Doing my best to find my way.
All this talk about Jesus.
And the stone rolled away.
And the empty tomb.
If you want to know if it is true
Or if it really matters
Or makes a difference
Look in these three places.
In the mirror.
In your heart.
At how you live.
Borrowing from Wendell Berry…
Practice resurrection.
I am just home from an Easter service at the church we are attending.
The service had all the requisite parts.
Easter hymns.
Special music.
Gospel reading of the women at the tomb.
Call and response.
Christ is risen!
Christ has risen indeed!
But, I left the service a bit uneasy.
What if we have it all wrong?
What if we are missing the point of the story?
What if the resurrection narratives are not about Jesus
Or, at least as much about Jesus as we tend to make it
(Maybe it is safer if we keep it about Jesus!?)
What if the narrative is about the disciples
And what happened to them.
Maybe that is the resurrection we need to pay attention to.
The resurrection we need to focus on.
And be convicted by.
Because if the story is really about what happened to the disciples
Then, the story is also about you and me
And what might happen to us
About what God hopes happens to us
Because God knows the world needs resurrection.
Here is what I mean.
The Last Supper is not a memorial meal, but a commission.
Jesus, encouraging the disciples to become the next Jesus.
His body and blood now in us.
Now our body and our blood.
Who he was we are now to be.
But crucifixion is brutal.
And fear is real.
And death is real.
But something changed.
Didn’t it?
Somehow those disciples experienced Jesus alive.
With them.
In them.
His vision of how life and world could be
Should be
Suddenly stronger than their fear
Even of death.
And they found themselves transformed.
Being Jesus to others.
Jesus alive in the world.
I don’t know what happened at the tomb.
In the end, I don’t think it matters that much.
What matters is what happened to the disciples.
And what can happen to you and me.
Look!
The stone’s rolled back.
Not his, but yours!
Get up!
Go!
The time is now and there is work to do!
Resurrection.
Easter blessings all.
Now let’s get to work.
Once a week I am doing a video reflection for the Second Congregational Church in Londonderry, VT which I attend. This is today’s reflection. This is what I wrote. The video link is below. Easter blessings one and all.
Today, I thought I would share with you portions of a poem written by Wendell Berry, an American novelist, poet, environmental activist and farmer. This is from his poem Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
Practice resurrection.
I particularly like that last line.
Practice resurrection.
Now that we have celebrated Easter,
Like the disciples of Jesus,
The question becomes how will we live it.
How will we practice resurrection now that we have experienced and celebrated it?
Today.
Where we are and how we are.
And also tomorrow with whatever tomorrow brings.
I leave you with this prayer.
Remind us of strength, O God.
The strength to care.
The strength to share.
The strength we can lean on.
When we find life hard or challenging or painful.
Remind us of grace, O God.
A grace which heals.
A grace which opens us to hope.
A grace which meets us in the midst of each day
And turns our lives in a new direction.
Remind us of Your dream, O God.
A dream of swords into plowshares.
A dream of a table large enough for all.
A dream of a time and a place when and where
All are named and welcomed as sisters and brothers.
Thy kingdom come.
Remind us of gratitude, O God.
For love which sustains.
For food enough.
For who we are and for who we are called to be.
Amen.
I know I am jumping the gun.
But, that is one of the hazards of my job.
Moving through Holy Week at the same time needing to think about and to get ready for Easter. As I try to find my way, here is what I found myself thinking about this morning.
What came first?
The resurrection?
Or, the stone being rolled away?
I think we often assume the resurrection came first.
Jesus ready when the stone is miraculously pushed back.
But, what if that not the case.
What if Jesus remains dead until that stone is removed?
If that is true, then what about today…
In Aleppo…
In Parkland…
In Paris…
In Seattle…
Next door…
Is Jesus still dead?
If so, who will roll away the stone?
This morning I invite you into a conversation.
About Easter.
About resurrection.
About where you see it and experience it.
About where and how in your life you “practice” it.
A conversation about hope.
About faith.
About new life.
About that moment when, for you and others around you, the Kingdom of God is right here and right now.
As a prompt and to give you a moment to think, several brief reflections on resurrection. First, something I wrote this week for my blog.
Easter Continues
The headlines are harsh.
Describing a reality I read about.
But do not know.
Or understand.
The tomb is real.
The bombs are real.
The fear is real.
The ruthlessness is real.
Yet, somewhere a stone is rolled back.
Just a bit.
Just enough.
And life pushes its way out.
Into the harshness of the headlines.
Refusing to bow down.
Or to be silent.
Or to hide.
Easter.
Do I feel it?
Or see it?
Sometimes.
But not always.
But it does not depend on me.
Beyond my seeing
My knowing.
It is there.
And these two reflections which Leslie Mott, our Coordinator for Spirituality and Practice, used in our Spirituality groups this past week. The first is a few lines from Wendell Berry’s poem, Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.
So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute.
Love the Lord.
Love the world.
Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.
Practice resurrection.
And, this…. (I am not sure where this is from.)
“Once in a parish mission when I was studying this scripture with a large group (Luke 7: 11-17/Jesus raising a young man who had died), someone called our harshly, ‘Have you ever brought someone back from the dead?’ I had been saying that life happens when we are interrupted, and that some of the most powerful acts of resurrection happen to the least likely people; that we are the people of resurrection and hope, called to live passionately and compassionately with others, to defy death, to forgive, and to bring others back into the community, to do something that is life-giving, that fights death and needless suffering. And then this challenge from the back of the church.
My response was ‘Yes.’
I went on to say, ‘Every time I bring hope to a situation, every time I bring joy that shatters despair, every time I forgive others and give them back dignity and the possibility of a future with me and others in the community, every time I speak the truth in public, every time I confront injustice – yes – I bring people back from the dead.”
Conversation.
[Here we had a 10 minute conversation about where we see and experience Easter.]
And, to wrap up, two additional reflections…
John 21 (read the entire narrative yourself)
But here is what strikes me about this passage.
After the experience of the resurrection, whenever and however that happened, the disciples returned to Galilee, where they had lived their entire lives, and went fishing, which they had done their entire lives. It was there where they lived each day that they met Jesus. Maybe the same is true or can be true for us.
I had a second letter (the first letter was written to the children and shared earlier in the service) in my empty Easter basket this morning.
Dear Bedford Presbyterian Church,
Thank you for all you do to make the world a better place.
It matters.
And, it makes a difference.
Today, I would like you to remember this.
Easter is, not Easter was.
God.
