“Resurrection …is the End of the World ”

 Cross Seekers, Empty Tomb Finders, Good News Bearers,

These days we celebrate Easter like clockwork.  While the date for Easter is fluid …tied to the moon phases in relationship to when the Passover is—we look forward to it every year.  We count the days of Lent (forty, plus Sundays); we anticipate Holy Week, lost eggs, marshmallow peeps, Reese’s eggs, Cadbury eggs, and an empty tomb—as if all these things are “normal.”  We mark Easter, as if it’s NORMAL! 

As I shared with you last month, Biblical scholar and preaching guru Thomas Long would remind us that Easter changes everything! 

“ …Easter …is instead the end of this word.  Easter destroys the perceived world at hand, and before we sing about the joy of Easter’s new reality, it is crucial to feel the shock and to see the destructive power of the Resurrection on the old reality. ” 

Everything about resurrection is disorienting—or should be!  From the fact that the dead are raised, to Jesus’ walking through walls with real wounds from his crucifixion, to expectations about our own demise and rising.  In our world, the dead are supposed to remain dead—the walking dead, is only a TV show! 

But what are we to do when little seems to really change about our lives?  When the “difference” in resurrection is mostly a story for us about the one who was raised?  When what we hope for, isn’t what is seen?  When Long declares that the world was CHANGED BY GOD who does resurrection, what are we supposed to experience?  What should we be looking for? 

 

Death doesn’t win.  This year marks 4 years of COVID.  So many died.  But death isn’t the last word.  War in Ukraine drags on and on; there’s war in Gaza; there’s violence in Haiti; drought and starvation and gang violence and broken government hold much of Africa’s nations hostage it seems; there’s terrorism; violent rhetoric and dehumanization …yet, death doesn’t win.  Sin, cannot triumph.  The victory—is God’s! 

Honestly …I don’t know “how” this works.  I must believe God’s promises, and what God has done.  God raises Jesus.  God declares, we are raised, too.  None …are lost.  And yet, so many are lost in this life. 

But this allows us to live our life for others.  This allows us to give fully of ourselves as Jesus does.  This allows us love …with reckless abandon.  This allows us to live freely with the Kingdom of God in our heart, in our minds, in our hands.  So, this is not just Jesus’ resurrection …it’s our resurrection.  It’s our laying down the life of the world and taking up the life of the Kingdom of God. 

For Easter, God says: This world is finished; our life together isn’t!  …Goodbye old world.  Easter’s come and gone.  Now it’s time to live like it. 

It is my privilege to remind you that Jesus loves you.  So do I.  God wants the best for us and is inviting us to fulfill our calling.  Jesus dies; but God raised Jesus in the Resurrection, and that changes everything!  Get ready.  The tomb was empty.  Christ is risen!  And so are we! 

“ What Is God: Resurrection! ”

Jesus Followers, Cross Seekers, Good News Bearers,

Well known preacher and teacher, Thomas Long, begins a recent article in a preaching journal with a story about the gathering of scholars who wrote the Westminster Confession of Faith.  He reminds readers of this moment when one of the members of the Westminster Assembly raised the question, “What is God?”  But when none in the Assembly had enough sand to try and offer an answer, they turned to the youngest person in the room to give a formal answer, a young 30-something Scottish Pastor named George Gillespie.  Unlucky enough to be called upon, “I need God’s wisdom,” he said, his voice surely cracking.  “Will you join me in prayer?”  And then he prayed:

“ O God, thou art a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in thy being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. ” 

Though Gillespie’s offering was simple and majestic, the Assembly did what assemblies often do, beefing up the words, piling on the descriptions, and trying to include every possible definition in what seems like a William Faulkner-esque sentence.  Good for them! 

Long simply recalls that when Moses spoke to the burning bush and asked who it was that was there, all he received was the reply “I am who I am.”  And then goes on to quote theologian Robert Jensen’ s answering the question, “Who is God?” this way: “God is whoever raised Jesus from the dead, having before raised Israel from Egypt.” 

