yet. Yes, the Lambuth I knew, the Lambuth I loved, and the Lambuth I had given
four years of learning, service, and dedication would no longer be the same. Still,
even into its death shroud, God was weaving strands of resurrection. Soon after
the decision to close Lambuth University, we found out that the University of
Memphis had decided to purchase the campus and would open it as an extension
campus. Within four years of the U of M taking over the school, enrollment was
over 800 students, double the enrollment during most of my time at Lambuth. The
U of M was able to invest money and energy into much needed renovations for campus
facilities and retained on staff many of the influential professors and
administration who were the heart and soul of Lambuth. The student body continued
to keep the Lambuth Eagle Spirit alive, and the newly formed Wesley Foundation
under Steven Fonville’s leadership engaged more students in spiritual growth
and discipleship than it seemed we ever had regularly attend chapel services. Only
through death, a death that hurt deep in my heart and soul, was God able to
bring new life through resurrection to Lambuth.
God brought resurrection out of the closing of West
Nashville UMC, the congregation where I served as an intern during my time at Vanderbilt
Divinity School. At West Nashville, I met Jesus in the face of the neighbors experiencing
poverty and homelessness who attended our Thursday Night Community Meal. When
the congregation closed and merged with St. John’s UMC down Charlotte Pike, they
took on the mission of the Community Meal, ensuring our friends on the streets
still had a place to come, sit, rest, and share a meal on Thursday nights. A
church even still worships on the property (bought and renovated by a commercial
developer) where West Nashville used to sit – a continuing witness to God’s radical
and inclusive love for all.
God brought resurrection out of the end of the Turner
Leadership Scholars program, which I had the immense privilege to participate
in during seminary. Though I was among the last dozen or so students to be part
of the program, I have continued long after graduation to connect with and lean
on my fellow Turner scholars across the United Methodist connection for advice
and counsel. I meet each week via online video chat with my covenant discipleship
group, friends who were part of the Turner program, and who have become my deepest,
most trusted relationships in ministry as we unpack the intersections of life,
ministry, and our own spiritual journeys together.
God brought resurrection out of a terrible season in my life.
In 2014, I graduated from seminary on Friday to come home and find out my husband
had lost his job the next Monday. When our plan had been to stay in Nashville for
me to pursue CPE and Adam to work on his social work license, we quickly made
plans to come back home to Memphis, not sure what the future would hold. Over that
summer, my mother was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor wrapping around her
spine which was removed in an emergency surgery 24 hours after it was
discovered. Because we were available in a way we would not have been before
Adam lost his job, we were able to move in with her to help her recover and
transition to Social Security disability. In September, once Mom was more
stable, Adam and I were offered jobs in the span of the same week—he continuing
to change the world through social work with Youth Villages and me beginning
what would become a beautiful journey with Bolivar FUMC (more about that story in
a blog to come). And now, though she still experiences discomfort daily from
permanent nerve damage caused by the tumor that nearly paralyzed her, my mom is
living fully for Jesus—teaching Bible study with me every week at Grace Place
UMC in the women’s prison, leading small group for older elementary children on
Sunday mornings, volunteering at a Bible club on Wednesdays at Sea Isle School,
serving as the Lay Leader for Colonial Park UMC, and so much more!
During a particularly challenging season of ministry for me,
my good friend and mentor Dr. Angela Harris commented, “I don’t know why you’ve
had to face so much death and so many endings in your life, but God must have a
purpose for it.”
At the 180th session of the Memphis Annual
Conference this year, lay and clergy delegates will vote whether or not to dissolve our
conference and form a new conference, combining with the Tennessee Conference.
Though I know this decision feels like death in some ways for us in Memphis, I
have learned…God will bring resurrection—resurrection for our lives and for the
kingdom. Always! If we just have eyes to see it.
I don’t think anyone would argue with the fact that we are
in a difficult time in the life of the United Methodist Church. The path
towards peace, grace, and love seems difficult. I’m not sure what God will do
with the people called Methodist as we seek to move forward from the conflict and
harm of General Conference 2019, conflict and pain we have been living with in
earnest since 1972.
Maybe the purpose of the deaths I’ve experienced so far in my
life is this…that I would come to believe deeply in the promise of resurrection
at all times, so that I could answer these questions even when it feels like
the denomination I love is at its breaking point.
Why do I believe in
resurrection? Because I’ve seen it. At Lambuth University. At West
Nashville UMC. Through the Turner Leadership Scholars program and the friends
it brought me. In the lives of the women I read Scripture with each week in
prison at Grace Place UMC. In my own life.
How do I know its
real? Because I’ve experienced death, up close and personal. And, out of that
death, I have witnessed God through the love of Jesus Christ and the power of
the Holy Spirit bring the abundant life of resurrection.
May you experience the Grace and Peace Jesus brings through resurrection after death.
--Amanda HW
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