Ain’t No Grave Gonna Keep This Body Down

Well, two days after Easter and here we are, what a weekend, what a dream, what a truth. You know, one of the things I think about when I think about Easter is earthquakes. You say, really? Yeah, well, you know, sometimes in the Easter story, we kind of get quick in the reading. And on the afternoon of the crucifixion, the lights go out. It's dark over the whole land from 12 to 3 in the afternoon, 3 hours, pitch black, metal of the day. That's enough to scare you, we bit. And then there's an earthquake. I'm a California boy. I know about earthquakes. I remember being in the 10th grade in geometry class, 10 o'clock in the morning at Fremont High in East Oakland, California. And all of a sudden that three story brick building began to rock. And that was back in the day of chalkboards where you had sections of chalkboards. And as the building swayed and rattled and rolled, the chalk dust started flying off and filling the room. All of us per the drills that we had with earthquakes climbed under our desk, except from Mr. Albright, who was the math teacher. And he was sitting at his big old desk and is it bounced around, he was in his 60s. He started chuckling, saying, well, this isn't as bad as the 1906 earthquake. Well that was small comfort to a 10th grader hiding under his desk. But a more critical earthquake for me was October 17th, 1989. I'm living in Santa Cruz, California down on Monterey Bay about 90 miles south of San Francisco. And I'm heading across what we called the hill, the coastal range of the Santa Cruz mountains towards San Jose, going up to the East Bay Oakland area to speak at a fundraiser for a group called Teen Challenge, who works with folks who are trying to free themselves from drug addiction. I'm just coming off the summit of that hill at about 3,000 feet and all of a sudden everything goes up for grabs. It was what they called the Loma Prieta earthquake. And that was when, I think it was about 11 miles down in the crust of the earth, the tectonic plague shifted three feet and generated shock waves at, I don't know, 7,000, 10,000 miles an hour to the surface of the earth, released more energy in 15 seconds than all of the armaments of World War II combined, including the A-bombs. It took about 30 seconds for it to get to San Francisco, something like that. But I'm on top of that, coming down through these tall trees, 100, 200 feet high and all of a sudden everything's moving and I'm trying to stop the van I'm driving. And then here's a principle, folks, just want you to know this, that your breaks do not work when the road is moving. That's the first thing. The second thing is there's this old biblical phrase and the tree shall clap their hands. I always thought that was a strut of an expression of exuberance and praise to God and all that. I'm here to tell you that when the trees clap their hands, you really don't want to be close. I'm just saying, okay? Anyway, by the way, for those of you baseball fans, that was the fourth game of the World Series between the Oakland A's and San Francisco Giants. And it happened at 504 p.m. on that evening, not that I remember, of course. That thing is embedded in my psyche, like there's no tomorrow. Well, in this little booklet that I referenced last week that's created by the magazine Christianity today, Reflections on the Easter season, there's a wonderful group of friends, eight of them all together, who have articles and they're focused around a given song. I want to read you a piece of this article called The Resurrection to Come. By Carolyn, and I apologize, Carolyn, I don't know how to say your last name, but it's spelled A-R-E-N-D-S. It's errands or arends or errands, and I'm not sure, but Carolyn has written a wonderful article. She's a recording artist from British Columbia. And this is her thought about thoughts on The Resurrection to Come. Years 1934, her words are these, 12-year-old Claude Ealy was dying in Virginia, stricken with tuberculosis. As his family huddled in prayer around his bedside, the boy began to sing, ain't no grave gonna hold my body down, ain't no grave gonna hold my body down. When I hear that trumpet sound, gonna get up out of this ground, ain't no grave gonna hold my body down. Claude eventually recovered, and the healing in his lungs was so complete that he grew up to become a singer and a preacher, known for his freight train volume and pedagogical gusto. In adulthood, he traveled the south as the, quote, gospel ranger, unquote, proclaiming The Resurrection Power of Jesus in one righteousnessly raucous revival beating after another. On October 12, 1953, almost 20 years after Ealy's boyhood healing, King Records captured him in a, quote, live worship, unquote, recording session at the Electric County Courthouse in Kentucky. The audio for Ain't No Grave has been preserved and listening to it is a visceral experience. Ain't no Claude sings like he's pulling a boulder back in a slingshot. He hollers like he's letting the boulder fly. Other worshipers join him shouts singing and clapping and off beats in a spirit-fueled Pentecostal holiness style, overpowering the microphones as gloriously distorted exuberance. If Ealy delivered Ain't No Grave like a sonic earthquake, perhaps it's because he could trace the song's conviction back to a literal earthquake. Consider how Matthew describes the moment in history that makes the song true. After the Sabbath at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. There was a violent earthquake for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and going to the tomb rolled back the stone and sat on it. The angel must have made quite a sight reclining on the boulder. The Roman army had been certain would keep Christ sealed in his tomb, then he delivered the news that changed absolutely everything. He's not here. He is risen just as he said. As brother Ealy might have declared, no grave could hold his body down. The violent earthquake in Jerusalem that morning was nothing compared to the seismic shift in the cosmos. Every person who encountered the risen Jesus