A Decent Burial

Will Willimon said somewhere in his book, Accidental Preacher, that most of us would have been better off if Jesus had left us alone. He was being cheeky but also making a point. It's awesome to think about a new life when our current one sucks. But we forget that it also requires that we give the old life a decent burial.

"Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may life a new life."

Romans 6:2-4 NIV

What dry, dead bones are you holding onto? They may be preventing you from having space for a new life.

Disillusioned

Anyone who knows me understands that as of late, I have questioned my purpose for living. I have asked my husband and children, "Did I ruin our lives when I agreed to leave our cozy nest at 'big church' and strike out on this pilot project in 1999 that is still chugging along in 2021?" No one has exactly given me a ringing endorsement that no, indeed not, I did not ruin our lives. Instead, they have hugged me and allowed me to process my own grief and suffering with a lot of support. And peanut butter.

As usual, the scriptures find a way to sit with me.

When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent his disciples to ask him, "Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?" Matthew 11:2 NIV

John the Baptist, the guy who foretold the coming of Christ and preached repentance with vim and vigor, wants to know what the heck is going on here. He's in prison NOT for following his call to declare the coming of the Lord. He's locked up because he condemned Herod for marrying his brother's wife. Soon John's head will roll, quite literally, because a wicked mother encouraged her daughter to ask for his head on a platter FOR HER BIRTHDAY! Sheesh. Jesus is NOT doing what John expected the Messiah to accomplish.

Jesus was SUPPOSED to end political oppression. Jesus was SUPPOSED to bring in a new ruler and a new authority. Jesus was SUPPOSED to clean up the corruption and get rid of the bad guys.

Last night Pete and I were out walking and I was reviewing my expectations for the last 22 years of my life. Early on, I would end most messages with a rousing, "We can do this!" Until I learned we could not. It seemed so...simple and clear to me back then and in some ways I see it the same today. IF we could pull together and commit to sacrificing for the greater good, we COULD make a difference. We COULD provide resources for suffering families. And - we can and we do. But it is not at all like I expected.

I want treatment to work and I want people to want to work at getting healed. I do. And treatment does work - sometimes. And people are able to manage their use disorders - more often than we hear about on social media. But I want it all NOW. No more deaths by suicide; no more overdoses; no more families ripped apart. Surely Jesus, who talks more about love than sin, who hangs out with my kind of people, who performs miracles and just all around GETS IT - wants the same thing?

Here's what we end up with. We end up with a God who supports us while we find our own answers. We get a God who allows us the privilege of living with the consequences of our actions. We end up with a God who holds us in his big hand when we wonder if we have ruined our life without feeling the need to offer false comfort.

Man, this faith stuff is a lot harder than I thought it was when I used to sing, totally off-key, "Trust and obey, for there is no other way, to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey." Tomorrow, we'll consider why this is not bad news. Stay tuned.

Evidence

"Each time we love again after having our love rejected, we share in the power of the resurrection. Each time we hope again after having our hope smashed to pieces, we share in the power of the resurrection. Each time we pick up the pieces, wipe our tears, face the sun and start again, we share in the power of the resurrection." East Indian Jesuit Pratap Naik

In the meantime, we do not know what it'll mean, we just have evidence that it is so. And this evidence inspires us to respond to the breath of God on our dry, dead bones. Reviving us after tragic loss. Renewing our hope. Giving us a vision for how to carry on after destruction and death and ruin. On May 2nd our community will begin opening up again after over a year of pandemic zooming. We have no idea what it will look like, all the different feelings that this change will bring up for each of us. There will be all sorts of different reactions. But what we must do, we who want to be faithful, is learn to trust God's resurrection strength. In any form it arises.

"Let us rise up and build"

Nehemiah 2:18.

Resurrection is Out-of-the-Box Believing

None of us are familiar with resurrection, are we? Dead people do not come back to life except in horror movies. This is entirely unnatural. But as unnatural as it is, every time I return to this story I find new things to confound and inspire me. In a sermon preached by Barbara Brown Taylor, she says this, "A resurrection is a miracle of another order. There is no continuity with life as we know it. The spark is utterly extinguished. The heart stops...Death occurs, beyond a shadow of a doubt. The living withdraw to get on with their lives and the silence is complete. Then, when everything is over, something entirely new begins. What was cold becomes warm again, and what lay still sits up. Creation occurs all over again - not a spark rescued from the ashes but a whole new fire kindled out of nothing - the gracious act of the only one who can make life out of dust, not just once upon a time, or even at the end of time, but over and over again."

