God’s Right Hand Man, Ours, too!

Ascension Day doesn’t really make the hit parade of Christian holidays, but it should! It proves Jesus’ triumph and exaltation to “the right hand of God the Father Almighty,” as the Apostles’ Creed declares. Easter is the highest point of our faith and has, of course, always been tied to Passover. The reason the date of Easter shifts is because Jesus’ death and resurrection coincided with the Passover. So, ever since the inaugural Easter, it has always come on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. Easter, therefore, can range between March 22 and April 25 each year.

Ascension Day is always 40 days after Easter because Luke says in Acts 1:3, “After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God.” Forty days after Easter is always a Thursday. This Thursday is Ascension Day!

We need to recapture its importance because it gives so much hope and encouragement, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Ascension Day confirms that Jesus has been elevated to God’s right hand. That act symbolizes his identity as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He’s literally God’s Right-Hand-Man! We usually shake hands with someone using the right hand because the right arm is most people’s side of strength and where a weapon might be held. Shaking right hands reveals that a person comes without a weapon, in peace.

A right-hand-man is, therefore, exalted, strong, dependable, the first to be called upon, and a representative of the one at whose right hand they sit or stand. When you see one, you see the other; and we know Jesus said when you’ve seen him, you see the Father (John 14:9). There are many passages about Jesus sitting at the Father’s right hand: Luke 22:69, Colossians 3:1, Psalm 110:1, Hebrews 12:2, Hebrews 8:1, Matthew 26:4, I Peter 3:22, Mark 16:19, Acts 2:33, Hebrews 10:12, Revelation 3:21, Hebrews 1:3, Ephesians 1:20, Mark 14:62, Acts 5:31, and there are more! Please read them this week and be encouraged!

Ascension Day’s importance as evidenced in Scripture gives great hope. Jesus is too tough to tame. He’s king of the universe, an embodiment of the Father’s glory, power, and strength. There is nothing too big or bad that can defeat him. He has already defeated everything that comes against us, and it keeps getting better and better because He ascended. Jesus told the disciples that it was better for them if he ascended so the Holy Spirit would come (John 16:7-16).

In other words, Jesus said that his ascension triggered the outpouring of the Holy Spirit 10 days later at Pentecost. Jesus could only be in one place at one time, but the Holy Spirit, which is His Spirit, can be everywhere. This is what Peter meant in his first sermon after Pentecost when he spoke about Jesus and what was happening, “Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear (Acts 2:33).” Amen!

Jesus’s exaltation through the Ascension gives us the Holy Spirit and confidence so that we might have forgiveness of sins and be empowered by the Holy Spirit!  Over and over in the Bible it tells us what Jesus is doing while He is at the Father’s right hand. He’s praying for us, you and me! What could be more encouraging? Romans 8:34b says, “Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.” Hebrews 7:25 says, “Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.” He is interceding for us, intercedere, as our literal “go between,” as the word itself means. Jesus becomes our “Right-Hand-Man,” along with God the Father’s, in speaking up for us, defending us, doing everything possible to help us. What an encouragement!

The most powerful example of Jesus interceding for us is with what happened to the first deacon, Stephen, in Acts 7:54-60. Stephen is being stoned to death as the first Christian martyr when, as he was being executed, says “Look, I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God (Acts 7:56).” This is amazing confirmation of the importance of Ascension Day and what Jesus continues to do for us who believe.

The interesting thing is that it portrays Jesus, the One that the Scriptures mostly say is “seated at the right hand of God the Father,” as standing at God’s right hand in this passage. Some say this is Jesus giving Stephen a standing ovation! It leads me to believe that there are times, tough times, in our lives that Jesus stands up and shows up in mighty ways on our behalf. Amen! Amen! This is my prayer: “Please God, remind us this Ascension Day, this Thursday, that you have been exalted and are ever ready to pour out your Holy Spirit to comfort, empower, and teach us. You are interceding for us, STANDING UP for us when times are difficult. We are so grateful! In your powerful name, we pray; Amen!”

