Your Turn
He came to give meaning and fulfillment to the covenants of old.
He brought the great line of patriarchs and matriarchs of the grand faith to a manger.
He interpreted the law with authority, clarity, and conviction in a way that gave life to dead words.
He lived into the hope whispered by the prophets to comfort a people in bondage.
He was one with his Father who guided him daily, giving him strength to withstand the expectations
Israel had for what a savior should look like.
He recognized the divine in ordinary fishermen, partisan revolutionaries, and in the full voice of women.
He put up with their misunderstanding.
He spoke truth plainly with simple stories.
He pulled God to the surface of rigid traditions, giving life to its shell.
He expanded a religion beyond its ethnicity, inviting an entire world in.
He provoked the powerful for their own good and for the liberation of those they trampled underfoot.
When he gave nothing but life, it was seen as nothing but a threat…
A threat to those who wanted to hold their power,
A threat to those who couldn’t push through their fear
And a threat to those caught up in frenzied passion stoked by entrenched leaders.
That was the moment he made a living model of his teachings, leaving all behind to take his place on a cross.
He endured physical, emotional, and spiritual pain until his death.
And he was buried and forgotten.
If that was all God had done, it would have been enough.
But because it is God, it doesn’t stop at death.
Then came the third day.
God is always bringing life to the lifeless.
Breathing spirit into ashes.
Beating spears into pruning hooks.
Rolling away stones and rising again.
God is a god of resurrections.
Rejoice in the good news! He lives!
If that was all God had done, it would have been enough.
But because it is God, it doesn’t stop.
Jesus is but the first fruits of the resurrection.
Now, it’s your turn.
Our second Scripture lesson comes from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, where he tells us that Jesus resurrection isn’t the end of the story, but the beginning of the story, into which we’re invited to be important characters. Read it here.
Before I back to Huntsville, after having lived in Montgomery for a few years and wanting to return to my hometown, I had spent a few years trying to find a new job. I sent resumes off to many places. I went on a few interviews to different places. And so I received several letters in the mail, informing me that I wasn’t being selected for the job I had applied for. My wife, Christy, too, has gone through periods of applying for work and received rejection letters. Rejection letters tend to follow a predictable form. Usually, they are delicately worded and typically contain a few sentences that say how there were many strong candidates, wording that says how good we are — just not “a match” for their particular needs at that time. Probably in an effort to annoy my wife, more than any healthy attempt to grow from a negative situation, I decided to do something a little goofy with our letters. I would highlight all the good parts of the letter — even if it was obviously a form letter. Even if the only thing nice they had to say was, “thank you” or “warmest regards,” and I would stick it on the refrigerator. Rejection letters were now notes of affirmation hanging on the fridge.
I have to confess that the idea wasn’t my own, though I wish it were. It came from a crazy roommate of mine in college who, despite his brilliance would sometimes come home with terrible grades on quizzes. He’d get 1 or 2 out of 12 right or something terrible like that and he’d circle and highlight the questions he got right and put it on our dormitory fridge. His pride in his own mediocrity, failure even, later inspired me to annoy my wife with “notes of affirmation” attached to our fridge. He redeemed his failures — not so much through focusing on the questions he got right, but created something beautiful out of it all by making it something that we all could laugh at. It was a resurrection of sorts. New life emerged from that which was dead. And new life grows and replicates itself. It is like a mustard seed that grows or a bit of yeast in unleavened dough. And so, years later, I participated in this admittedly small form of resurrection in my own life.
I think that’s what Paul is trying to tell the church at Rome — we are to copy the resurrection — each in our own ways, in our own contexts. Take the yeast, the mustard seed of the resurrection given to us by Jesus — the very Spirit of God and mix it into who we are and let it take over. Paul says, “just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life (6:4).” And this can happen in bigger, grander, much more fundamental ways than highlighting the few positive words in a rejection letter. But the form is similar. God’s creativity finds nuggets it can work with.
• Sometimes it happens by finding something still giving life among the dead.
• Sometimes it uses the skeleton of the dead as scaffolding for the new.
• Sometimes it is so mysterious, creative, and beautiful that all we can do is call it a miracle.
It’s the story of God’s relationship to creation. It’s a story that’s still being written. Bread becoming leavened. The greatest of trees growing into more fullness.
That’s the business God is in — resurrection.
God brings life to dead things.
That’s God’s job.
