Author: shelliwilliams

Anticipation

shelliwilliams ADVENT, Awakening, Awareness, Openness to God, Perception, Presence of God , ,

 

 

The Top of the MountainScripture Text:  Mark 13: 32-37

But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. 34It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. 35Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, 36or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. 37And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”

 

You know that feeling when you’re driving up a really big mountain (or maybe climbing the tallest loop of the roller coaster)?  You can see behind you (although that’s probably not a good idea if you’re actually driving!) and you can see ahead–but only to the top.  You can see where the top begins to round out its shape and give way to the other side but in your view, there is no other side.  It almost looks like you’re just going to keep climbing and be propelled into the open sky, to lose control, to lose footing altogether.  At this point, there is no way to plan at all.  You just trust–trust that the mountain will gently curve its way to the other side and give way to another view, trust that the road on which you’re traveling actually DOES continue and that you will not fall into nothingness, and trust that, in just a moment, in just a moment…this climbing will end.

 

Advent reminds us that we’re sort of on that road.  We feel it under us.  We see it up ahead.  But it continues beyond what we can see, beyond where we can comprehend at this point.  And so we trust and we anticipate that what is up ahead and where we are called to go.  The Scripture text (which we Lectionary readers read this past Sunday) exhorts us to keep alert, to stay awake.  Maybe it could just as easily tell us to anticipate what is up ahead.  I mean, weren’t you told that by your driving instructor all those years ago?  Anticipate the road. I don’t think that means become a psychic or a mind-reader.  After all, the Scripture reminds us that we do not know, that, in fact, we CANNOT know, that we are not at this point in our being, capable of knowing what is up ahead.  Anticipating is not about knowing; it is about readying oneself, preparing oneself, maybe even feeling the road a little more deeply.  Perhaps living with anticipation is about being so awake and so aware that you can actually taste the Presence of the Divine and know that Presence so deeply that life changes.  If one begins to anticipate what is up ahead, one begins to live life as if the road is beginning to curve.  As if…what would it mean to live “as if”?  What would it mean to live as if peace were the norm?  What would it mean to live as if poverty ceased to exist?  What would it mean to live as if God’s Presence was so real that it literally permeated every thread of your being?

 

Advent is our calling to wake up, to anticipate and begin to live as if God has already come into our midst, because that’s EXACTLY what has happened.  The call to keep alert is not a threat; it’s God’s gift to us.  Stay awake, my child, for you do not want to miss it.  Life is coming, a Life that you cannot even fathom how incredible it is.  The road is beginning to round and another view is just up ahead.  Be alert.  You don’ want to miss it.

 

A dreamer is one who can find [his or her] way in the moonlight, and [whose] punishment is that [he or she] sees the dawn before the rest of the world. (Oscar Wilde)

 

FOR TODAY:  What does it mean to be alert?  What does it mean to allow yourself to be awakened to the presence of God in our midst?  What does it mean to anticipate life, to live as if?

 

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

 

Expectant Hope

shelliwilliams ADVENT, Faith, Hope , , ,

cropped-dreamstimefree_2365100.jpgScripture Text: Hebrews 11:1

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

I remember when I was little, going to bed on Christmas Eve was the hardest and the most amazing thing to do.  I would lay there so excited about the next morning that I couldn’t sleep.  There were things that I hoped against hope would be under the tree when I awoke.  But, the main thing, is that I knew deep down that, regardless of what I hoped would be there, there was always something wonderful there.  I knew that.  I thought sure that there was no way I would ever go to sleep but at some point, I would drift off.  Then in the morning, I would lay there for a little awhile.  Even at a young age, I understood that there was this moment–this wonderful glorious moment when I would get my first look at the Christmas tree (post-Santa’s visit) and I would savor it, push it until I could not stand it anymore.  Then, there it was–this moment filled with beauty and wonder and hopes fulfilled before the tree stood a short time later in a barren wasteland of discarded wrapping paper.  But in that moment was hope alive.

 

I think we have lost the meaning of the word hope.  We’ve become like that young child, attaching it to a list of needs or wants that we have somehow conjured up in our head.  We have gotten hope confused with wishing.  I think, though, that hope is more.  It is not what we want to happen or what we wish would happen; hope is what we expect will happen.  The young me had somehow gotten that part of it too–that understanding that hope was not merely wanting something, but daring to expect it, daring to imagine that it would actually come to be.

 

As Christians, we are given hope.  Oh, hope was always there.  We just believe that it became more tangible that night in the manger and that it could no longer even be denied as we stood before an empty tomb.  But what we do with that hope is up to us.  Living with hope is not about merely wishing things were different and it’s certainly not about wanting things to be better for us.  Living with hope is living with the conviction that somehow, some way, even though it doesn’t make sense to us and even though we don’t understand it, we dare to expect that that moment will come to be–filled with beauty and wonder and hopes fulfilled.

 

This season of Advent gives us hope.  In our waiting, in this season in which we have to let go of our need to control what is going to happen, our need to plan, our need to jump ahead to the next season, we find hope.  And as the passage implies, hope feeds our faith, gives it life.  Hope is not wishing; hope is expecting.  Dare to expect what seems to be beyond hope and there you will find hope.  Hope is alive.  It is more than a dream; it is the story into which we live.  Living with hope is daring to live as if what you are expecting has already come to be.

 

Hope holds with it the promise that God always answers our questions by showing up, not necessarily with what we ask for but with remarkable gifts that change our lives and the world. (Mary Lou Redding, “While We Wait”)

 

FOR TODAY:  For what do you hope?  What do you expect?  What would it mean to live with expectant hope?

Grace and Peace and Advent Blessings,

Shelli

Not Quite Yet

shelliwilliams ADVENT, Waiting , ,

 

 

waiting-on-god1Scripture Text:  Isaiah 64: 7-8

7There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. 8Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.

Yes, I know, it’s been forever since I’ve written.  The seasons have changed many times (both literally and figuratively).  And here we are at Advent…the Season of Waiting.  Perhaps it’s one of the hardest times.  After all, our culture is pushing the whole time, pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing…trying to get us to buy into the mindset that we have to do it NOW, jump while the prices are hot, buy while the getting is good, check off our lists before everything is gone.  And so instead of talking about Advent and waiting and the slow but deliberately wonderful work that God is doing, we fill our minds with Black Friday and (now) Light Black Thursday (which used to be known as Thanksgiving Day) and Grey Wednesday, preceded by the colorful days before, and Small Business Saturday (Yeah, they need THAT desperately…hoped you shopped, shopped, shopped, to show the superstores that there is more out there than their marked up-marked down, red carpet, yellow tag deals.) and Sort-of-Cyber-Sunday (didn’t that use to be the day that things were CLOSED???) and, building it all up to Cyber Monday, the biggest online shopping day of the year.  Hurry, hurry, hurry…or the things will be gone….

Whew!  STOP!!!!!!  Shhhhhhh!

“We are all the work of your hand”…So what happens to that when we are all running around like mice in some sort of bizarre color wheel?  Advent is a time of waiting, a time of listening.  I think it may be the hardest season for us to pull off.  After all, the culture allows us our Lenten darkness, our Holy Week closures, our Easter joy.  But Advent…GET READY…ONLY 25 SHOPPING DAYS LEFT!!!   25 Days of waiting on the Lord…25 Days of not jumping ahead…25 Days of looking for the Lord.

I supposed that it is right that God appears to hide from those who seek the Lord.  I suppose it is true that God has somehow hidden the face of the Divine from us.  But, really, what would you do if you knew, knew all that was God, knew what God looked like?  What would be the purpose of continuing on this faith journey, of expecting God to mold us and make us?  We are comfortable with waiting for a child to come, for a birth to happen, for the glorious gestation that our biological makeup requires that we endure.  So, why do we rush the birthing of the world?  Creation was the beginning.  And now we wait.  We wait for eternity to come to be.

Advent teaches us just that.  It doesn’t merely teach us to wait; it shows us that for which we wait.  The Advent season is three-fold.  It is a remembrance of the waiting for the birth of Emmanuel; it is the realization that we must wait in our lives, that we must experience the waiting for God to come to us; and it is the practice that we need to wait for God’s coming into the world in its fullest, the waiting of the glory that is to come.  If we don’t learn to wait, we will never know what God’s Coming means.  Wait for the Lord…Wait…Wait…Not quite yet…

You must give birth to your images.  They are the future waiting to be born.  Fear not the strangeness you feel.  The future must enter you long before it happens.  Just wait for the birth, for the hour of new clarity.”  (Rainer Maria Rilke)

FOR TODAY:  Wait…Wait…Wait…what does that mean?  Why can’t you do that?

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

 

 

Beach: Unknown Depths

shelliwilliams Imagination, Knowing God, Openness to God ,

Beach at Sunrise (2014-05-19)Scripture Text:  Acts 17: 22-27

Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us.

