I’m used to
Lent being a hard season. There are usually,
at least extra services on for Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday—but this year, in
a new call, a Holy Week brought a community Lenten service each day. There are often extra Bible Studies or church
study groups—chances for the faithful to be all “Lenten” by taking on more than
normal rather than just “giving something up.”
This year, there wasn’t a special study for me, but in a new
congregation, a weekly Bible Study that I didn’t have a year ago. And getting to Easter Sunday, with a
different rhythm than the past few years was still like a relief valve going
off—even though I wasn’t as overworked as many of my clergy colleagues.
By the time
Easter Sunday arrives, you’ve heard enough about death and that the power of
sin is death—the Easter news that Christ has conquered death is this
announcement of great reprieve.
So this
year, Easter came but death also happened.
Really.
Holy week
brought several people close to my congregation home to the local hospice
house. Another person related to our
congregation then died on Good Friday.
So Easter Sunday was followed immediately by funeral planning. The weekend after Easter in our small South
Arkansas town was inundated with a triddum of memorial services sprinkled around
Sunday morning worship—Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.
And it
wasn’t just me. My Facebook and Twitter
feeds were invaded by news of friends and colleagues facing any number of
funerals astride Easter-related celebrations.
Then, there was the news that a much-beloved-by-many colleague in the
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) had succumbed to pancreatic cancer only a month
after being diagnosed. In the aftermath
of “resurrection” news, death seemed all around.
And death
has seemed sure on display. Not just in
my little part of the world. A deadly
gas attack in Syria was answered by a deadly bombing. Maundy Thursday was interrupted by news that
the “mother of all bombs” had been deployed by U.S. forces. Here in Arkansas, the state not only busily
scheduled the executions of 8 condemned men—two-at-a-time, in order to beat the
expiration date on the drugs used for the executions—it carried out most of
them.
“O death
where is thy sting?”—that famous verse from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the
Corinthian Church—is seemingly just a line.
There’s been sting a-plenty these days.
In these “Easter
weeks” news of even more deaths—people close to members of our Church staff,
anniversaries of other deaths significant in the lives of people around me,
concerns about people’s health, diagnoses of cancer and other illnesses promising
that death hasn’t gone away or yet been completely sacked. The truth is the dying still seems to be
happening, and the rising not so much.
Our lives,
it seems, are continually being transformed by death. People are dying all the time. So what about the promise of the resurrection
having a little more punch? I’d like to
see death finally get punched in the face.
I’m sure that other people would, too.
But too
often our pleas sound only for a reprieve from the pain and suffering associated
with death. We limit our “rising” to
some kind of “stay of death” in which those who die live longer and accompany
us farther on life’s journey. We want a
Lazarus-like re-living, not a Jesus-like resurrecting.
But the
truth is that resurrection isn’t a resuscitation. When Jesus is raised from the dead he isn’t
simply “put back” the way he was. Resurrection
was transformative. And I think that’s
how it’s supposed to be for us, too!
Transformative.
I believe God
is always working on the dark places in our lives. That if nothing else, God gives us strength
and courage not to be so afraid and debilitated in this world. We know that God has good things in mind and
that this is enough, because God doesn’t abandon us to whatever may happen, but
is always at work changing us and the world around us.
The truth
remains, however, that dying and rising in Christ is no easy feat! It usually doesn’t “just happen;” much like
Lent it takes some willingness on our part to engage in the work of “new life.” It actually means change—the change of attuning ourselves more and more to God’s
love, God’s gifts, and God’s possibilities that are always inviting us to do
more, be more, and LIVE more.
So what are
we doing to show the world new life in Christ?
How might we give witness to the daily victory of God in our own lives
and in the lives of those around us?
Where are we seeing Jesus alive and well, and how are we making others
aware?
Jot down some
notes and share them with someone in your life.
New life is worth sharing. That’s
what Jesus does, and we can to. And as
we do, the light of life will displace the darkness. The sting of death may be another matter, but
of the light of life there can be no doubt.
© Rev. David Stipp-Bethune; Teaching Elder
and Pastor, The First Presbyterian Church of El Dorado, Arkansas
