Month: April 2017

Long after the Thrill

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Way back in 1982 John Mellencamp came out with Jack and Diane. That song ALWAYS pops into my head when I read about the disciples after the crucifixion. They were so lost. Oh yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of livin’ is gone. Which is to say: sometimes our dreams disappear before we do. I imagine Peter down by the water with the nets in his fingers, wondering what he’s supposed to do with his life, now that Jesus is gone. Yet the sacred word of the resurrection turned out to be that sometimes we shouldn’t try going back to normal. I miss lots of things about the ‘old days’ – my parents, my physical condition, my hair! But I don’t miss overt racism against First Nations, teachers smoking in the classroom, bullying encouraged in school, open sexism against women, gay-bashing and anti-Semitism. Some day soon, God willing, we’ll look back in equal horror at the ways the banks now make profits, the outsourcing of pollution, the obscene salaries of CEOs, and the gutting of our little towns and industries by the almighty dollar. Can we be prophets who call out injustice, hurt, and hate? The resurrected Jesus stands on the shoreline of our lives, calling to us in our little boats. Don’t go back to normal, he shouts out. That’s done. You can grieve it, if you need to, but it’s gone. Come sit, and be quiet, and have a little something to eat. And then together, let’s talk about what you’ll do next. Let’s sit and think and ponder and plan whatever resurrection is needed.

Recalibrating

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I remember the first time I drove with GPS. I heard a word I’d never heard before: Recalibrating. You’re going one way when maybe, you should have been going another. The machine doesn’t fuss, or fret, or blame you. You could go off a cliff and it would just…recalibrate. Do not be afraid, says the angel to the two Marys who had come to anoint the body. RECALIBRATE. THAT was the message to the women who came to the tomb. The path your life is about to take, the angels said, is different from the one you had planned. Something has happened. Something dangerously hopeful. Recalibrate. After Jesus dies, it says in Matthew’s Gospel that the city leaders ask for a guard for the tomb. Matthew’s the only Gospel to recount this. “We want to make sure that his disciples don’t come to steal the body,” they say, “Otherwise his disciples will claim that he’s been raised, so the last deception will be greater than the first.” That phrase has always stuck with me. How can we, who celebrate this day, answer people who believe that we ARE living a deception? How about this? What’s unrealistic is NOT Easter. What’s unrealistic is our death-denying, hiding-the-facts-from-ourselves society claiming we’re never get older, just better. Some deny resurrection. But then we swallow the big lie that there’s no death, period. What’s unrealistic is paying hundreds of dollars for creams to hide our aging, or living in a world where the contents of a dumpster are entertainment on TV. What’s unrealistic is people who call themselves Christian who celebrate the world’s biggest bomb and never think about the fact that all that shiny metal is designed to blow human bodies up. The Marys were on their way to anoint a dead body when they were surprised by life. Like my experience learning to drive with a GPS unit for the first time, our Creator sometimes knows the path better than we do. Life comes THROUGH death. Do not be afraid. Life can triumph. The way can be recalibrated. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed.