THE RESURRECTION IS NO BIG DEAL

John, the Apostle and Evangelist, in his Gospel says this about his and Peter’s encounter with the empty tomb on Easter morning: “Then the other disciple [John}, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.” (John 20:8-10)

When I first read this passage years ago and even many years past that time, my first reaction was that I didn’t believe it. I did not believe that John immediately “saw and believed”; nor did I believe that he and Peter simply returned to their homes as if what they saw, an empty tomb, meaning that Jesus had been raised from the dead, was really no big deal.

It certainly was a big deal. And why would John declare that he, for one, immediately believed that Jesus had been raised from the dead when, later on in that same passage he basically takes Thomas to task for not believing that Jesus had been raised and that he and the rest of the Apostles had seen him in the flesh? Was he simply giving himself a pat on the back?

Maybe he was. Even sainted Apostles can have egos. However, to cut John a break, what I think he was saying was, yes, the resurrection was and is no big deal, nothing to get excited about, so just go home, if, and this is a big “if”, if we believe. If we believe that Jesus is the son of God, why, of course, he was raised from the dead. Is there any doubt that he would be? He said he would. The tomb’s empty. He’s risen. Might as well go home and wait to see what Jesus wants us to do next. What John is saying is that for a believer the resurrection is no big deal.

For a non-believer, it is a big deal because that person will simply state that a bodily resurrection of some dead-as-a-doornail-as-Jesus-was could not have been bodily raised. It is simply impossible. But we are believers even if we have no way of understanding what happened or what the resurrected Jesus looked like or how he got from one place to another, like entering the room where the disciples were even as the doors were locked.

We believers don’t waste a lot of time trying to explain the unexplainable. What we are supposed to do is, well, go home, think about what we believe, and then get on with living out that belief as best we can. We’ll never prove to a non-believer that Jesus was raised from the dead, not in a way that such a person can understand.

But we do, in fact, prove our belief in the resurrection by living out our faith each day, especially in those instances when a non-believer would tell us that we are foolish to do what we are doing: like turning the other cheek, forgiving when we should be asking for justice and vengeance, giving the shirt off our back. The resurrection? No big deal.

EASTER PEOPLE

Years ago when I was in seminary, one of the banners we had hanging around the place read “We Are Easter People and Alleluia Is Our Song.” Well, we were and it was living, as were, in an environment closed off from the real world behind the seminary doors and walls. The outside world was much different as I soon learned after seminary when I was thrust into parish life in that real world. Over the years I have come to learn that there are many kinds of Easter People who have their own songs to sing.

First, there are the Easter Bunny People for whom Easter is a family celebration with the Easter Bunny and jelly beans and chocolate eggs and a nice dinner and nothing more, certainly no church and no idea what Easter is really about.

The second group are the Easter Bunny, Holy Day people. Easter is a holiday and a holy day. Easter wouldn’t be Easter without the Easter Bunny and all that goes with him but it also wouldn’t be Easter without church.

The third group is made up of the Easter Bunny, Holy Day, Confused Christians. They love the secular part of Easter and are in church not just on Easter and Christmas but regularly. But they are confused. They wonder, “What does it all mean? What does it mean to be an Easter Person? We want to be. We believe we should be. But how do we actually be one in our daily lives? We sing ‘Alleluia’ but we are still trying to figure out what this ‘Alleluia!’ really means.”

The fourth group is made up of the rare birds. They love everything about the secular celebration of Easter: the candy, the food, the family gathering, even the Easter Bunny. They love the liturgy and love to be part of the celebration, not just on Easter but all of Holy Week and participate in the services as much and as best they can. They sing “Alleluia!” not just on Easter but every time they are asked to live out their faith in the resurrected Jesus even if that living out means pain and suffering on their part. They are the true martyrs/witnesses to what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

I wish I could say that I was in the last group. I can only hope I am getting there. Mostly I am part of the third group. Most of the time I understand what it means to be a follower of Jesus and most of the time I follow as I should, live as Jesus would have me live. But there are times when I shy away because I find it difficult to sing “Alleluia” when I am in pain and, in fact, try to avoid it if I can.

I am not one of those rare birds. I was not one in seminary even if my classmates and I thought we were. We had no clue. It was only when we finally got out into the real world among real people who suffered real pain and who wondered why, who wanted to believe but sometimes could not, who were confused and looked to us for answers, it was then that I began to understand what it mean to be an Easter Person. I’m still learning.

DO YOU REALLY LOVE ME?

We’ve all heard the story about the man, call him Jim, who fell off a cliff, but on the way down grabbed onto a limb of a tree where he hung on for dear life. His cried for help landed on deaf ears. So began to pray in earnest for God to somehow save him. He was startled to hear a voice call out his name. When he asked who it was, the voice replied that it was God.

When God asked Jim if he really loved him, Jim replied that he most certainly did. When the voice asked Jim if he believed in him, Jim said that, yes, he most certainly did. When the voice asked Jim if he would do anything the voice, God, asked him to do, Jim said that he would? Then God said, “Let go!”

We smile, of course. Cute story. But it is also a true story, only the name and the circumstances change. For in the true story I am Jim. Each one of us is Jim. There are times in the lives of each one of us when God asks us to let go, to do what we don’t want to do, to do what we are afraid to do for whatever reason we are afraid, to trust totally in God and not in ourselves.

The saving grace in all this is twofold. First, whenever we find ourselves in such a position where we have to trust totally in God, God will give us whatever grace and strength we need to accomplish what is being asked of us. Second, those requests are few and far between. In fact, we may go through life without ever finding ourselves in such a position, thankfully.

Sometimes the big acts of love, like acts of heroism, are performed by people with little or no faith. Someone needs help; we are there; we can help, and we do even if the situation is dangerous, even life-threatening. Our faith in God, however, is not measured in great acts of faith or great acts of love, which, again, are rare. Rather our faith is God is measured in the little things in life, the little acts of kindness and love.

The poet Rod McKuen once wrote: “It doesn’t matter who you love or how you love but that you love. For in the end the act of loving anyone is the act of loving God.” It seems to me that until we equate every thought or word or deed as an act of loving God, then there will be little change or growth in our own lives, in the world as a whole or let alone our own little corner of the world. It will remain as it is: in need of so much love when so little is being offered.

For when we say “no” to someone else, to another’s need for our help or our love, we are saying “no” to God and our profession of faith in God. Would you or I let go of that limb were God to ask us? Of course we would, we say. But the truth is, we actually answer that question whenever someone reaches out his or her hand for our help, our love. Do we reach out and grab hold or do we not?

GOD AT WORK

What if someone at work walked up to you and, instead of wearing a name tag as seems to be the rule these days in the work place, wore a tag that said “God at Work”? Or what if the boss had that same phrase inscribe on a block of wood sitting on her desk facing towards you as you entered to speak to her? What would you think? Or, to make it more personal, what if your name tag read “God at Work?” What do you think your co-workers would think about you?

My suspicion is that I would judge my co-worker as some kind of religious not, my boss as someone on an ego trip, and myself as having one heck of a lot of chutzpah. No one of us would claim that we are God and that everything we say or do is what God would say or do. Well, I would hope no one would be so bold as to make such claims, certainly not so self-centered as to believe the claim.

Nevertheless, we should all wear such a tag on our person. Do we not believe that God works in and through us, that the only way God’s will gets done here on earth as it is done in heaven is in and through those who profess to believe in God? Thus, when we are at work, God is at work. When we are living out our faith in God, God’s work and God’s will is being done.

That is the honest-to-God truth whether we like it or not. Mostly, if honestly, we like it even as it scares us to death to think about the implications of that truth. When we do honestly, sincerely, deeply think about those implications, it becomes frightening. God has entrusted each one of us to carry out God’s work in our everyday lives no matter how mundane or how trivial or even how important it is that we are doing.

Yes, there is a certain amout of chutzpah in claiming to do God’s work but, again, it is tempered by the knowledge that we fail to do that work more than we would like to admit. Even worse, at times what we do is in direct contradiction to what we know God would have us do. Sometimes our actions give non-believers that right to say, “If that is how your God acts, I want nothing to do with your God.”

So we are wary as we are warned. We know what is expected of us but are wary of claiming that we are doing God’s work and that God is at work in us because we know ourselves, how selfish and sinful we sometimes are. And we are. No one of us is perfect. We know that. More importantly, God knows that. Yes, God would like perfection. So would we. But perfection only comes in the life to come.

In the meantime, it might do good were we, every morning as we finish getting dressed, to pull out a tag that says “God at Work” and pin it on our clothes for all to see. It would remind us of our calling and our responsibility as God’s worker here on earth. But do we have the chutzpah, let alone the guts and courage to do so?