I got up before sunrise this morning and went out and sat on the deck.  The wind was fierce as it seemed to pull the waves toward shore.  They were noisy, crashing into each other as they fought for a place on the shore.  And in that moment, just before dawn, the light seems to hover over the deep, peeking from behind the horizon, asking you to stop and look and, just for a moment, to imagine something that is yet to be, to imagine something that is yet unknown.  (Yes, I’m on vacation!)  I love the beach.  I do NOT like the crowds or the traffic or the sun frying my skin.  I will drive right past the growing crowd at Buc-ee’s, since I don’t really understand what that’s all about anyway (I mean, they have nice restrooms and all but do you really need a whole pie for your car trip?).  But I love the beach.  I love sitting there in the silence and listening to the waves and feeling the wind and experiencing that moment just before dawn when everything is still, when everything is as it should be, that moment before creation dawns, before the light comes and the world begins trying to yet again mold itself and its thoughts into something that is comfortable and known.

This speech of Paul’s is not a treatise against religious icons and items of worship.  It is against the notion of pulling God down into one’s world, into what can be understood, can be fully known.  It is against the idea of being satisfied that you have by some miracle figured it all out and can check it off your ever-growing to do list.  Paul is pushing his hearers to imagine, to imagine something beyond themselves, something beyond what they know.  He is calling them to plunge into the depths beneath the crashing waves and the fierce winds and to see, maybe for the first time, what you’ve been missing all along.

We hear much about experiencing God’s presence, as if we are somehow running around looking for a God who is eluding us, sort of playing hide-and-seek with our spiritual well-being or in some way walling him or herself off from us.  But here Paul is talking about much, much more than just experiencing.  He is talking about allowing ourselves to imagine beyond what we know, to imagine this unknown God who so wants us to know in the deepest part of our being. I don’t really think that Jesus walked this earth and taught what he taught to give us a book of doctrines or a list of what we should be doing as Christians. I also don’t think we were ever intended to be handed a full and complete picture of who God is. What we were given in Jesus’ life was something much more profound, something much more valuable. We were given the gift of having our imaginations opened enough for God to fill them. Jesus did just enough to peak our imaginations about God so that we would continue to imagine God on our own.

Imagine it until it is. And then, close your eyes. The artist Paul Gauguin once said “I shut my eyes in order to see.” So, do not look at things the way they are. But instead, imagine…there is God, in whom you live and move and have your being.  And then plunge in–into the unknown depths, into a world that you can only imagine with a God that so wants to be imagined.

Jesus does not respond to our worry-filled way of living by saying that we should not be so busy with world affairs.  He does not try to pull us away from the many events, activities, and people that make up our lives…He asks us to shift the point of gravity, to relocate the center of our attention, to change our priorities…Jesus does not speak about a change of activities, a change in contacts, or even a change of pace.  He speaks about a change of heart. (Henri Nouwen)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

When Doubts Seep In

shelliwilliams Doubt, Faith, Seeing , , , ,

Seeing Through the FogScripture Text:  John 20: 19-29 (Easter 2A)

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”  A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Well, it’s the 2nd Sunday after Easter, so it must be Doubting Thomas Sunday!  We read it every year.  We read of the disciples in hiding and the return of the Risen Christ, offering them the chance to see.  And part of the story is Thomas refusing to believe, refusing to accept that this really WAS Jesus.  You have to wonder what the disciples were thinking locked behind the door of their house. Was their grief just so unbearable that they couldn’t do anything else?  Were they afraid that they would be next? Were they disillusioned that things had turned out that way? Were they feeling remorse or guilt or shame at the parts that they had played (or not played, as the case may be) in the Passion Play? I suppose it’s possible that they were a little afraid of the rumors that Jesus HAD returned. After all, what would he say to THEM?  I mean, it wasn’t like they had been stellar examples of devoted followers the last few days!  But that’s not what happened. Things were going to be OK. Jesus was back. The disciples rejoiced. Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit into them. They were sent. They became the community of Christ. And so I supposed they went off merrily praising God and being who they were called to be. This is a premise for discipleship. Jesus offered light and truth through his relationship with God. Now the disciples are called to offer light and truth through their relationship with Christ. All except Thomas. Poor Thomas. He wanted to see proof. Why couldn’t he just believe?

Personally, I think we give Thomas a bad wrap—after all, for some reason, he missed what the others had seen. (It is interesting that he was apparently the only one who had ventured outside!  It appears the others were just hiding out.) He just wanted the same opportunity—and Jesus gave that to him. He wanted to experience it. The point was that the Resurrection is not a fact to be believed, but an experience to be shared–whatever that means for us. And perhaps, part of that experience is doubt. Constructive doubt is what forms the questions in us and leads us to search and explore our own faith understanding. It is doubt that compels us to search for greater understanding of who God is and who we are as children of God.