Patient Endurance in the Pandemic

It has often seemed puzzling that people in the hospital are called, “patients,” when it’s so difficult to have any. Patience is hard to come by, but one thing that COVID-19 has taught us is sometimes we have to wait. The whole world has turned into a hospital of sorts, and we’re getting impatient! Many people’s patience is running thin: Presidents, governors, politicians and all kinds of people are going stir crazy to get “normal” life going again. Our quarantine situation reminds me of Revelation 14:12 when the early Christians were being persecuted. They were encouraged by these words, “This calls for patient endurance on the part of God’s saints…”

Patient endurance, determination, and hope are so needed right now! Many of us feel somewhat helpless and powerless in the changing landscape of our lives. Tornadoes and storms have added more on top of what most can bear. Our spirits are downcast, and it feels like Easter didn’t last near long enough. But, if Easter means anything, it means that Jesus’ resurrection gives us victory, not just over death, but also over the coronavirus, and everything else. Easter gives us hope that lasts well beyond Holy Week. It is eternal!

Easter is what gives God’s saints “patient endurance.” Easter hope inspires us to hang in there, to keep praying and not give up. Faith that only flourishes when times are good is fickle and transitory. Just two days ago the echo was heard: “The Lord is risen!” “He is risen indeed!” If it is my profession of faith that Jesus is alive, then I need to get my act together. Easter changes much more than COVID-19 ever will. It’s up to us to act like it!  Patient endurance is more than a hopeful fantasy if Jesus is really king. The hurting world around us and the Lord Christ above us deserve better than half-hearted Hallelujahs that last only a few days.

There’s a good story that captures this sentiment. There was a band of minstrels who traveled from town to town playing music to make a living. Times were hard, like now, and they were getting depressed and dejected because fewer and fewer people showed up to listen. Early one evening when they usually set up to start playing, their situation spilled over into their conversation. All but the oldest suggested that they not perform. “What difference would it make?” one asked. Another said, “Last night we performed for only a handful. Fewer will come tonight.” Yet another said, “How can anyone do his best for so few?” The youngest threw in the towel saying, “Let’s not even perform tonight. It won’t matter if we cancel the concert.”

The oldest minstrel wisely said, “I know we are all discouraged, but we have a responsibility to those who might come. It’s not their fault that others don’t show up. We will go on, and we will do the very best that we can do.” Encouraged by the words of their eldest member, they went ahead with the show. They never performed better!

When the show was over and the small crowd was gone, the oldest called his troupe to him. In his hand was a note that had been handed to him by one of the people who had been in the audience. The old man read it to himself, and then exclaimed, “Listen to this, my friends!” Something electrifying in his tone of voice made them all turn to him in anticipation. Slowly the old man read: “Thank you for a beautiful performance.” It was signed very simply – “Your King.”

God our King is watching our performance in these strange days. Our “patient endurance” will be rewarded with, “Well done, good and faithful servants.” It is not the time to give in or give up. It is time for us to be at our very best, and honor King Jesus in all things. We have an audience of friends and neighbors who desperately need us to be the Church. Mainly we have an audience of One!

The Virus Didn’t Steal Easter

How the Virus Stole Easter

By Kristi Bothur, With a nod to Dr. Seuss

Twas late in ‘19 when the virus began

Bringing chaos and fear to all people, each land.

People were sick, hospitals full,

Doctors overwhelmed, no one in school.

As winter gave way to the promise of spring,

The virus raged on, touching peasant and king.

People hid in their homes from the enemy unseen.

They YouTubed and Zoomed, social-distanced, and cleaned.

April approached and churches were closed.

“There won’t be an Easter,” the world supposed.

“There won’t be church services, and egg hunts are out.

No reason for new dresses when we can’t go about.”

Holy Week started, as bleak as the rest.

The world was focused on masks and on tests.

“Easter can’t happen this year,” it proclaimed.

“Online and at home, it just won’t be the same.”

Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, the days came and went.

The virus pressed on; it just would not relent.

The world woke Sunday and nothing had changed.

The virus still menaced, the people, estranged.

“Pooh pooh to the saints,” the world was grumbling.

“They’re finding out now that no Easter is coming.

“They’re just waking up! We know just what they’ll do!

Their mouths will hang open a minute or two,

And then all the saints will all cry boo-hoo.

“That noise,” said the world, “will be something to hear.”

So it paused and the world put a hand to its ear.

And it did hear a sound coming through all the skies.

It started down low, then it started to rise.

But the sound wasn’t depressed.

Why, this sound was triumphant!

It couldn’t be so!

But it grew with abundance!

The world stared around, popping its eyes.

Then it shook! What it saw was a shocking surprise!

Every saint in every nation, the tall and the small,

Was celebrating Jesus in spite of it all!

It hadn’t stopped Easter from coming! It came!

Somehow or other, it came just the same!

And the world with its life quite stuck in quarantine

Stood puzzling and puzzling.

“Just how can it be?”

“It came without bonnets, it came without bunnies,

It came without egg hunts, cantatas, or money.”

Then the world thought of something it hadn’t before.

“Maybe Easter,” it thought, “doesn’t come from a store.

Maybe Easter, perhaps, means a little bit more.”

And what happened then?

Well….the story’s not done.

What will YOU do?

Will you share with that one

Or two or more people needing hope in this night?

Will you share the source of your life in this fight?

The churches are empty – but so is the tomb,

And Jesus is victor over death, doom, and gloom.

So this year at Easter, let this be our prayer,

As the virus still rages all around, everywhere.

May the world see hope when it looks at God’s people.

May the world see the church is not a building or steeple.

May the world find Faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection,

May the world find Joy in a time of dejection.

May 2020 be known as the year of survival,

But not only that –

Let it start a revival.

Jesus Is Alive!

Easter has held a deeper meaning for most of us this year. Seeing the huge number of unclaimed pine coffins buried in a New York mass grave has been a stark reminder of what’s been happening in too many places because of COVID-19. Our realities, in short order, have been shaken by social distancing and self-quarantining; the nearly empty streets and shelves; the worries about our family members, who either work in healthcare, or are sequestered by health issues; plus countless concerns about small businesses, school years and graduations, jobs and financial stresses, plus everything else that has changed in our world. These uncertainties have made Easter’s hope more important than ever.

I sense a wake-up call, not caused by God, but one that can be used by God to make us better people, redeemed people, and a more spiritual people. Our uncertain world is met by a sure and certain God. Alarm clocks have gone off. People in India can see the Himalayas in the distance for the first time in decades because pollution has decreased. We can hope that China will NEVER EVER allow another “wet market” stay open and cause another pandemic. My prayer is that our lives will forever be altered in good ways. It would be even better if our lives were “altared,” notice the spelling, and placed on God’s altar –dedicated to God Almighty, who is the Living God, and the One who is, was, and is to come in Jesus Christ.

Because Jesus is alive we can face tomorrow with hope. It has often made me think about Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances. He has a new and improved body. He can eat with his disciples and pass through walls, too. He’s better than new, but let me tell you what really gets me this year in particular. It’s an exhilarating and sobering thought. If God raised Jesus from the dead, why didn’t God fix him up? Why were the scars left in his side, feet, and hands for Thomas and the other disciples to touch and see?

They were left for us to see, too. Why? Could it be that God is trying to say, “You cannot see or understand Jesus Christ or Easter’s Good News unless you see the wounds?” Somehow what my heart is feeling this Easter is that the resurrected Christ is forever the wounded Christ. He is living, but never fixed up. He is not bound by death, but he is scarred for eternity. Is that what has happened to us and the world this year? We’re scarred, too, maybe forever. The Good News of Jesus, however, is that we can be scarred and resurrected at the same time. We will get through this! That’s the message of Easter Season 2020. We are not defined by COVID-19, rather we are defined by our relationship to the One who knows our sorrows, carries our scars, and is yet alive. He is alive, but he is wounded so that we can look at his scars and claim hope.

In his drama, “The Trial of Jesus,” John Masefield has the centurion Longinus report back to Pontius Pilate after Jesus’ crucifixion. Longinus had been the officer in charge of the execution. After he gave Pilate his “official” report, Pilate’s wife Procula summons him to tell her how Jesus had died. After he told her what happened, she asks, “Do you think he is dead?” Longinus answers, “No, Lady, I don’t.” “Then where is he?” asks Procula. Longinus replies, “Let loose in the world, my Lady, let loose in the world where no one can stop his truth.” Amen.