was confronted with the magnificent reality that in the words of C.S. Lewis and miracles, Jesus has forced open a door that has been locked since the death of the first man. He has met, fought, and beaten the king of death. Everything is different because he's done so. This is the beginning of the new creation. A new chapter in cosmic history has opened. Maybe it's only right that Ely's performance of Ain't No Grave is more battering ram than Melodius Choir. The core refrain of Ain't No Grave seems to be more of a primal human expression than the property of anyone artist. The song has since been adapted by countless musicians over the years, including Tom Jones, Russ Taff, Robert Duval, and Molly Skags. Many of us first encountered the song through Johnny Cash, and then she goes to 2003. American country legend Cash was days away from death. With the help of his friend and producer Rick Rubin, he continued to sing in record almost to his last breath. Well, look way down the river. What do you think I see? I see a band of angels, and they're coming after me. Ain't No Grave can hold my body down. When the recording was released on the posthumous album American 6 Ain't No Grave in 2010, listeners encountered a fragility in his legendary voice that made the performance, porous, and transcendent. Rock critics struggled to find words to describe the effect. The Washington Post Bill Friskick's Warren wrote about the spiritual even biblical quality of the music, more pragmatically and powers, a writer at the LA Times, dubbed the project Cash's Hospice Record, which by all accounts was exactly what it was, fast-forward to 2018 here. And Carolyn Wrights, my mother was in hospice. I was lying on the couch next to her bed holding my own breaths in the pauses between her increasingly shallow ones. She'd been unresponsive for days, and I knew her body would soon be in the grave. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. I whispered from 2 Corinthians 5. She seemed absent from her body already. All that remained was an illness-ravid shell, and yet it was still a body I loved. I held her hand, and enacted the code she taught me in childhood. Three squeezes mean, quote, I love you." I traced the remnants of her final manicure in the edges of her fingernails, evidence of her love of color and enjoyment of chats with a salon technician. I adjusted her pillow, and remembered the way her shoulders would shake next to mine, when something struck as funny at church, and we tried to suppress our laughter. I found myself thinking of a stanza in cash's version of Ain't No Grave, one you don't find in many of the other editions. Well, meet me, mother and father, meet me down the river road, and mama, you know that I'll be there when I check in my load. Ain't no grave going to hold my body down. That's when I was almost startled to remember that because I'm a Christian, a believer, my word. I believe not only in the resurrection, but in the resurrection of the body, the resurrection of this body, the one right in front of me. No grave could hold my mother's body down. Paul speaks to it when he reminded me that if we are convinced Christ has truly overcome death and belief in the resurrection of our bodies, it's not only plausible, but essential. I'm going to pause here just for a moment. This is both speaking. There isn't this mind-boggling thought that when we think it's over, it's not over. It goes on. I find tremendous joy in that thought that I get a new body. I want one that's slim and got hair. I kind of have this heretical theology that maybe we're all ten in heaven. I mean, who knows, you know, anyway, going on, this is the Apostle Paul writing, if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say there's no resurrection of the dead? Again, both here, because there was a group of folks in and about the town at that time that said there is no such thing. If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. That's a mouthful, both here again. If Christ has not been raised, then the story doesn't count. It's a fairy tale. I mean, it counts as a fairy tale, but like it's not real going on with Carolyn's words. Then as if sensing my tendency to divorce our resurrected bodies from the ones we have now, the Apostle pressed further. But someone will ask, how are the dead raised with what kind of body will they come? How foolish what you sow does not come to life unless it dies. So will it be with the resurrection of the dead? The body that is sown is perishable, it's raised imperishable. Sown in dishonor is raised in glory. Sown in weakness is raised in power. Sown a natural body is raised as spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Carolyn goes on, it began to dawn on me that our spiritual bodies will be a transfiguration rather than an obliteration of our current ones. The God who made bodies loves them and has truly wonderful plans for them. The old field of space, time, matter, and senses is to be weeded, dug, and sown for a new crop. Suggest Lewis, we may be tired of that old field, but God is not. The early church surmised that our risen bodies will be characterized by subtlety, matter and spirit so in synch that walls are no longer a barrier, agility, the ability to travel wherever we want instantaneously, both here I love that. Impassibility, immunity to illness or injury, and glory, like the luminosity of Christ at the transfiguration, no wonder brother Ely found the resurrection something to hoot and holler about. Today, brother Ely, bosie stirred event, sister tharp and Johnny Cash are in the presence of the Lord yet still anticipating the day resurrection. So for that matter, the Apostle Paul sees Lewis in my mama. What a moment it will be when, quote, in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable and we will all be changed. Maybe then, as we grin at each other and admire our same but different gloriously transformed bodies, we'll sing it all together. When I hear that trumpet sound, I'm going to rise right out of the ground, ain't no grave going to hold my body down. This is both so there I'm out.