Hans Kung is a Swiss-born theologian and writer. He says it like this: Doubt is the shadow cast by faith. One does not always notice it, but it is always there, though concealed. At any moment it may come into action. There is no mystery of the faith which is immune to doubt. Isn’t that a wonderful thought? Doubt is the shadow cast by faith. Faith in the resurrection does not exclude doubt, but takes doubt into itself. It is a matter of being part of this wonderful community of disciples not because God told us to but because our doubts bring us together. Examining our faith involves doubts, it requires us to learn the questions to ask. And it is in the face of doubt that our faith is born. God does not call us to a blind, unexamined faith, accepting all that we see and all that we hear as unquestionable truth; God instead calls us to an illumined doubt, through which we search and journey toward a greater understanding of God.

Frederick Buechner preached a sermon on this text entitled “The Seeing Heart”. In it, he reminds us of Thomas’ other name, the “Twin”. It was never really clear why he was called that, but Buechner says that “if you want to know who the other twin is, I can tell you. I am the other twin and, unless I miss my guess, so are you.” He goes on to say this: I don’t know of any story in the Bible that is easier to imagine ourselves into that this one from John’s Gospel because it is a story about trying to believe in Jesus in a world that is as full of shadows and ambiguities and longings and doubts and glimmers of holiness as the room where the story takes place is and as you and I are inside ourselves…To see Jesus with the heart is to know that in the long run his kind of life is the only life worth living. To see him with the heart is not only to believe in him but little by little to become bearers to each other of his healing life until we become fully healed and whole and alive within ourselves. To see him with the heart is to take heart, to grow true hearts, brave hearts, at last. (“The Seeing Heart”, by Frederic Buechner, in Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons)

The truth is, doubt is a normal and expected part of faith.  Our faith is not a list of checkboxes that we just check off as we believe.  It is not a static list of what we should think or what we should know.  There is always another question after the answer or the answer just falls flat.  The questions make the answers come alive.  The questions are what open our eyes to see the Risen Christ.  And that sight is not some sort of pat, boiler plate type of sighting.  This passage shows us that Jesus shows us what we need and that we need what Jesus shows us.  It is different for everyone.  So Thomas needed something a little more tactile, something he could really hold.  Is that so bad?  I think most of us would have to admit that that might make this whole thing a little bit easier to grasp for all of us!  But maybe it’s not supposed to be easy.  Maybe faith is such that the questions should never end.  So what do we do when doubts seep in?  Go with it.  Ask more questions.  Live into the doubts.  Maybe the Truth is not in front of our face but just beyond the fog.

Contradictions have always existed in the soul of man. But it is only when we prefer analysis to silence that they become a constant and insoluble problem. We are not meant to resolve all contradictions but to live with them. (Thomas Merton)

Journey with your doubts and keep asking questions.  Faith is not about certainty but about the journey toward meaning and Truth, a journey with God.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

 

So, What Next?

shelliwilliams EASTERTIDE, New Creation, Resurrection

Dancing on the roadScripture Text:  Luke 1: 46b-55

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

So, what next?  What comes after all this journeying, all these vast and varied emotions?  What comes after this 40 days of moving toward the cross?  What comes after Easter morning?  What exactly are we supposed to do with a Risen Savior?  What are we supposed to do with this redeeming work of God?  What are we supposed to do with a world that is filled with the Divine?  What do we do with vanquished death and a Creation created yet again?  What do you do when you find that you’ve been re-created?

If the 40 days of Lent are our journey toward who God calls us to be, the 50-day journey of Eastertide is our becoming.  (50 DAYS???  This journey is LONGER than the one we’ve just finished?)  It may have seemed easier before, when we were being called to follow, being called to look to Jesus for our teachings, for our way of becoming what we should be.  But now, we are not being told to follow.  We are being told to “Go”.  Go?  Go where?   Go and become.  Go and be disciples.  Go and embody all that is Jesus Christ.  Go become the Word incarnate, the Spirit of Christ here on this earth. Go and live as one resurrected, as one who IS a new creation, as one who walks with a Risen Christ.   (Wow! And we thought LENT was hard!)

Soar we now where Christ has led, Alleluia!
Following our exalted head, Alleluia!
Made like him, like him we rise, Alleluia!
Ours the cross, the grave, the skies, Alleluia!
                             (from “Christ the Lord is Risen Today”, hymn by Charles Wesley, 1739)
 

So, go forth into the world, into your life. Go forth and become the Living Christ, the embodiment of the One who has Risen. Take the road of new Creation.  But, remember, you are never alone. The very Divine has spilled into our world.