Jesus’ resurrected body with scars is the sign of the Gospel’s truth. It validates everything we believe. If we will put our trust in the Lord who is let loose, we, too, will be let loose and freed, not just from COVID-19, and not just for Easter, but forever. That is our certain hope! I feel it more this year than ever, and I hope you do, too. Jesus is alive, and NO ONE and NOTHING can stop his truth!

Holy Week Isolation

A theme for Holy Week 2020 for me is isolation. We’re all doing our best to keep others safe by isolating from one another. It protects us, too, and we sincerely pray that it stops or at least slows down the COVID-19 spread. That first Holy Week created an overwhelming sense of isolation for Jesus. It shows up throughout the week. It is showing up across the world right now, too.

Isolation is something that weighs heavily on all of us today. Some of you have already known it because of treatments or immune-deficiency conditions. COVID-19 has made it real for everyone. Residents of care facilities cannot see their families, funerals are graveside only, hospitals have necessarily strict visitation limitations for every patient, and churches have gone virtual at a time when we really need a hug. God made us in God’s own image, and a huge part of that is being social. If God exists in the community that we call the Trinity, how much more do we want and need to be with each another.

“Non-essential” small business owners are especially feeling isolated. God bless each category of person or business in this period of isolation. God bless all our healthcare workers, first responders, SRS employees, grocery store and pharmacy workers, and all the others that have to come home every day in fear of contaminating their loved ones. Then there’s another kind of isolation felt by the teachers that are  at home, but are still producing lesson plans for their students. Another isolation is the “cabin fever” that separates children from their friends, neighbors, and classmates. Plus, there are the students that will not have a prom or a graduation ceremony this year. God bless every person who is feeling isolated and alone.

This is exactly why Holy Week 2020 will be especially poignant and helpful. If we wrap our minds around the fact that God in Christ knows our difficulties and pain, it lets us know we’re never truly alone. Jesus literally knows what each one of us is going through and desires to redeem it (Romans 8:28-39). That is the promise of Holy Week every year. We have a God that has skin; mysteriously truly divine and utterly human – One who is able to empathize with our every weakness (Hebrews 4:14-16).

It wasn’t long after Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday that he experienced a distancing between himself, the authorities and even his friends. Judas, the group’s treasurer, betrayed him with a kiss. Peter who was usually brash and brave cowered in fear in the courtyard of the High Priest’s home, and denied ever knowing Jesus three times. When the temple soldiers came to arrest Jesus, all of his disciples fled. Jesus was totally isolated.

One can really “feel” his isolation when it came to his late-night prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane. He ventured into the darkness with only three of his disciples with him. He asked Peter, James, and John to offer their nearby prayer support while he went further into the darkness and prayed alone. The Scripture says that he agonized so much in his praying that it was like he perspired “great drops of blood” (Luke 22:44). He went back to his three closest disciples over and over again and each time found them sleeping.

His horrible isolation on the Cross is so evident. In one of his last statements, Jesus said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This was isolation within himself, being both fully God and fully human. Some of us have felt that kind of turning on oneself when we cannot see past our own hands. Good Friday was only good for us, not at all for Jesus. One can feel his emotional, spiritual and physical heaviness as his body sagged on the Cross.

Holy Week 2020 is a unique time for us to see what Jesus went through with a fresh albeit difficult perspective. It may be the closest we have been to it ourselves in our lifetimes. May our sense of isolation help us grasp the depth of sympathy God has for each of us, and also take hold of hope because it may be Friday, but Sunday is coming. We are not quite yet to Easter yet in our fight against COVID-19, but it will not be long. Until then, we travel our own via dolorosa (Way of Suffering), but, like Christ, we will win. There is a resurrection!

Easter Hope from Old Salem

Holy Week Hope is what I need this year. COVID-19 has ravaged the world and things like Easter services have changed in its wake. This doesn’t change the fact that Jesus is alive and well. Holy Week’s drama doesn’t end on Golgotha, but at the empty tomb. There will be differences this year because we can’t meet together, but I pray that we will hear the echoes of “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!” reverberate in our hearts.

