From the Wilder View - April 2009

I have been looking at an empty page for several days now. It says, ‘From the Wilder view…’, and then…nothing…just a blank page. Many times I have started to write something only to erase it and start over. Some would call it writers block, but for me I find that words are quite limiting when I try to speak about the power of Easter.

For most of my life, Easter was focused on Good Friday. I can’t tell you how many sermons and lessons I have heard about the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. I can’t begin to count how many times that I have heard about my sin being the cause of his suffering and death. Nor can I describe the guilt that I have lived with most of my life. The guilt of my sins, the guilt of being inadequate, the guilt of not being thin enough, or smart enough, or good enough. The living in the death of, ‘if you really knew who I am, you wouldn’t like me.’ Good Friday isn’t much fun for any of us. It seems though that our Christian faith tends to be completely centered on Good Friday and we seem to just flit by Easter Sunday so we can get back to the comfort of our own pain and suffering.

At some point in my first year at Lafayette Park UMC, God whispered something very transformative in my ear one day. It was something simple. “It’s not about my death, it is about my life.” I think I said, “What?” The phrase came back to me again. “It’s not about my death, it is about my life.” I still didn’t get it, and then the verse, “I have come that they might have life and have it abundantly” came to my mind.” It seemed that verse after verse began to come to my mind about life. All of a sudden it was if someone flipped a switch in my brain and a light went off. It isn’t about Christ’s death! It is about Christ’s life!

Easter is about Christ’s life. It’s about the life that he modeled when he walked this earth in human flesh. Christ’s life as he knelt and washed the feet of his disciples. Christ’s life as he broke the bread and lifted the cup. Christ’s life as he welcomed the children and the people on society’s margins. Christ’s life as he said, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they have done.” Christ’s life as he folded up the grave clothes. Christ’s life as he told Mary not to weep. Christ’s life as he greeted his disciples and invited Thomas to touch the wounds in his hands and side. Christ’s life as he lives within us today.

Easter is about the power of Christ’s redeeming life and His love touching our lives so that our sin, our guilt, our fear can be dead once and for all and we can live strong, vibrant, abundant lives. Easter is about living in the power of God that conquers everything…even death.

My hope for each of us this Holy Week and Easter is that we can openly embrace the LIFE of Christ in our lives and began to truly experience the joy of God’s abundant life.

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
Pastor Kathleen

Sharing Time with Sharon: You can’t get there from here!

April 2009

Every year, worship planners must figure out what the itinerary for Holy Week, those days between Palm Sunday and Easter, will look like in the church. The task is to bring folks from the excitement of Palm Sunday’s “Hallelujah!” when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, through the throes of his pain and passion of his last week on earth, to the glorious wonder of Christ’s resurrection on Easter morning.

Anticipating that people’s lives are too busy to come back to church mid-week for another service, many churches try to divide the pre-Easter Sunday between the palm welcome and the agonizing crucifixion, all in 60 minutes. What you end up with is emotional whiplash.

Too much really important stuff happened during that week, and the theological and emotional significance takes time to soak in to really become part of our spiritual journey. Other churches have been known to skip the midweek destinations all together, believing that they’re too depressing. Better, in our already anxious times, to keep the worship celebrations cheerful and positive. So they leapfrog from happy Sunday to happy Sunday, with just a footnote about the intensity of emotion and raw passion that Jesus experienced in those days in between.

Well, friends, here’s the deal. There just isn’t any way to get to the joyous destination of Easter, if you don’t stop and experience Good Friday, dwelling in the how and why of Jesus’ arrest, trial, and death. You have to travel with the disciples and his mother to the foot of the cross and hear the agony of his whispered prayers. You have to sit with the sin that kept Jesus on that cross in order to feel the giddy rush of freedom offered by the empty tomb.

Oh sure, if you travel directly to Easter morning, you can still enjoy the flowers, sing the old traditional hymns, and wear your new bonnet. But the goose-bumpity glory and power of the empty Easter tomb in rooted in that wretched Friday cross. If you don’t hang out there first, it will be like watching somebody else’s travel slides instead of experiencing the texture and tastes of the journey for yourself.

I’ll see you at the cross,
Pastor Sharon