Acts 9:36-43 "Resurrection Runners"

         The Bible is filled with stories of little known but talented, courageous, sometimes simply good, and sometimes wily women.  Frequently overshadowed by the tales of their men, they often fade into the background and are skipped over. 

         There was Leah, Rachel’s older and physically less attractive sister, who over time bore Jacob six sons, one of whom was an ancestor of the great King David. 

         There was Miriam, who put her baby Moses in that woven reed basket and kissed him goodbye even as she pushed his floating cradle into the Nile River, a courageous move that saved his life and, one could say, the lives of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt as well. 

         There was Anna, who was the first to recognize the infant Jesus for the Messiah he was, when Mary and Joseph brought the child to her husband, Simeon, to be blessed.

         And there was Tabitha (or Dorcas as she is known in Greek).  Her story, almost like a Biblical afterthought, is wedged in between the very dramatic conversion of Paul and the equally dramatic vision of Peter – a vision of animals suspended from heaven that caused the apostle to expand his diet to include a whole bunch of previously prohibited impure and unclean animals, a very big deal for one who had been a devout Jew.

         And in between is the story of this Christian woman.  In fact, if you were to read Tabitha’s story in Greek, you would find that she was referred to as a disciple, the only instance in the Bible that a named woman is specifically given that title.  One can presume then that Tabitha was a leader in her church, which would necessarily shoot down the notion by the way that women were relegated to making the coffee and washing the communion cups in these early faith communities.

         Apparently, however, Tabitha did not care for all the haggling and arguing that inevitably goes on among the leadership of any organization.  What I mean is that, according to a sermon preached by Presbyterian pastor Thomas York, “earlier in the book of Acts (in the 6^th chapter actually) we know there had been a problem in the Jerusalem congregation when Greek speaking and Aramaic speaking Jews argued over the distribution of the welfare checks for the widows, the Greek speaking Christians complaining that their widows were being neglected.”

         One gets the feeling that the men spent a great deal of time quarreling over the exact formula for this early social security system and ended up creating what might have been the first church committee to explore the issue.  Tabitha, however, perhaps intuitively knowing that more important than all the task forces on which she might serve and more critical than all the discussions in which she might participate, recognized that she was now the hands and feet of Jesus in the world – and so spent her time “doing good and helping the poor” rather than deliberating on the issue of entitlement programs for the destitute. 

         However, in spite of all her good works, one day Tabitha became quite ill and died.  Amidst rivers of tears, her body was prepared for burial.  However, so loved was Tabitha and so crushed was her faith community by her passing that it sent for Peter, “Please hurry and come to us.” 

         What did they expect him to do?  Pray with them?  Weep with them?  Raise her from the dead?  What an interesting similarity we have here between this little story and the one about Jesus being called to heal the daughter of Jairus, who had also died. 

         And the likenesses between the narratives continue.  Just as Jesus went into the room with the young girl, accompanied only by Peter, James, and John and closed the door behind him, so Peter went into the room where Tabitha lay in state, shooing out the scores of weeping widows and impoverished ones who showed him all the shirts and coats and tunics and prayer shawls that Tabitha had made over her time of ministry. 

         Now alone, what was Peter thinking – being new in the resurrection business himself?  Of course, we have no way of knowing what was going through his mind.  However, we do know that, in the end, he did what Jesus did. 

         He prayed and then, just as Jesus had commanded Jairus’ daughter (“Talitha Kuom, which means “Little girl, get up”), so Peter, with an authority he was not even sure he had, changed one letter and commanded the dead woman lying at his feet likewise: “Tabitha Kuom - Tabitha, get up!” There was that endless moment that followed when Peter held his breath, but then Tabitha’s chest began to move, and she opened her eyes.

         In doing so, Tabitha had the distinction bestowed upon her of being the first person – man or woman – raised from the dead following Jesus’ resurrection.  As evangelical pastor Peter Loughman notes, “Now, for us, Tabitha is one of those people who is almost a footnote in Scripture. She is someone who many of us pass over when we read the Bible. For us, Tabitha is a minor character in the building of the early church, a person of no real significance. But for God, Tabitha is so significant, that (God) raises her from the dead.”

         Why Tabitha?  Why does the writer of Acts choose to include the story of someone who makes this single appearance in the early Church’s narrative history? The writer of Acts could certainly have included a lot of other stories.  Why is Tabitha’s story particularly worth remembering? 

         As one blogger wrote, “What was it about her life that made her death the occasion for this miracle? (After all), Tabitha was not an eloquent preacher or theologian. She didn’t make her mark by performing brave deeds or giving major financial gifts.

She wasn’t out in the forefront or in the limelight where all her actions could be seen and admired.”

         I think there are two reasons that the writer of the Book of Acts chose to include this tiny tale of Tabitha, this little vignette that I believe lies at the very heart of the Christian faith.

         First, the story of Tabitha is a marvelous example of how we who call ourselves followers (disciples) of Jesus should be spending out time.  That is, we are not here in the church to talk about service and to dialogue about mission and outreach.  As St. Francis of Assisi said, “Preach the Gospel, and when necessary, use words.”  Words have their place, to be sure, but they are not the be all and end all of Christianity.  As the church, we are here to do mission.  We are here to serve.  

         And there are opportunities.  There are so many opportunities.  That is why Polly invited all of you to come and make school kit bags this past week.  That is why Tom and Bonnie have invited all of you to be a part of our summer mission trip to Maine Seacoast Mission in Cherryfield in July – whether you can be there for the full week or just for a few days.  

That is why Sarah and Judy and Carol and others of you and even people who do not come to worship here continue to knit literally hundreds of prayer shawls, some of which we blessed this morning.  That is why our Youth Group went to HOME last fall and plans to go to the Common Cathedral this Spring. 

       And if what we do seems small, insignificant, and hardly worth doing (What difference can a single prayer shawl make?), then remember that story of a man who was walking on the beach and saw someone in the distance throwing something into the ocean. As the man got closer, he saw that there were starfish – thousands of them - on the beach, stranded by the outgoing tide. A child was tossing them far enough out, so they could swim away.

       The man asked, “What are you doing?”

       The child replied, “I am throwing the starfish back out to sea. If they don’t get back into the deeper water, they will die.”

       The man replied, “I understand that part, but look at this beach. It is covered with starfish. There must be tens of thousands stranded out here. You cannot make a dent into the problem, and you certainly can not make a difference.”        

         The child bent over, picked up another starfish, hurled it out to sea, and with a smile on his face said, “Made a difference to that one!”

         We are the hands and feet of Jesus in this world, called and committed to making a difference, as Theresa of Avila recognized in the 16^th century.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours; (she wrote)

No hands but yours;

No feet but yours;

Yours are the eyes

Through which is to look out

Christ’s compassion to the world;

Yours are the feet

With which he is to go about

Doing good;

Yours are the hands

With which he is to bless now.

         The other reason why Tabitha’s story is important is because it reminds us of the continuous and ongoing power of the resurrection, a power that, in some ways, is placed in our hands.  In the movie, “Bruce Almighty”, a TV reporter named Bruce continually challenges God. “You're not doing your job!” he complains.

         Finally, God calls Bruce's bluff: “You want the job – you got it.”  Bruce (now) has the wondrous working power. However, it does not help; it fails to change the world.     

         So God tells Bruce, “Your problem is that you spend too much time looking up. All the things you've been doing with the power I gave you – they're not miracles – just magic tricks….Stop looking up all the time,” says God, “and stop looking to me all the time. Look at yourself – you be the miracle!”

         We are all still reeling from the bombs that exploded this past week at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.  As usual, there has been some amount of finger pointing – conservative and liberal pundits both using this tragedy to take pot shots at each other (no pun intended). 

         However, there are also the folks who were in Boston, the ones who took people in, who found water and food for exhausted runners, who jumped over barriers even as they prayed there would not be another explosion that would claim their lives as they helped the fallen, the bloodied, the severely injured.

         Those acts of kindness, that selflessness, that reaching out and really serving one another - that is the power of resurrection entrusted to us – you and me - that courage we sometimes do not even know we have and that faith in something bigger than us that enables us to say no to death and all it symbolizes –

fear, terror, hatred, a world without love.  In the Koran, the Islamic Holy Scriptures, there is a verse that says “If you find evil, do good.”

         That is what the story of Tabitha is saying to us.  As Lutheran pastor Eric Barretto wrote, “In these weeks after Easter, it may be that our wonder over the resurrection (has) abated somewhat. Perhaps we have heard the story repeatedly… and our hearing has grown dull.” 

         However, remember, as he goes on to say:  “The gospel looks out over a world characterized by death…and loss and yet declares that…life is the new order of the day, that Jesus himself embodies and assures us of the promise that death will not have the last word.”  We should all be out training for the 2014 Boston Marathon – as participants for peace, as resurrection runners.

         Oh, Tabitha, you may be small.  You may only appear this single time in our Bible, but you are one of the mighty ones.  You show us how to live as followers of Jesus, and in your death, you remind us of God’s promise of life, in the end, always life.

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine

         

Acts 9:1-20 - "Are You Kidding?"

       For those of you who grew up going to Sunday School, I suspect that a story you might remember is the one about the conversion of Paul (as he was called in the Greek language) or Saul (as he was known in Hebrew).  The story is rather dramatic when you come right down to it and filled with wonderful visual imagery. 

         Though Paul did not personally know Jesus, like the rabbi, he was a good and devout Jew.  However, when we first encounter him here in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, which is the only recorded narrative history we have of the very early church by the way, Paul is not only deeply suspicious of this new movement, the “Way”, within Judaism, he is actively antagonistic. 

         Paul was present and nodding in approval when Stephen was stoned for a particularly bitter and harsh sermon and critique of the Temple elders.  Paul was also known for going door-to-door in Jerusalem, sniffing out Christians and sending them off to prison.

         In short, Paul was proud to be a chief persecutor of early Christianity, and when we meet him today, he is somewhere between Galilee and Damascus, which is in Syria, intent on initiating more bold public acts in defense of his faith. From Paul’s perspective, no one ought to be preaching about a messiah who could not possibly be real.  Did these disciples of Jesus not remember that there had always been claims about this one or that one being the long awaited Messiah, and none of them had turned out to be real? 

         And so you see, Paul was bent on rounding up the so-called Christian Jews who had perhaps fled Jerusalem and, in his own vigilante way, stamping out this particular heretical fire.  In artistic renditions, Paul is often pictured on horseback and is said to have carried with him the locations of synagogues and names of individuals he considered to be violating the foundation of Jewish faith. 

         Paul would quite likely have faded into oblivion were it not for what happened to him on the road to Damascus.  Related three different times in the Book of Acts, his experience was clearly a significant one for the early church.  One minute it was a normal day in the life of an early Christian persecutor.  The next minute that life was changed forever. 

         We are told that Paul saw a light, a light so bright and overwhelming and unearthly that it blinded him and knocked him to the ground. 

         Then we are told that Paul heard a voice, presumably coming from heaven – or at least from the clouds above him.  “Saul, oh Saul, why do you persecute me?”

         “Who are you?” Paul asked – quite a reasonable question under the circumstances. 

         “I am Jesus, the one whom you persecute,” the voice replied – and the unspoken words were to the effect that whatever you do to the least of these you do to me. 

         “Go into the city,” the voice continued.  “I have big plans for you.”

         Paul’s traveling companions, who had not heard or seen anything, but only knew that Paul could now not see so much as a hand in front of his face even in broad daylight, placed Paul’s hands on their shoulders and shuffled him into Damascus, where he was afraid to eat or drink anything for three days.        

         Now, if your Sunday School training was anything like mine, that is pretty much where the story ends.  From there, Paul regains his sight and sets out to travel through such places as Corinth, Ephesus, and Thessalonika. 

         On his three major journeys, he converts many non-Jews to the new Way of Jesus, nurtures small house churches, and writes a series of letters to these fledgling faith communities, encouraging them and suggesting solutions to the problems and issues that they faced.

         However, in between the blinding light and the journeys into Asia Minor, there is an important little story, and that is the tale of just how Paul regains his vision and becomes a baptized Christian himself.  It is the story of Ananias, and it is tacked on to this appointed lectionary reading for today almost as an afterthought.

         You see, Paul was not the only person to have a vision that morning.  Ananias did too.  He was a Christian living in Damascus, perhaps one whose name was even on the list that Paul carried with him.  We read in this account in the Book of Acts that God also spoke to him that day.         

         “Ananias”

         “Yes.”

         Now hear the voice gets really specific.  “Get up and go over to Straight Avenue. Ask at the house of Judas for a man from Tarsus. His name is Saul. He’s there praying. He has just had a dream in which he saw a man named Ananias enter the house and lay hands on him so he could see again.”

         And here is where Ananias tries to draw a clear line in the sand.  “Are you kidding?” he asks in disbelief.  “This is one bad dude.  You can’t be serious. Everybody’s talking about this man and the terrible things he’s been doing, his reign of terror against your people in Jerusalem! And now he’s shown up here with papers from the Chief Priest that give him license to do the same to us.  What are you thinking?”

         But God said to Ananias, “Don’t argue. Go! I have picked this man as my personal representative to primarily non-Jews, but also for kings and Jews as well.”  

         Maybe when God says “don’t argue” – well, it is best not to argue, and so Ananias decides to acknowledge this call.  And in following God’s command, he does a profoundly beautiful and deeply remarkable thing. Ananias puts aside his questions and his fears and his deep loathing for a man who has done despicable things and makes his way to Straight Street, to the house of a man named Judas, and finds this frightful man from Tarsus, Saul (or Paul). 

         The little details that the author of the Book of Acts chooses to include here are marvelous.  We are told that Ananias places his hands on the blind man Paul – on his shoulders, on his head, tenderly cupping his face?  We do not know, but the gesture is traditionally one of acceptance. 

         We are told that Ananias calls him “Brother” – friend, family, community member, equal – a term of endearment and another gesture of acceptance. 

         We are told that, in a final gesture of acceptance and affirmation, Ananias shares with Paul why he has come:  “Brother Saul, the Master sent me, the same Jesus you saw on your way here. He sent me so you could see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”

         It is then that something reminiscent of fish scales fall from Paul’s eyes – what a marvelous little add-on to this story.  He can see again. Not only that, he is a new man – reborn in a sense, resurrected. Then Paul is baptized, presumably by Ananias, and, after three days of no food, feasts on what?  Bread?  Wine?  New life?  Who knows?

         I like Ananias because he had the hutzpah to question God, but in the end also the faith to trust the Almighty even when what God was asking of him seemed so wrong at the time. Ananias was canonized as a saint, you know, and perhaps, partially at least, for that reason – for trusting though the situation made no logical and rational sense – and was likely even to lead him to personal harm.

         How many times have we had a deep and intuitive sense that God is calling us, but to an action or a situation where our response is likely to be, “Are you kidding?”  United Church of Christ pastor Kirk Moore lists some examples in a sermon he once preached:

•   “I can’t ask that person to come to church!”

•   “I can’t have a conversation with that person! They’re completely unreasonable!”

•   “But that would make me have to question all the times I’ve done it this way and knew it was right.”

•   “That’s something for someone older.”