I have always wanted to attend the Easter Sunrise service at Old Salem in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Being a pastor makes it nearly impossible to pull that off due to leading my own flock in worship. This year marks the 240^th uninterrupted succession of Easter Services at Old Salem. The Moravians since Count Nicholas Von Zinzendorf in Herrnhut, Germany have given this poignant and powerful homage to Christian hope and faith. This year it will be just as rich except it will be live-streamed at http://www.moraviansunrise.org/. It’s not an extravaganza, never has been. It’s deep and worshipful. It is the essence of Christian hope because it’s not based on pyrotechnics or stage management. It is simple, yet extremely profound.

We need to remember the Moravian influence on John Wesley, Methodism’s founder, who was caught in a storm at sea frightened for his life and soul, yet surrounded by these German Pietists who had heart faith that inspired them to sing hymns and pray through the storm. They had more than the head faith of Wesley. The Moravian’s witness had a profound effect on Wesley that led him to believe Methodists would do best if we connected head and heart, and literally “felt” our religion. Wesley even met with Zinzendorf at Herrnhut to experience more of this living hope himself.

Feeling our religion is the essence of hope. So yearly, albeit 2020 will be quite different, the Moravians who have been in Old Salem since the 1700’s have celebrated their faith in a special way. At 1:45 am a brass band of nearly 400 using trumpets and tubas goes around the city and plays Easter music, alerting everyone that sunrise will soon be coming. Then they gather at the Old Salem Church at 6 am when the bishop steps out of the Moravian Church into the darkness and says the traditional Easter Greeting: “The Lord is Risen!” The gathered throng responds, “He is risen indeed!” Then silently they make their way to the ancient cemetery called “God’s Acre” where bodies have been buried or sown in faith as physical bodies so they can be raised up as spiritual bodies.

The cemetery is a witness itself of new life. Every flat recumbent stone is identical and they are covered with flowers: forsythia, jonquils, azalea and dogwood blossoms – whatever plants, bushes, and trees are full of color are carefully laid on each tomb as a sign of resurrection piercing the night’s fading darkness. The tombs are all the same for each person as a reminder that each of us needs God’s grace the same as anyone else. Tombs are not gathered in family plots, but are ranked in specific order of married women, unmarried women, married men, unmarried men, etc. Zinzendorf himself said this is the way it should be as if our bodies were “choirs,” of sorts, with equality and democracy the same rule of heaven as it should be on earth with no one better than another.

Gathered there at the cemetery in silence everyone looks toward the eastern hill beside God’s Acre and the cedars that were brought from Germany when the first Moravians settled Salem. The sun comes up over that hill and the Communion of Saints is revealed: the earthly saints in the Church Militant joined with the deceased saints in the Church Triumphant, all living saints as represented by the people standing and the graves festooned by every imaginable color of flower. It is impressive. “Christ is Risen!” “He is Risen indeed!”

Pray and plan that Holy Week and Easter 2020 will be as glorious as any in Old Salem. May we feel stronger in the faith as we visualize our deceased loved ones alive again and rooting us on in our quest for hope and resurrection today. Amen.

Resurrection Dust

In seminary a bunch of us students would unwind by playing the board game “Risk!”  The game is all about world domination, and the winner is the one who conquers everyone else. There was this one guy who would always quote Jesus’ words, as he perennially went down to defeat, “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” I can hear him even now. The rest of us thought that it was just a game, not a theological exercise.

I’m afraid that’s the attitude many people have about their faith. Life is a game to win or lose, and one tries to fit God in wherever one can. Like Peter admonishing Jesus about the absurdity that the Son of Man must die, many of us think it’s better to gain the whole world than carry a cross. Carrying a cross seems like losing, game over. So, we are convinced that it is a hard journey to carry a cross. Jesus says that without this self-sacrifice we are doomed. Jesus is the only One who conquers everyone and everything else!

We have to let him “conquer” us so that we give up our wants and wishes and accept God’s will. If we don’t, everything is lost. We need to move from being WAM people and become WAY people. “What About Me?” people are always looking out for themselves while WAY people consistently ask, “What About You?” It is even better if the “You” in question is God. WAY people are selfless, not selfish. The way of the cross is about what’s right and pleases God. It’s the ultimate choice to do the right thing, no matter what the personal cost.

