It’s a week since Easter Day – a week since we celebrated that central focus in the life of the Christian church – a week since the bare church was transformed with the vivid, joyful colours of dahlias piled high on the communion table and the choir candles returned to bring light, signifying our hope. It’s just a week – seven days since we announced once more that even in our most hopeless times, even when all seems to be destroyed, the sun does break through again. It was just a week ago we affirmed that in God, all things can be transformed. A week can be a long time. In seven days, new worlds can be created – and destroyed; births and deaths can change our lives; our life stories can take many twists and turns.
Of course, for our culture, Easter is over... the story is old news: the eggs and hot-cross buns are now ‘out-dated stock’; the long weekend is over; the Easter sales make way for ‘mid-season’ clearances. But, for the Church, Easter has just begun – again. For this story forms the framework of our being – it provides the way of shaping meaning for our lives. And, for that reason, every Sunday, throughout the year, the Christian Church celebrates the amazing good news of that first Easter conviction: that, in God transformation is possible. And, the church will continue to observe the Easter Season over the next few weeks, as part of the Christian Liturgical Year, because, for us, Easter is anything but over: as we sang in our opening hymn “Christ is alive and the universe must celebrate”!
As I mentioned last week, the words “Christ is alive” and “Christ is risen” are shorthand phrases Christians use to affirm that life emerges from death and that joy breaks through the clouds of despair. In claiming “Christ is risen”, we are not being asked to suspend our rational minds; rather, we are being asked to open our minds and our hearts to something ‘more’ – a way of living that deals with all our present joy, our pain and hurt – a way that releases us from our deathly despair into transforming love and hope. There can be nothing more promising than to assert Christ is risen!
The resurrection is the Christian way of describing a life-time journey. It’s a way of writing our life-story around a central commitment to a process of “dying to an old way of being and living into a new way of being”. Throughout his teaching, Jesus used the image of deaths and resurrections as the way to abundant and flourishing life. Sometimes we experience this as a single, dramatic moment of being confronted with the amazing possibilities of new life, (described by some, including Jesus in his encounter with Nicodemus, as being born again) – more often, we have “simple, gradual and incremental” daily experiences of choosing and experiencing life over death and despair in this way of the cross, which is our life journey.[1]
It’s worth noting that this way of living out our story – this path of dying to the old and being reborn into the new, is a “process at the heart not only of Christianity, but of the other enduring religions of the world. The image of following ‘the way’ is common in Judaism, [where] ‘the way’ involves a new heart, a new self centered in God. One of the meanings of the word ‘Islam’ is ‘surrender’: to surrender one’s life to God by radically centering in God. And Muhammad is reported to have said, ‘Die before you die.’ Die spiritually before you die physically, die metaphorically (and really) before you die literally. At the heart of the Buddhist path is ‘letting go’ – the same internal path as dying to an old way of being and being born into a new. According to the Tao te Ching, a foundational text for both Taoism and Zen Buddhism, Lao Tzu said: ‘If you want to become full, let yourself be empty; if you want to be reborn, let yourself die.”[2]
Let yourself die ... let go what is holding you back so that you may experience new, transforming life – in all its fullness.
Marcus Borg[3] suggests there are two transformations necessary in the Christian way – the way of individual and personal transformation and the way of communal, social, political, transformation. Today, I invite you to consider the way of your personal transformation. How is your life story being written as you live the resurrection way? Did last Sunday’s celebration help you celebrate the delight of Love waking again – even and especially when hate and sorrow seem to overwhelm everything? Did you carry that hope high through the week; or did life circumstances swallow up last Sunday’s tender shoot of possibility? Was the seed of something new planted in your heart; or did your rational mind refuse to entertain any idea that things could be different? O, yes, we all know how doubt and fear seize us in our daily lives.
This weekend, Rod and I have been in Christchurch – a city that knows so much about hope waiting to be reborn, even as it grieves tremendous loss; a city where resurrection promise, encouragement and spirit is evident; a city urging itself – and urged by others: kia kaha – keep strong; a city where waiters in cafes have printed on the back of their t-shirts – walk tall. We were in Christchurch for the Ecumenical Board of Theological Studies graduation ceremony. There, we celebrated resurrection moments in the lives of women and men, all of whom were in what might be called the second half – or even third age of their lives. These people had dedicated themselves to study by distance, over many years and, on Friday night, with their families and tutors, they celebrated the growth and transformation which had occurred in their lives through their in-depth studies of bible, church, ministry and theology.
Guest speaker at the graduation was Professor Colin Gibson, who invited us all to consider how ‘stories are never innocent’ – ‘never up to nothing’ – always doing something - taking us on a journey of self-discovery. As I listened to Colin take us through a Margaret Mahy[4] story with its invitation to refuse to be fearful and timid – but rather to claim the abundance of passionate life – I found myself reflecting on the Easter Stories, with their similar themes.
As we noted last Sunday, the resurrection story in Mark’s gospel ends with dumb-struck amazement and fear. This morning’s first reading, another resurrection story of the early church, is about the transformation of a community into a people of extraordinary compassionate generosity; while our gospel reading describes the way in which Christ’s peace can transform locked down terror.
“Like all stories”, Colin Gibson reminded us on Friday night, “this story knows about you and me.” “Stories hold up a mirror of so many people who might be me.” When we enter the story, consider who we might be within it and imagine ourselves determining its ongoing journey, transforming hope is possible.
Who are you in the resurrection story – and how is your hope-filled life shaped by that story?
On this Sunday, a week after Easter Day, are you one of the women, whose fear and terror cripple you – preventing you from speaking out the wondrous possibility of hope? If this is you, you might ponder how the story came to be told (and continues to be retold) – if the women didn’t ever speak....
Are you one of those disciples who shut themselves away behind locked doors ... huddled tight, terrified of how others might cause you dreadful harm? If this is you, you might ponder how Jesus’ offer of peace breaks through fearful lockdowns....
Or, are you, like Cleopas and his companion, so busy talking and rationalising all that has happened in your life, that you can’t see the presence of Christ – walking alongside you, offering you something different, something more? If this is you, you might ponder how hope emerges, when strangers are invited to share food together ...
Are you like Thomas, holding out from any full commitment until you have proof – proof that this way of Jesus will overturn all your fears and doubts – now! If this is you, you might ponder how hope is found in touching the nailed hands and pierced bodies of those this world crucifies each and every day ...
Perhaps you are like the early church described in the Acts reading, already fired by the ongoing presence of the Holy Spirit – compassionate and generous, wanting to live out your faith in grace and love. If this is you, you might ponder how your enthusiasm will be shared with this community so that others will catch your vibrant vision of hope.
On this Sunday, a week after Easter, what ever way your resurrection story is being lived out, may you, like the writer of the Gospel of John affirm, my story is being written so that all who read it may have life – transforming life, in all its fullness.
No comments:
Post a Comment