Thinking about the Resurrection
First, I hope that your journey through holy week is bringing you more fully into the Jesus story and deepening your hunger and thirst to pursue God’s justice and righteousness in the world. Blessings as you walk through these final days and the celebration of Easter.
Ah, Easter morning. How to help a congregation engage the story of the resurrection. Diana Butler Bass in her blog for Sojourners when she overheard someone ask the Rev. Daniel Corrigan if “he beleived in the resurrection?” He looked at the questioner and said firmly, without pause, “Yes. I believe in the resurrection. I’ve seen it too many times not to.”
I think that his answer requires us all to stop and think about what we believe, know, have experienced. It is easy to say Christ is Risen! but to have experienced or seen the fruits of resurrection in the world today is a different thing. If we cannot give testimony to the power of God, the presence of Jesus, by talking about where we continue to see and experience the newness of life that the resurrection story bears evidence to, we are telling a dead story that has no power to transform, make whole, and save God’s world. I think that people are waiting to be invited into their role and experience in that kind of living, ongoing story. May our Easter messages and worship services be ones that celebrate the power of God’s spirit to change and transform, to resurrect and make new, still today!
05 Apr 2007 russm
Hi Russ,
Thanks for posting an Easter comment for us to reflect on. I like what you write in the last paragraph. Our faith should not just be an intellectual, but also an experiential faith! The more we see and experience God’s presence in our lives, the more excited we are about our faith. Also, I think we will open-up even more to God’s transforming power.
I’ve shared this already with some of my closest friends. Last week, I traveled to Nashville to attend the “Evangelism Connections” meeting. I represented the Church of the Brethren as reps from 8 denominations gathered.
I don’t do time zone changes very well. So, I wanted to sleep-in as much as possible before the 9am meeting on Monday. I started waking-up before 7am and found myself fighting this state. So, I decided to get-up at 7am (5am PDT) and go for a prayer walk with the extra time that I had before the meeting.
Two blocks from the hotel was Vanderbuilt University (founded 1793). As soon as I walked on-campus, I was BLOWN AWAY by God’s creation!!!! There were several different kinds of trees in bloom, besides dogwoods and red bud. In addition to the trees were several tulip flower beds around different fountains.
After praising God for all the beauty of the campus, including the 1800’s style architecture, all of which you don’t see in Southern California, I was struck with this thought, “I wanted to sleep-in. God wanted to reveal the glory of his creation in a new location. I was trying to fight against the divine appointment God had in store for me.” I’m so glad that God wouldn’t let me sleep!!! Seeing the his glorious creation put me in a wonderful place to look for and experience God’s presence in the meetings over the next two days.
Thanks for posting! I look forward to seeing more from you in the future.
Blessings to you,
Jeff
Hey Russ and Jeff and others… Happy Easter! I got up much earlier than I wanted to today, because I could hardly sleep. I was anticipating all that candy my wife was gonna give me and the fun looking for eggs in the yard and the time with the family! Actually, I was so caught up in the resurrection that God is doing in my life and in the life of my congregation that I decided to get up to pray, worship, and just sit in God’s presence! Check out my blog … to read more of the awesome story of the resurrection I am living, later this week it should be an awesome story to tell as today we collect a one time offering …. my blog
Hey Russ,
I tried to add the links to your blog… and in doing so, I may have deleted some text. I tried to put it back, but you might want to check it to see if it is the way you wanted it. SORRY!
For all of us adding links… do this from the dashboard editing page and you will see a chain link at the top… click on that whle the cursor is on the word you want to link and then the pop up window will allow you to type the url and in the blog it will read “Blog” or whatever and not the url. Learning as I go. That also make the link active and you don’t need to cut and paste from the blog to get there.
Sorry about the unitentional edit…great post!
Martin,
I read about the plans for this day on your blog and tried to respond but didn’t have the time to create an account in order to do so. Know that you and your congregation are in my prayers today for the offering that you will recieve and the signs of new life that surround you. May you all sense how blessed you are today!
Happy Easter! Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed!
Russ
ps – glad the pews will be going. Hope you can find someone who really wants them.
This is a great post, and has quite a lot to say to the church today. I’ve blogged part of this article here, at my blog, Sauer Grapes, a place for discussion on the life the Church of the Brethren.