Christians have been called people of The Way before. It takes faith in action. Lent is our season to drill down and discover our faith’s bedrock. It’s a time to ask ourselves what we really believe, whom we really follow, and will we carry a cross. The song by Matt Redman, “Jesus, it’s all about you,” sings and sounds well enough, but is so hard to do in our self-absorbed world. It is usually the poor who get this truth before anyone else. They depend on the power of resurrection to be real. Actually everybody I know depends on this truth if they’re honest enough.  All of us need an Easter faith. So, Lent and Easter come at a perfect time. We want winter to be over and warmer weather to arrive.

I’ve been nursing an amaryllis since Christmas a year ago. Trying to get it to re-bloom after more than a year has taken more effort than I imagined. I’ve followed all the rules about letting the leaves absorb sun throughout last summer. Finally the time came for me to stop watering so that the leaves would die before last fall arrived. I cut the old fronds away, then stored it in the fridge. I was careful to keep any apples away because their proximity causes sterilization.

Finally I pulled it out 8 weeks before Christmas and expected it to be a holiday delight. I repotted, watered, and put it in as much sun as I could. It turned an ugly rotten brown. I figured I had overwatered it and firmly felt underneath it several times to see it was soggy and too far gone. It felt okay, so now, three months late, it finally started sending out green shoots. I went from being in Dr. Seuss’ “waiting place” in Oh, The Places You’ll Go to Resurrection time, and I’m looking forward to the blooms!

Has this been a “waiting place” of a winter for you? If so, there’s hope! Pollen has begun to fall and cover our cars in our temperate Southern climate. My daughter, Narcie, calls pollen “Resurrection Dust.” It wreaks havoc on sinuses, but it’s a wonderful sign that no matter how long the winter, or how hard the journey, or how heavy the cross, there’s a resurrection coming. Spring is on its way to scatter away the last vestiges of winter’s chill. “Resurrection Dust” sprinkled over our lives gives us renewed hope.

This makes me hear echoes of Natalie Sleeth’s “Hymn of Promise” – “In the bulb there is a flower…, a spring that waits to be…, unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.” My amaryllis was done for, but now it’s alive! God’s “Resurrection Dust” is a sign! If nature recognizes this pendulum that swings from death to life, why don’t we? Look out at the yellow pollen and be grateful. Easter’s coming!

A Fisherman’s Tale

Easter came so early this year that I feel like I missed it. We had a huge number of people in church. The music was grand. Everything went well, and immediately after the last service I changed into my camping duds, left my suit at church, and took off for the mountains to enjoy 3 days of respite and relaxation. I wanted to catch another trophy. Last May 29 at 12:15 in the afternoon using a Mossy Creek “Rebel” Teeny Weeny Crawdad, I landed a 26 inch Rainbow Trout. Funny how the specifics of that are more easily remembered than much more important things.

This last week’s trip was the earliest I had ever been on the New River near Jefferson, NC. It showed. It was cold and there wasn’t a leaf on a tree. Heavy frost and below freezing temps made my -40 degree sleeping bag a welcome place to snuggle inside my 4-season one-man I-tent. The usual fish that I catch like Redeye, Smallmouth, and Sunfish all had lock-jaw. The trout fishing, however, was the best ever.

It wasn’t a 26-incher, but I missed catching a giant Brown trout except for forgetting to put the net in the canoe. I did catch a beautiful little trout that looked like a cross between a Rainbow and a Brown, pink spots at the top and dark ones at the bottom. Gorgeous, but the fishing went from good to bad by the last day when in 6 hours only 4 fish were caught.

You’re probably wondering why in the world this fishing and camping expedition is on my mind, and there is at least one reason: most ministers need some time off after a hectic Easter! But, the main reason this is on my mind today is that I’ve been looking at the lectionary texts for this coming Sunday. The Gospel for April 10 is from John 21 where the disciples encountered the Risen Christ on the Sea of Galilee. He met them doing exactly what they were doing when he called them to join His ministry. They were fishing.

There’s something comforting about going back to the familiar after a life-changing event. Maybe the disciples were just hungry, but, for whatever reason, they went back to catching fish instead of their charge to be fishers of people. Going back to the same-old, same-old is about as disappointing as the drop in attendance from Easter to the Sunday after. It’s not called “Low Sunday” for nothing.

What’s impressive in John’s account is that when they hauled in the miraculous catch of fish, he says the fish are large and they’re exactly 153 of them! Sounds weird, doesn’t it? It makes the account sound a little fishy, but at the same time it adds precisely what the Easter narrative needs after two weeks of going back to our normal schedules. The size of the fish and the specific number add authenticity, reality, Truth.

For the fisherman in me who just got off the river – cold and wet, with precious little to show for my supposed time away, it shows that Easter lasts longer than a special day. It is Good News that comes in handy when we’re doing the ordinary, the usual, and the work-a-day stuff of life. Jesus met the disciples, and meets me, and you, too, more in the natural ebb and flow of life than He does at Empty Tombs or Mountains of Transfiguration. Those don’t mean near as much if they don’t impact where you and I spend most of our time.

Maybe what I need to do today is count fish. Rather than lamenting that Spring Break is over, I can go one better by noticing the miraculous in the mundane. Instead of daydreaming about my next excursion, I can focus on the awesomeness of now. In this strange semi-down time after Easter, it will do my soul more good to ponder the exactness of 153 fish caught and how big they were. Ours isn’t a make-believe faith built on myth and fabrication. Jesus’ resurrection is real. It gives tangible hope in our ordinary lives.

So, whether you’re facing a doctor’s news, test results, hours of rehab, spring cleaning, the spreading of new mulch, or the nuts and bolts of prepping a flower bed, then know this: there is nothing more extraordinary about ordinary life than when you know Jesus is alive! I don’t have to escape to future far-off oases, or to past good old days when the Living Lord is right here and now. If I count them, I’ll guess that there’s 153 large God-moments with my name written on them, just waiting for me to haul them in. How many “fish” have you caught today?

 

Taps or Reveille?

I don’t think that it ever hit me until this week how our country went from triumph to tragedy so quickly 150 years ago. On Palm Sunday 1865 General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse to Ulysses S. Grant of the Union Army, effectively ending the American Civil War. Five days later, on Good Friday 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was shot and died the next day. A horrible war with brother against brother, state against state was capped by another horror. From triumph to tragedy in just a few days.

I am looking out my study window right now and can see the graves of 26 Union soldiers who died 5 weeks before the Civil War ended. How awful to be so close to the end of the carnage and yet die. Historical accounts of the Battle of Aiken, SC on February 11, 1865 list 53 Union soldiers killed, 270 wounded and 172 captured for a total of 495 casualties for the North. On the Confederate side there were 31 killed, 160 wounded, and 60 captured for a total of 251 casualties. I cannot imagine the awful grief that gripped the families of these young men who died so close to the war’s end.

Jesus had his triumphal entry into Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday and five days later was killed on Good Friday, too. Both Jesus and Lincoln were killed, but Lincoln’s tomb in Springfield, Illinois is occupied, and Jesus’ is empty. Nevertheless, I am struck to the core by the juxtaposition of life and faith. We live in a world of bad news, and yet we believe in Good News. We believe in a God who can go with us from the peak and valley of triumph to tragedy and still redeem it all for good. Today is Friday, but Sunday’s coming.

I just met with a mother whose child is in that in-between crucible of surgery and prognosis. So many of us have been on that roller-coaster ride between the peak of “We got it all,” and the valley of “There’s something suspicious.” Right now, two very special people, Revs. Chris and Elise Barrett, are on this roller-coaster and are facing it with a brave Easter faith that doesn’t gloss over the very real sense of mortality that so many seek to deny or avoid. Chris’ lymphoma has come back with a vengeance and he and Elise are doing the very best that they can to fill a bucket list of memories.

We all know people all over the world who are experiencing Good Friday crucifixions but try to live Sunday’s Easter faith. They are inspirations. For all who live in this tension between a won war and the tragedy of after-action casualties, we need to celebrate Easter all the more. Jesus rose from the dead with scars – pierced hands, feet, and side, to remind us that the reality of pain isn’t touched up by the makeup and brush of a mortician’s hand. Jesus continues to carry the marks of what life dealt him, but he is very much alive.