Easter is coming—arriving before your next newsletter!  Easter is coming, and Jensen’s radiant definition implies we need a new definition of God—that we must refashion our understanding of God in light of what God did in the Resurrection!  What is God?  God is what raised Jesus from the dead!  This is Long’s way of saying, “Easter changes everything!”  He writes:

“ …Easter is not a way to get along better in the world as it is but is instead the end of this word.  Easter destroys the perceived world at hand, and before we sing about the joy of Easter’s new reality, it is crucial to feel the shock and to see the destructive power of the Resurrection on the old reality. 

 

“…The Resurrection …is instead the unmasking of the present reality, the world we assumed was permanent, the world of business as usual, the world of inevitable death.  Easter is an earthquake destroying the reality we thought could never change, a world in which dead people stay dead and in which some little tyrant is always placing guards in the cemetery to make sure it remains that way.  Easter is a lightening -bold illuminated flash forwarded to that time when “The Kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever.”  That joyful good news of Easter is an obituary and a birth announcement combined: the old world has passed away and the new has come. ” 

 

“ …Easter calls for a change of citizenship.  The frightening demand, the more-astounding-than-can-be-imagined invitation, of Easter, is to leave the familiar but dying world behind and to enter the new, unexpected, and uncertain world revealed in the Resurrection. ” 

 

Long suggests we cannot look at Easter in the way we’ve been used to celebrating it.  It’s not a moment in which to cheer, “Up from the grave [Jesus] arose!” or, to simply exclaim, “the tomb is empty,” as if, once again, “Jesus were the reason for the season.”  No.  Instead, the world was changed by the God who does resurrection.  It is no longer the world to which we are accustomed; it is the world God would make it to be because …RESURRECTION! 

That takes some getting used to.  And …well, we’re not used to it! 

It is my privilege to remind you that Jesus loves you.  So do I.  God wants the best for us and is inviting us to fulfill our calling.  Jesus dies; but God raised Jesus in the Resurrection, and that changes everything!  Get ready.  Gird your loins.  Easter is coming.  The journey was already started! 

“ Followers …and Sharers of the good news ”

 

Star-Followers, Jesus Followers, Good News Sharers,

As we take a deep breath for a couple of weeks in February—free of the Christmas exuberance and yet unfettered by the Lenten disciplines that arrive mid-month—Jesus is being revealed for us in several lectionary stories from the beginning of his ministry.  “Epiphany” is more familiar as a date on the calendar when we remember the visit of the Magi as told in Matthew’s Gospel; but what is pivotal in Matthew’s story is that the Epiphany is the first story in a series of stories that reveal Jesus to be …in the world.  Not just as a baby! 

Going a bit further in the gospel narratives, we see Jesus revealed as a healer, as Jesus casts out unclean spirits and with authority over demons, when Jesus touches the untouchable, feeds the hungry, restores the broken, repairs the brokenhearted.  Jesus is in OUR WORLD, restoring human wholeness and righteousness.  We witness Jesus became the living reality of what the prophet Jonah testifies about God …that God:

“[is] a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment.” 

Jesus is the living manifestation of God.  We see this in how he treats his followers, how he speaks to crowds of people, how he reacts in the presence of those who are broken, how he treats Pharisees and scribes even.  Who he eats with.  If he’s willing to touch someone.  How Jesus responds to needs as they arise …in a synagogue, on a mountaintop, along the roadside. 

And yes, while we follow the Epiphany star, while we confess Jesus as Lord and pledge to “follow him,” even when he says we will “fish for people,” even when we may not fully understand, we are graciously and generously being armed with powerful bits of “good news”:

God doesn’t leave us; God is with us.  God doesn’t lose focus; God claims us.

God reveals to us the one who is anointed to share good news with the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the oppressed and release to the captive, to proclaim the year of God’s favor—so that we might also bear witness and share this good news!  …We’re called to be followers—yes!  But aren’t we also called to be sharers? 

I don’t know about you, but I think the world could use a bit more of grace, mercy, and steadfast love, so that it contributes to less punishment and less anger.  Not that bad actors get a free pass, but that we help build the world’s capacity toward resilience.  Life is already hard enough, without us trying to heap on more problems—like trying not get angry by getting even. 

As we encounter gospel stories where Jesus begins to move about the Galilean landscape, as he walks and talks with disciples and strangers, as he demonstrates his authority to change lives and restore the life God intended for human beings—where are the moments in our own lives, where we do the same?  Where we “share” by reenacting the moments where Jesus is Jesus? 