Every broken thing, God is working to fix.
Every sin, God is working to reconcile.
Easter is the very pattern of God’s activity in the world.
And God is working on each one of us so that, as Paul says, “we might be dead to sin and alive to God in Jesus Christ.”
Bringing life to something that was dead, doesn’t always mean what we think it means. God doesn’t just kill death. God doesn’t just end pain. Nor does flesh and blood just come to that which was dead. That’s resuscitation — not resurrection. Resurrected things not only live and breath, but become resurrecting things — themselves pulling life out of death. And those things pull life out of death. And so on and so on. Resurrected things bring this expanding, abundant life. The prophets talk about turning swords into plows and spears into pruning hooks. God doesn’t just break the instruments of war, but turns them into gardening tools. I think it would be just like God to be at work this very Easter morning doing something like turning nuclear weapons into nuclear power — the biggest threat to life as we know it resurrected into the solution of one of our biggest problems. You see, Jesus didn’t just recover his pulse and breath. At Easter, we don’t celebrate the resuscitation of Jesus — but the resurrection. He’s not just “not dead,” but alive, giving life, and now alive within us. Jesus now says to us, “lo, I am with you always.” That resurrecting spirit resides within us and God is calling it forth. And we are sent to do some resurrecting of our own. Don’t settle for resuscitation — resuscitated things will die again and by their very nature still fear death. Resurrected things have no need to fear death — for it is the raw material of its unfinished art.
To be resurrected, something must have new life, new purpose. God finds a way of harnessing the depth of our pain, into the tools of the kingdom. God is infinitely creative. Those without resurrection eyes have trouble seeing the possible places where new life can grow. Cynicism trumps possibility. They write people off. But God does not. On multiple occasions, God used cold-blooded murderers to lead God’s people. Some say that we all have a God-shaped hole in our hearts. But I think it might be more accurate to say that God can fill any hole in our hearts — God takes the shape of our lifeless places. And so, the Apostle Paul, who was a persecutor and killer of Christians, zealous for a dead version of Judaism, is now the fiery architect of the church, winning the first church conflict to be the apostle to the Gentiles, and the one who proclaims to us this morning — that we too can experience this resurrection, right here, right now, in our own bodies.
Now, God is not a plastic surgeon — making you look all nice and new while you are lying down under anesthesia. Jesus walked to the cross and nailed the pain of the world to it. We too must declare death to our dead places. Otherwise, we cannot expect resurrection. Death is a necessary precondition to resurrection.
God does the resurrecting underground, as it were,
in the tomb,
in the descent to hell,
in the dark night of the soul
in the wilderness wanderings
in the 40 days of Lent
in the accusations that God has forsaken us.
and in the places we’ve declared dead.
We marked ourselves with the ashes of the earth at the beginning of our Lenten journey.
We end as witnesses to what God can do when we let dead things die and trust that death isn’t the end of the story.
We end rejoicing with what God can do with a little dust.
So, rejoice at the broken places in your life.
Are you without a job?
Do you eat too much, drink too much, smoke too much?
Do you have trouble controlling your anger?
Do you do all sorts of things that you detest?
Rejoice — these are sites of the resurrection.
Have you been hurt deeply by those who are supposed to love you?
Do you feel inadequate to do the things the world seems to be asking you to do?
Are you dominated by fear?
Rejoice — these are stones being rolled away.
Don’t let fear over come you.
Don’t let shame define you.
Don’t give up the fight against your addictions.
Don’t ignore the places within you that are not full of abundant life.
Don’t let impulses control you.
Don’t give into anger, greed, lust, and laziness.
Don’t settle for the pain you carry with you in life.
Don’t be satisfied with less than God wants for you.
For the God of Easter is in the resurrection business.
That God is busy beating spears into pruning hooks.
Turning rejection letters into notes of affirmation.
Transforming failed quizzes into shared laughter.
Solving the world’s energy crisis with the world’s excess weapons.
Flipping rejection into empathy.
Birthing passion from pain.
Transmuting impulses into fortitude.
Calling courage out of fear.
And harnessing your darkest shadows into the light of the world.
God is busy rolling stones away.
That’s what God does. It’s God’s job.
And there’s no job too small and no job too big for a God who can fix just about anything.
Easter is God’s job.
He is risen. And through the power of a resurrecting God, we’re rising too. Glory to God in the highest.
Happy Easter!