Therefore, we can all get on with our bucket lists and dare life to deal us its worst blows because God is the conqueror of death. Sure, we all would rather not have the pain of Good Friday, and would rather go peak to peak from Palm Sunday to Easter, but that’s not reality. The deaths that we die are not the way God wants it for God loves us so much that he would never cause us harm. Bad things are never God’s will (James 1:17), but what God does best is that through Jesus Christ he walks the solemn path with us, and defeats every foe. This is our life as Christians: triumph to tragedy to triumph, over and over again, but through Jesus the last scene will always be one of triumph, not the sounding of “Taps,” but “Reveille.”

Passion and/or Palm Sunday?

Palm Sunday is a mixed up day for the church. We know the rest of the story too well and want to get there too quickly. We know the following Sunday is Easter and there are anticipatory smiles all around. We want a taste of that joy on Palm Sunday, too, as if to soften the gruesome events of Holy Week. We even call the day of Jesus’ crucifixion “Good Friday” when it was anything but good for Jesus.

Our rushing the week to an early happy conclusion by celebrating Palm Sunday with such gusto is indicative of our culture’s enthrallment with happy endings. But if we don’t speak on Palm Sunday about what Jesus went through then the only opportunities left are Maundy Thursday or Tenebrae services, which are usually not well-attended. What a disservice and underestimation of the depth of Christ’s love and pain.

Our desire for a “good outcome” and selfish “me-ism” trumps an adequate appreciation of what we’re really commemorating. We jump from high point to high point and skip the horrible events of mid-week. Doing so, to me, is too much in tune with Satan’s challenge for Jesus to jump off the pinnacle of the temple. That was as if the devil was saying to him, “Bypass all that suffering, Jesus. Here’s a shortcut. Show them who you are and you won’t have to die.”

Who wouldn’t want a shortcut or bypass suffering? I know that I resemble that remark! For instance, I want to know ahead of time if a movie concludes well; i.e., has a “happy ending.” Life is difficult enough. I don’t want to see a movie that’s a downer. I need a lift, and desire entertainment. Therefore, I’m not much on watching anything sad or tear-jerky. I recently watched a rerun of Nicholas Sparks’ movie, “Nights in Rodanthe,” and it was a bummer and I am cured from being a fan of the sad and sappy genre.

Is this a universal desire to skip the sad and welcome the glad? Is this why we focus on the children waving palm branches and giving Jesus the Red Carpet Treatment, rather than castigate the throng who begged for Jesus’ death later in the week? Do we prove our aversion to pain by our preference in calling the day “Palm Sunday,” rather than “Passion Sunday,” or the phrase “Holy Week” over “Passion Week?” The word “passion” derives from the Latin “passio” which means “to suffer.” No wonder we don’t use it very much, or have changed its meaning to something steamy and erotic.

Here’s the rub. Changing the name and the emphasis doesn’t change the facts. Jesus suffered. If we rush over Jesus’ sufferings and go from one little Easter (Palm Sunday) to the real Easter, then we’ve missed the point of the Incarnation. Jesus, God-In-The-Flesh, came and suffered with us, for us, to save us from trying to save ourselves through entertainment or attainment. Nothing we do to inoculate ourselves from the world or evil’s consequences will work. It’s all been attempted and failed miserably. God comes to us and allows Himself to be subjected to the worst in humanity to restore us to the best selves humanity can ever imagine.

Therefore, don’t rush from mountaintop to mountaintop this coming week without pausing in the valley of the shadow of death. It is in the valley that God does what God does best. There in the trenches where you and I struggle with personal sin, fears about health, finances, or relationships is where we see Jesus at His best. In the midst of Holy Week, He struggled with whether or not He would take up the cross. He dealt with the betrayal of two of his disciples and the desertion of all the rest. He agonized in pain from the scourging that He received, and suffered a death the likes we have never imagined.

It is in the valley that Jesus lets me know full well all of that from which I can be redeemed. If I rush from Palm Sunday’s parade to Easter’s glory, I might miss that. My solemn promise is to attempt to walk the Via Dolorosa with Jesus so that I might relish even more the victory that He’s won. I hope that we all have a blessed Passion Sunday and a solemn Passion Week.