In other words, a step beyond “What would Jesus do?”—to get to, “this is what I saw Jesus do, so this is what I’m going to do.” 

Remember.  We come on Sunday, bringing the world around us to God.  And we leave worship to take God with us back into the world. 

It is my privilege to remind you that Jesus loves you.  So do I.  God wants the best for us and is inviting us to fulfill our calling.  Jesus is born, he has been revealed in the world, so that now he can also be revealed through what we do. 

“ Christmas Time, Giving Time, New Time, Life Time ”

Jesus Followers,

Sometimes I feel like the joy of Christmas for too many is getting through the rush to the manger, to see the baby.  Like the shepherds, who’d been invited by the angels, before going with all possible haste to find the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.  RUSH through the season to get to the end!  …There should be more than this to Christmas, don’t you think?  

A few years ago, at the stewardship conference I serve on the planning team for, one of the speakers presented a radical “new” idea …have the stewardship campaign starting in January, rather than September or October.  The original idea came from someone who recognized that the natural conclusion to the Christmas story is gift-bearing.  People still groaned. 

When it was pointed out that most people experience a “come to Jesus moment” when the Christmas euphoria wears off, and it’s time to pay the credit card bills—someone saw an opportunity for the Church to talk about another relationship to money that can be life-giving, rather than life-sucking.  Many still doubted. 

When it was suggested that most of us are pre-conditioned to naturally consider our money in relation to our “contributions” because of tax season, some thought a stewardship campaign before “tax day” could be timely and helpful, and useful toward more “contributions.”  And still, some saw only unwelcome change. 

When it was demonstrated that the church had good things to say about money, and our relationship to money, and that money empowers mission and ministry …it seemed a whole lot better to who a whole lot more folks to start talking about money in the new year, rather than the old year.  But…. 

I don’t know that this presenter with bold stewardship ideas actually got very far, even though the presentation was compelling.  Old habits are hard to break; but this isn’t about giving money.  Instead, the “end” of Christmas isn’t simply that a baby was born, or even THE baby was born.  Rather, Christmas should remind us all that there’s work to do now.  Christmas joy and the incarnation should invite us to live in bold, new, reimagined ways. 

Jesus has arrived …in us.  WE can now be God’s gift to the world, in the form of Kingdom values and Kingdom living.  …Now that the baby is born (like when most other babies have been born) …the real work begins!  How are you doing, Church? 

If the reason for the season was Jesus—now’s the time to get to work.  Here’s how the prophet Isaiah describes us: 

" The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion—to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.  They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, to display his glory.  They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. "  

We may be used to doing it another way.  Christmas means …dare I say—“a new way.” 

It is my privilege to remind you that Jesus loves you.  So do I.  God wants the best for us and is inviting us to fulfill our calling.  Jesus is born, now he’s in us. 

" Prince of Peace "

Jesus Followers,

My prayer, every year for Advent and Christmas, for as long as I can remember—even back when I was a child—has been for peace on earth and good will among people.  Disappointed isn’t the right word for how I feel about the seeming failure of God’s gift of Jesus to accomplish this …but my life somehow feels like a perpetual advent—waiting. 

There is a moment in this season, every year, in which I often feel that “all the world is hushed.”  There’s an experience I have of timeless holiness where the world itself appears to me to stop being a whirling dervish and I feel a moment of sweet relief—a familiar hushed-ness, as if I can hear the whole world take a collective breath in a pause that lasts …never long enough. 

Unlike some other years, this year, there’s war again in the Middle East, in Israel,

with Palestine.  I took this photograph 14 years ago while visiting Bethlehem—so it’s never lost on me these days that Bethlehem is physically located in Palestinian territory, is perpetually being fought over, while separated from Israel by a huge wall.  The place where Jesus—the Prince of Peace—was born, now is seemingly forever at the heart of a conflict between human beings, where the Church of the Nativity stands in the shadow of another part of this wall, with a similar turret not far away.  It’s shocking. 

