Tag: tomb

New reality

On By thallfpcpLeave a comment

Over the last year and a half we’ve lost so much, and for most of the time we haven’t even been able to process our grief properly.

Loved ones got sick and we couldn’t hold their hand.

Those close to us passed away and we couldn’t hold a funeral…or a wake.

People suffered alone because there was nothing else to do.

The first Easter began with the women getting up before dawn and going to the tomb with spices to pack around Jesus’ body.

What an awful thing to have to do.

But at least it was something.

Over the last year and a half nearly every one of us has had to confront the reality of tombs, the actual ones and the metaphorical kind.

So many of us have had to confront the reality of life without a loved one, or without a job, or without the business we worked hard to build.

Dreams were buried. 

Look, I don’t have any snappy answers to make it all go away; but I do know this: When the women got to the tomb that morning, they experienced a new reality. 

The tomb was empty.

And Jesus met them. 

He told them not to be afraid. 

And he gave them something new to do. He said, “Go and tell.”

You’ve got new work. You’re not packing spices around the dead; you’re proclaiming new life.

All those tombs we’re facing are real, but because of the resurrection, we can see them in a different way.

Tombs don’t have the last word.

In Jesus Christ, we will always have something new to do.

Put off by religious types?

On By thallfpcpLeave a comment

A few weeks ago, our sons helped lead the funeral service for their grandmother (my wife’s mother). Presbyterians call this “A Witness to the Resurrection and a Celebration of Life,” and so our sons made sure that the resurrection was front and center at the service. Like her late husband, Lorraine lived with the assurance that she belonged to God; that this life was not all there is; and that one day she would rise to see her loved ones again.

The loss of a loved one is one of the few occasions when people open up about faith. One person expressed views that ministers often hear: he didn’t believe, he said, because he’d been turned off by the rules and hypocrisy he’d seen in church growing up; the religion he’d experienced seemed too confining; and there were plenty of people on the Internet who shared his views.

Acknowledged.

But what does any of that have to do with the fact that Jesus Christ, who was stone cold dead, came out of the tomb?

Are you telling me that, because you were put off by some church people, that’s going to influence the way you understand the most important event in history?

You let a bad experience of church shape how you understand reality itself?

Far from being confining, the resurrection is the most liberating news you could possibly hear. The resurrection means that we can live with courage and love and hope because we have proof that God is for us, and that God is dealing with the problem beneath all our other problems.

Of course, if Jesus really did come out of the tomb, and I believe he did, it creates a bigger challenge for us than what to do about “religious” people. The risen Jesus calls us to choose him so that he might use us to transform the world today, and so that one day we might rise with him and live with him forever.

What’s influencing that choice for you?  

Why doesn’t Easter change us?

On By thallfpcpLeave a comment

A long time ago, a grieving woman went to a garden tomb to pay last respects. Mary had lived a life of torment and despair. Today, we’d probably say she suffered from mental illness; in our day, it seems epidemic. Mary had intended to say farewell to her teacher and friend, the one who had given her hope when everyone had given up on her.

Nothing could have prepared her for what she found. The stone covering the entrance to the tomb had been removed; the body was gone; and just the burial cloths remained. Mary ran to get her friends. They ran back to the tomb and found things just as she had said.

While the men went off to process what they’d seen, Mary just stood there crying. Then someone called her name, “Mary!” and as she turned to look, the whole world turned with her. There was Jesus, her teacher and friend, risen from the dead.

You can’t make this stuff up: the most important meeting in the history of the world was between God and a mental patient.

In some ways Mary was like a lot of us. She’d lived a life of desperation, possessed by something beyond her control. But from that moment on, her life had purpose. She was the first evangelist of the Good News, her name forever synonymous with resurrection hope.

Why aren’t we changed like Mary?

I’ve become convinced that it’s because we don’t put our beliefs into action. We don’t worship, study, pray, serve, or share our faith as we should. In other words, we don’t make ourselves available to God in ways that allow change to take place.

In a world filled with depression, anxiety, bullying, division, and worse, we should all be running to our friends with the Good News.

Jesus can still change you the way he changed Mary. Could this be the year you let him?

Easter as a verb

On By thallfpcpLeave a comment

The commercial shows a neighborhood full of kids on the wildest Easter-egg hunt ever. They rip off their Easter ties and hair bows, and go at it, running to snatch eggs out of the air, diving to find them at the bottom of swimming pools, and even searching for them with drones. All the while, the 1970’s rock anthem, “One Way or Another” blasts in the background. Inside, parents prepare for the Easter meal in relative peace and quiet, equipped with everything they need, from Wal-Mart.

The commercial ends with the line, “Easter like you mean it.”

It’s too bad that Wal-Mart so blatantly commercializes Easter. But at least the commercial points to a greater truth: If we really understood what Easter was about, we’d live with joy and abandon, like those kids in the commercial.

We’d all “Easter like we mean it.”

The first example of “Easter like you mean it” was Mary Magdalene. On the first Easter, she ventured to the tomb in the dark. Finding the stone rolled away, she ran to tell Peter and the disciple Jesus loved.

Then the two disciples raced to the tomb. Peter barged right in. Hesitating for a moment, the disciple Jesus loved saw the folded grave clothes and believed.

That’s “Easter like you mean it.”

Later, when the Risen Jesus met the bewildered disciples, he commissioned them to “Easter” the whole world. Infused with Easter power, they did just that.

Easter is proof that death and the dark forces that want to control us have been defeated. We can live with joy and abandon, knowing that everything Jesus followers do is part of renewing God’s creation.

Nothing could stop Jesus from rising from the tomb, and nothing can ultimately stop Easter people like us.

Live with joy and abandon. “Easter like you mean it.”