•   “That’s something for someone younger.”

         Ananias went out on a limb that day in Damascus, and maybe we should take a lesson from him and go out on a limb once in a while ourselves.  Ananias approached Paul – but not with outright fear, not with loathing, not with an exclusive focus on the baggage and past lives Paul carried with him, but rather with faith in God, with compassion, and with forgiveness – and maybe we should take a lesson from that attitude as well. 

         The question for us then is this:  How might the story of this dramatic call (to Paul) on a dusty road to Damascus (followed by the less dramatic but equally important call to Ananias) give us a new imagination? (Eric Baretto)  As Lutheran pastor Eric Baretto suggests:  Might it “encourage people to wonder if their zeal, like Saul’s, has been misdirected and even destructive (or) encourage them (like Ananias) to expect God to ask them to do difficult things and go to unexpected places…(and) not to exclude their supposed enemies from the work God might do in the world?”

         Call and discernment of call are always a challenge – mainly because when God calls us, God is generally calling for an about face, a real turnaround.  Our sense of call might not be up there with falling off a horse, hearing a booming voice, and being struck blind for three days as Paul was – or being asked to befriend a dire enemy as Ananias was, but, whatever our true call is, it is likely to dislocate our lives and distort us in the eyes of others in some way.  

         What then to do?  Oh, what to do?  After all we want to make sure that God is really doing the calling and that we have not created some mental acrobatics of our own.

         First, I would say – keep listening - through prayer, through Scripture, thorough gaining the perspectives of others.  God is still speaking, and I trust will speak clearer to you as time goes by.  Don’t fall back on “You’re kidding?”  Rather, listen with that deep intuitive part of your being - your heart, your soul – because that is where you might encounter God and deepen that relationship with the one who loves you.

         Second, keep pressing on.  Keep serving.  Keep being compassionate.  Don’t fall back on “you’re kidding?”, and do not be idle while you are trying to figure things out.  Live your life as Jesus called you to live it.  Keep forgiving.  Keep reaching out.  Keep loving – because that is also where you might encounter God and deepen your relationship with the one who loves you.

         And finally, be like Ananias.  Don’t resort to “You’re kidding?” because if you do, you will cut yourself off from so much that life has to offer.  Rather, take a chance on life in its fullest and richest.  Take a chance on those people and places and events God throws into your path whoever and wherever and whatever they may be.  And most of all, take a chance on the Way of Jesus, for both Paul and Ananias found that doing so made all the difference.

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church

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Luke 24:1-12 "Easter: Idle Tale or Love's Testament?"

         One Easter Sunday, a pastor invited the children in the congregation (as pastors are wont to do) to come to the front of the church for a children’s message.  She began by asking them, “Who knows why we celebrate Easter every year?”

         One child immediately chirped up, “Oh, that’s when you go to the mall and sit on the big bunny rabbit’s lap and tell him what you want in your Easter basket.”

         Then another child piped up excitedly, “No, no, no! Easter is when you get a tree and hang eggs on it—and you wake up on Sunday and there are presents underneath it.”

       At that point the pastor interrupted and gently said (so as not to crush the emerging senses of self-esteem of her youngest congregants), “Those are good guesses, but not quite right.  Any other ideas?” At that point, another child shyly whispered, “Easter is when Jesus was crucified. He died, and His disciples put his body in the grave. They rolled a big stone in front of the opening. And the guards went to sleep. On the third day, there was a big earthquake and the stone rolled away.”

         The pastor was quite encouraged now because the Youth Message seemed all-of-a-sudden to be heading down a better path, so she asked the child to tell the congregation what happened next.

         “Well,” the child replied solemnly.  “When the earthquake happened, the entire town came out by the grave. Because they knew that if Jesus came out and saw his shadow, there would be six more weeks of winter!”

         OK - that young child had part of the story right, but certainly not all of it.  However, I wonder if we as adults are all that different.  Sometimes I think we know some of the story, but not really all of it.  And so my question is this:  What really did happen that first Easter morning – and more than that, what does it mean?  What’s in it for us?

         Each of the Gospels in the New Testament part of our Bible (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) tells the story a bit differently.  John has the Risen Christ looking suspiciously like the graveyard gardener whom Mary Magdalene does not recognize at first as she scampers alone through the morning dew of the cemetery. 

Mark has three women discovering the empty tomb and all of them running off terrified, telling no one. Matthew adds a violent earthquake to his description, and he too has the women hustling off, but in his version, they meet up with Jesus on their way back to tell the disciples about the empty tomb. 

         The account from Luke, the narrative we just read, has the women figuring no one would believe their wild story (The gospel writer terms it “nonsense”), but they manage to persuade Peter to come back with them to the graveyard – though we are left wondering whether he believes any of this so-called “nonsense” either.

         You see, the women had expected to find a corpse in a borrowed tomb.  That is why they had brought spices with them – myrrh, embalming fluids, perfumes for anointing their friend Jesus’ body in order to give it a proper burial – something they had not been able to do the day he actually died, what with the Sabbath coming on and they being devout Jews and all. 

         The women had expected to find a corpse because Jesus was dead.  He had been betrayed when Judas had planted a kiss smack on his lips as a signal to the Roman soldiers who subsequently arrested him in the garden – while he was praying, no less. 

         The provincial governor, Pilate, tried Jesus and then sentenced him to death, but not before having him flogged until his back was left bloody and painfully scarred.  Then he was crucified on the City garbage heap between two criminals, and his side was eventually punctured with a Roman spear, just to make sure there was no life left in him. 

         His mother had wept at the foot of the cross, holding her grown son swaddled in his blood-soaked loincloth, until Joseph of Arimathea finished going through all the red tape of claiming the body and transported it to a rock tomb, rather like the cave he had been born in, but now, of course, he lay in a manger of death. 

        Jesus was dead, all right – and so the women expected to find a corpse – that is, if they could even get into the tomb in the first place – the rock sealing its entrance being so big and all.  That would be a problem.

         The Gospel writer tell us that the women were “puzzled” (now that’s an understatement) when they saw that the stone had been rolled away, leaving a gaping and dark entrance hole to the tomb.  Their terror did not occur, however, until those men in white popped up next to them, told them not to look for the living among the dead, in short, that they would never find Jesus locked away in a cemetery. 

         According to the Gospel writer of Luke, those women barely went inside the cave but took the word of the men in white at face value and hightailed back to the disciples, who were probably enjoying their morning coffee even as they hid themselves away until the events of the past week were forgotten so that they too would be forgotten, so that they could get on with their lives.

         Peter, we are told, did return to the tomb and found the grave clothes neatly folded in a corner.  He was neither puzzled nor terrified (as the women had been) but rather “amazed” –though the Gospel writer does not say that he believed either.

         You know, every Easter the pews in churches all over the world are filled, just like on Christmas Eve.  However, unlike Christmas where the birth of a baby in a stable with angels fluttering around and shepherds hurrying in from the hillsides and kings on camels traveling great distances from foreign lands following stars somehow fits within our rational mindset, many of us come with significant doubts about the authenticity of this empty tomb story and consequently disbelief about this whole resurrection business.

         I certainly cannot prove to you that it happened just like the Gospel writers of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John said it did because they were not eyewitnesses.  We have no eyewitness accounts.

         However, because the story shows up in all four gospels – as well as other Gospels that never made it into the New Testament – it tells me that something happened – something so significant that it caused one person to tell another and then another and then another  - and then to preach it and preach it and preach it right down through the ages even to now – today - in this little church in Raymond, Maine.  

         I believe – and I do not think it is just because I am a pastor – that something happened such that the disciples (and we even today) experienced (and experience) Jesus (even though he had been crucified, dead, and buried) in a real and vibrant and life-changing and transformative and – dare I say it – resurrected sort of way.  I refuse to downgrade the significance of the Easter story or the uniqueness of its message.

         The way I see it is if this had been a totally made up tale written a generation later in order to make Jesus look ever so special and to convince people to join this new movement within Judaism, the story would not have had the disciples so puzzled and unbelieving, so profoundly stupid, so muddled by the whole experience.  I mean, how persuasive would that have been?

         It is almost as if those early storytellers did not have the language to explain what had happened that Easter dawn in the cemetery – and what subsequently happened to them as they experienced a living relationship with this man they had trusted, loved, and followed during his earthly lifetime.

        When you think about it, we do not really have the language to explain it all either.  That being said, I think what we do when it comes to Easter and this weird, mysterious resurrection business is retreat into our world of logic and rationality.  We can accept angels at Christmas but not so readily at Easter.  We can look the other way at a virgin birth but not so with a rebirth. 

         Why is it that we insist upon neatly packaging the resurrection?  Why do we need to have it labeled, sorted, and explained? Why do we feel compelled to pack it away in a conventional box? And why oh why do we keep coming back to our churches each Easter Sunday to hear the “nonsense” story one more time?

         You know what I think?  I think we package the resurrection neatly, put it in a box, keep coming back each Easter because we are afraid that the story might be true.  That’s right.  We are afraid it might actually be true – and we want to be reinforced – one more time – in our hope against hope that it is too crazy – too nonsensical – to be anything other than fictional.

         As Presbyterian pastor, Thomas Long, wrote, “If the Jesus story ended on Friday, then the disciples can simply be "the eleven," and after the appropriate rituals and a season of mourning, they can go back to life as it was. If the story ended on Friday, then they can be … alumni of Jesus’ school of religion (and) students of an inspiring though finally tragic teacher. In short, if the story ends on Friday, we can close out the Book of Luke” as well as Mark, Matthew, and John. If the story ends on Friday, then life goes on, everything is dependable and predictable, and we can remain unchanged – pretty sweet.

         Because, you see, if it is true, if the story ends not on Friday, but really does continue to Sunday, to Easter, that means only one thing:  that God is on the loose – and who knows what might happen next.  Easter is not just the climax of the Christian calendar.  If Easter is really true, then it is the start of a whole new journey of transformation, rebirth, and restoration – of ourselves, of our relationships, of our world.

         If we decide that Christ is risen, that he lives, that in a manner beyond our understanding, the resurrection happened, then we must necessarily believe on the most foundational level that we are changed people, that the rules have altered. 

         And I don’t mean changed in regard to what is going to happen to us after we die.  Believe it or not, Jesus did not give a hoot about an afterlife in his ministry.  He was concerned about now, today, life in this world.

         If we believe, as United Church of Canada pastor, Bruce Sanguin wrote, in “a story implying that Love is stronger than violence, that life is the context for death, and that the kind of humanity that Jesus represented could not be snuffed out by the kind of human being that had executed him”, then we, as humanity, as sons and daughters of God Almighty, have enormous potential. 

         But not only that:  if we believe in such a story, we also have a deep and profound responsibility – as caretakers of creation, as peacemakers and reconcilers, as facilitators and collaborators, as justice-seekers, feeders of the hungry, advocates for the poor, and activists for the weak and marginalized.

         And I am not sure that we really want to take that on, own up to our human potential, and ultimately trust in the power of Love.  It is a whole lot easier to play out our rational do-loops every year and neatly package up the resurrection and shelve it – rather than live it. 

         You see, as Bruce Sanguin wrote, “That’s the Easter story in a nutshell and now I’m asking you which story you’re going to believe: the story of death or the story of life; the story of God affirming human dignity or God abandoning us to the worst in us. Christ is risen: Idle tale or Love’s testament?” You decide – and live your life by that conviction.

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine

www.rvccme.org