While the world screams for peace, we’re often still building walls by which to accomplish that peace rather than building the relationships that could lead to peace.  Maybe we come by this naturally.  One of the popular seasonal additions to the Food Network on television is called, “Holiday Wars.”  …Holiday WARS.  Let that sink in a little bit! 

For years, we’ve been used to the idea of armed conflict among shoppers for Black Friday deals.  More recently, stores have used our inability to avoid conflict with relatives at Thanksgiving dinner, to provide an “escape” by staying open on Thanksgiving Day—as if somehow, that’s a needed service (now there are even incentives NOT to behave?!?).  “My kid has to have that toy,” or, “my family needs that even bigger TV”, so I’m justified if I come to blows for it, right?  AND, it’s even acceptable to abandon every Thanksgiving decorum in order to ensure we get it! 

…So I come to treat every Advent as a time in which to begin again toward peace.  To try and slow down, to breathe deep, to step into the subtle messages from stories of long ago.  I try to remember what love incarnate is supposed to look like …and feel like.  Both to be loved and to love. 

It’s too easy of an “out” to simply blame it on “the world’s gone mad.”  The world being mad is maybe the primary reason that God sends Jesus to us.  It was into a mad, mad world that God put Jesus.  A savior, a king, born to an unwed peasant girl in a stable; someone without power, who would transform the world, who could help the world be a little less mad, transfiguring the lives of people, one at a time and entrusting others to see and believe in a different kingdom, a different order, in which LOVE reigns.  …So, I light my candles.  I wait in expectant hope of this Advent and Christmas being the one of true peace. 

It is my privilege to remind you that Jesus loves you.  So do I.  God wants the best for us and is inviting us to fulfill our calling.  Out of chaos, into hope and love and light and joy! 

“ The Part about NOT Following Jesus ”

 Jesus Followers, 

While “stewardship” is usually the word we use to describe “giving to the church,” I hope you’ve both seen written and heard proclaimed that it’s primarily or even more rightly about how we are called to live, how we are invited to use the gifts God has placed within our reach, and about seeing the Kingdom of God and how we might “fit” as a part of it.  Yes.  Our money is a part of how we respond to God and a part of how we might “fit” into the work of the Kingdom—but it’s certainly not the only part.  Let’s face it.  If looking good “with our money” were how this worked, we would simply have people write checks toward their place in heaven.  Can you hear all the personal appeals… 

“…there could be streets lined with gold, if you join heaven’s pre-payment plan.” 

You don’t need me to tell you that this isn’t how it works; you know already that our congregation’s mission and vision operates differently:  WE love because God first loved us!   

You know already, probably, that stewardship and following Jesus go hand in hand.  They’re about living fully and faith-filled lives following Jesus—who is the epitome of how God loves.  It’s about incorporating and using all the gifts we’ve been given to “make life on earth as it is in heaven” (to borrow from what Jesus teaches us to pray and do).   

But this month in worship, we’re facing some of Jesus’ most challenging stories.  You’ve heard about following Jesus.  …I wonder if you’d be willing to think about it differently.   

In his book, The Jesus Way: A Contemporary Approach to the Teachings of Jesus, Eugene Peterson asks:  

What if Jesus' messiahship was about creating a messianic community filled with the Spirit who would join him in turning the world right side up ...getting heaven into us rather than getting us into heaven? 

…What if Jesus weren’t just the one we followed, but the one who “gets heaven into us?”   

Maybe start with an image like communion—where we literally take Christ in—as a catalyst for transforming us.  …Like God, who at the time of creation, took chaos as a building block, transforming it as creation.   

What if we’re not just “following Jesus,” but supposed to be transformed into Jesus-ness …being made into little pieces of heaven-ness ourselves?  So that we are turning the world into the image that’s resident in each of us—the creator, or just as Jesus teaches us to pray, “on earth as it is in heaven.”   

It might mean then, that not just following Jesus, but that we are invited (or CALLED) to use God’s gifts “on earth as it is in heaven.”  And “stewardship” is how we manage what we’ve been given.   

…Then, it would help if we began to talk about heaven as something we’ve already been given; rather than simply believing, it’s only yet to come.   

It is my privilege to remind you that Jesus loves you.  So do I.  God wants the best for us and is inviting us to fulfill our calling.  Out of chaos, into hope and love and light and joy!