And here is the point that I want to emphasize in the midst of this Easter season. Life is more than what we can experience. Jesus did not die to rescue us from God, Jesus died the way he did so that we would understand that the God we worship knows what suffering and death is like and we are never alone. Jesus rose again, so we know that death is not a final ending, but a new beginning. Now, there's a lot we do not know. God keeps things invisible - like the resurrection - and these invisible truths are more important than anything we can fact check. Paul says in Corinthians that if we do not believe the resurrection "our preaching is useless and so is our faith." (1 Corinthians 15:14). He's a good one to speak on the subject since he witnessed first hand God's mighty power on the road to Damascus. Because here is the thing...

We no longer have to believe that it is up to us keep things alive. Not our children, not our parents, not our spouses or even ourselves. Because we know this - "God has never forgotten how to breathe life into piles of dust."

BTB

In my life, I confess that I have felt a strong pressure to keep struggling or dead or dying things alive. No more. This is God's work. But it is encouraging to know that He works in this way. What have you spent too much time and energy trying to "keep going"? What pressures have you put on yourself that you need to release?

A Re-Cap of Pre-Easter Events…

On Palm Sunday, the week before Easter, Jesus enters Jerusalem to shouting and praise. "This is Jesus, the Prophet from Nazareth in Galilee." (Matthew 21:11) But the party did not last long, soon the religious leaders were questioning his authority - not because they doubted he was God's son but because in fact THEY KNEW he was who he claimed to be. Jesus was on his game - teaching and answering questions, confounding and comforting the listeners. When he was finished, two days before Passover, he predicted his crucifixion - and Judas agrees to betray Jesus. Some people say it was for money - 30 pieces of silver. Others speculate that Judas was pushing Jesus to reveal himself, believing that Jesus would ultimately rise victorious. But it did not go as the pundits predicted and Judas died by suicide having returned the 30 pieces of silver to those who bribed him for information about Jesus' whereabouts. Now - we know that Jesus does rise again, but first, there was this:

Jesus was arrested, charged, abandoned by religious leaders, followers, political leaders and the common man. To be fair, Pilate did not want to crucify him. His wife sent him a note and told him in no uncertain terms to NOT let this happen. He tried to wriggle out of it, but the crowd was charged up and they cried for his crucifixion. This year, when I reread this story, I read it with more fear. That must have been truly terrifying for everyone. A whipped up crowd with bad intel and a political leader trying to maintain control of this city under Roman domination. Pilate had Jesus flogged and then absented himself from the crowd - washing his hands of the deed. Then the crucifixion. Insults hurled. Mocked and ridiculed.

And then, after hours of his torture, he cries out, "It is finished." Man, it was scary, the temple curtain tore from the top down, an earthquake shook rattled and rolled the land. The land went dark. He was laid in a tomb. But it wasn't enough for the authorities, who knew the scriptures. They remembered that Jesus had said, "After three days I will rise again." You see, Jesus did not get crucified because authority figures believed he was lying about who he was - they had him crucified because they believed. They believed that he was the Son of God. So they ordered for the tomb to be made secure so that his body would not be stolen.

Mary Magdalene and the other Mary show up at the tomb in total grief. They cannot find the body to anoint. An angel, doing what angels do, told the two Mary's to not be afraid; Jesus has risen. Go tell the disciples. Along the way, Jesus appears. In the gospel of John, a grieving Mary hears her name called as Jesus says, "Mary." And at that moment, she knows. She recognizes him. She goes to tell the disciples and they don't believe her. (Luke 24)

And so it goes. This group of Jesus followers just cannot figure out what is going on! And yet...God finds a way to work with them. They are, according to Jesus in the gospel of Luke, "dull minded". And so are we. We miss seeing Jesus, and we miss seeing ourselves as God sees us too. If we were to accept that God works with whatever we give him and in the end, God's plan will be fulfilled, then what would you do differently with your day? What would that belief change in you?