I don’t know Who—or what—put the question. I don’t know when it was put.  I don’t even remember answering.  But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone—or Something—and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.  From that moment I have known what it means “not to look back,” and “to take no thought for the morrow.”  (Dag Hammarskjold)

Christ the Lord is Risen!  The Lord has risen indeed!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

So, what next?  I’m grateful that you have joined me on this daily journey through the Lenten season.  Now there is work to do.  I will continue to post on this blog perhaps once or twice a week, so stay tuned!  I will also continue posting my notes for the Lectionary scriptures on http://journeytopenuel.com once a week, so I invite you to join me there too!  Thank you again for journeying with me!  Keep dancing!  Shelli 

 

Re-Creation

shelliwilliams CREATION, Easter, Life, New Creation, Recreation, Resurrection ,

Easter Lily (DT 8087007)

Scripture Text:  John 20: 1-18

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, 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.

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

 

THE LORD IS RISEN!

THE LORD IS RISEN INDEED!

Christ, the Lord, is risen today, Alleluia!   Sons of men and angels say, Alleluia!
Raise your joys and triumphs high, Alleluia!  Sing, ye heavens, and earth, reply, Alleluia!

Love’s redeeming work is done, Alleluia!  Fought the fight, the battle won, Alleluia!
Lo! the Sun’s eclipse is over, Alleluia!  Lo! He sets in blood no more, Alleluia!

Vain the stone, the watch, the seal, Alleluia!  Christ hath burst the gates of hell, Alleluia!
Death in vain forbids His rise, Alleluia!  Christ hath opened paradise, Alleluia!

Lives again our glorious King, Alleluia!  Where, O death, is now thy sting? Alleluia!
Once He died our souls to save, Alleluia!  Where thy victory, O grave? Alleluia!

Soar we now where Christ hath led, Alleluia!  Following our exalted Head, Alleluia!
Made like Him, like Him we rise, Alleluia!  Ours the cross, the grave, the skies, Alleluia!

Hail, the Lord of earth and Heaven, Alleluia!  Praise to Thee by both be given, Alleluia!
Thee we greet triumphant now, Alleluia!  Hail, the resurrection, thou, Alleluia!

King of glory, Soul of bliss, Alleluia!  Everlasting life is this, Alleluia!
Thee to know, Thy power to prove, Alleluia!  Thus to sing and thus to love, Alleluia!

(Charles Wesley, 1739)

The day has arrived!  After all this time of anunciation and birth, of baptism and ministry, of teaching and healing, of calling and response, of temptation and darkness, of dying and crucifixion, this Day of Resurrection has dawned.  After this long and difficult journey that we have taken, we come to this day with new eyes and as a new creation.  Christ has risen!  Christ has risen indeed!

But lest we lapse into thinking of this day as a commemoration of The Resurrection of Christ, as a mere remembrance of what happened on that third day so long ago, as some sort of shallow anniversary of Christ’s rising, we need to realize that this day is not just about Jesus’ Resurrection; it is also about our own.  We who carried our cross, we who died to self, we who journeyed through the wilderness and through those gates, are this day given new life.  God has recreated us into who God calls us to be.  And, in a way, that is almost more scary than the dying.  There is no going back.  The self that we knew before is no more.  We are a new creation.  We are a re-creation.

We have risen! 

We have risen indeed!

From the void, from the darkness, God created Light and Life.  Truthfully, if you look at it from a literal view, nothing has really changed.  Jesus, sadly, is still dead.  The human Jesus, the Jesus born into this world on that long ago night in Bethlehem, was gone.   But through eyes that have been resurrected, nothing will ever be the same again.

Maybe resurrection comes not in raising one above life, but in raising life to where it is supposed to be.  Jesus was the first to cross that threshold between–between death and life, between the world and the sacred, between seeing with the eyes of the world and seeing with the eyes of the Divine.  Hell has been vanquished.  Wesley wrote that “Christ hath burst the gates of hell”.  What that means is that everything, everything that God has created, everything above, below, within, around, everything we see, everything we know, everything we wonder about, everything we do not understand, has been made anew.  Resurrection is not about being transplanted to a new world but rather being called to live in this one as a new creation.  It means being recreated into the one that God envisions you to be.  It means being given a new way of seeing where love is stronger than death, where hope abides, and where life has no end.  It means being capable of glimpsing the Holy and the Sacred, the promise of Life, even in this life, even now.  This day of Easter is now only about Jesus’ Resurrection; it is about ours!  So, what do you plan to do with your new life?

The end of all our exploring…will be to arrive where we started…and know the place for the first time. (T.S. Eliot)

 

King of glory, Soul of bliss, Alleluia! Everlasting life is this, Alleluia!
Thee to know, Thy power to prove, Alleluia! Thus to sing and thus to love, Alleluia!

Everlasting life is truly this!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli