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Easter 2008 March 23, 2008
I awoke this morning and it was just as foggy and hard to crank myself up out of bed as most every morning. My feet hit the floor and I grogged a while before I rose up. It is not my most glorious time of day, but I do this because Jesus rose from the dead.
The sun rises quickly over the houses and trees, happily startling me in the side of the eye because Jesus rose from the dead.
I love the blue sky in the morning. Sometimes there is light coming in through the windows at almost a flat angle. It is bright yellow on the bathroom wall. And I know that the day will be new life, new purpose, new adventure because Jesus rose from the dead.
As I get older I notice that I am more careful coming down the stairs. They are steep and take a right angled turn. So I watch it because Jesus rose from the dead.
Just outside the front door I find the morning paper. Our paper delivery person, I don’t know if they are man or woman or more than one person, does such a fine job. It’s there, right at my door so I barely need to step out of the house to fetch it. And I open it up and look to see what is going on in the human community because Jesus rose from the dead.
And I look at the paper out of habit, sometimes wasting time on articles about redecorating your room. And I always read about insulating your house even though I have absolutely no need to read about that in the paper because I have researched it, but I still do it habitually because Jesus rose from the dead.
And before she goes off to work, if I can catch her, and I had better be fast and alert, I kiss my wife because Jesus rose from the dead.
There is my cat, once again lying on the love seat by the front window. He can sleep for hours in the day and at night patrols the house going from window to window where we allow him to peek out to watch for the life creeping about in the dark. And he will lie on my chest when I am trying to read the paper and do my sudoku puzzle and I know that even though he is an animal, he and I have a real, live — if not weird — connection with this life because Jesus rose from the dead.
And in the summer when I read the paper on the front porch and the two gentlemen in worn out clothing pass by going towards the liquor store and then, fifteen or twenty minutes later come back with paper bags hiding their morning’s booze and I greet them and they are happy to say hello to me, I know that somehow God is working through them to teach me something important about life and perhaps, in all humility, God might just might be using me to teach them something about life because Jesus rose from the dead.
Judi loves to garden. She has been thinking about it off and on all winter. We’ve already bought the first seeds for lettuce and peas and the clean up is on the schedule. She will spend more on the garden than the vegetables would be in the store. But she gets to plant something and tend it and watch it grow and guard it and mourn it when the root rot gets it or rejoice in it pulling off and eating whole, fresh sugar snap peas in the cool morning of a day that is going to get hot because Jesus rose from the dead.
And she gardens in a community garden, meeting people she and I might never meet in some other way because Jesus rose from the dead.
How exciting is each detail of life. I am driving my car. I keep forgetting to dust the dash board. You could write your name in it if you like. And still there is a beauty in that dust because Jesus rose from the dead.
I find every route for my car to take to this church building from my home. I love figuring out simple problems like that. A silly little thing really, but it satisfies me because Jesus rose from the dead.
I go to political meetings. I know that I cannot know everything that I need to know. I know that no one does. We are all pretty blind. I like to hear honest people and I love honest leaders and would support honesty and openness any day to someone who does not trust me with the truth. It makes me happy thinking of going to a meeting where there will certainly be a certain amount of confusion and poor leadership, but where we can trust each other to seek higher things. And I know that progress will be made when we live in this trust because Jesus rose from the dead.
Sometimes I watch TV. And I am picky and don’t watch stupid shows, although a very few stupid shows make me laugh very hard and I watch them. It is fine to spend some time in entertainment just relax because Jesus rose from the dead.
I am working very hard around my house. I want it to look good, and I really enjoy sinking nails into soft pine two by fours, but more importantly I want to improve my house so that I don’t have to feel guilty about how many carbons I emit. The feeling of guilt, or the avoidance of that feeling by doing good things is a great thing. I have guilt because I know I can be better and I want to be better and I know that it is possible for a sinner like me to be better because Jesus rose from the dead.
Now I know, you might not think I would find in the tiny details of life anything that really relates to Jesus rising from death. It’s Easter, Isn’t it? Would you not expect talk of heaven when we talk of the resurrection of Jesus? Is not all this world about us simply a prelude to the real thing which is that life lived with God after we die? Didn’t Jesus rise from the dead to let us know that we can join him on the other side?
Jesus came into the world, setting aside divinity so that he could walk with us, so that he could understand us, feel with us, so that he could teach us, so that he could organize people to work with him in his Spirit, so that he could confront Evil in all its forms and show that evil is defeated not with evil returned, but with love lovingly transforming that which is evil, so that it would be clear that even in our evil, our sin, God is not afraid nor separated nor powerless, but that God conquers. And Jesus died on the cross to show that God wants to and will pay for our sin so that we might be close to God. And not only to God, but to each other. And Jesus rose from the Grave so that we could know that he is God and that his way is one which is of love for the whole world and a way which allows us not to simply taste heaven but, if heaven might be defined as being with God, lives in life in heaven here on earth.
Jesus was walking barefoot when he was a little boy. Maybe one, maybe he was one and a half. He stuck his toes into the mud for the first time. And it squished out between them and it was so much fun he did it again and again. And then he skipped that little skip of little boys. And he stepped on a sharp stone and it hurt. And when he lay under a tree Joeseph’s favorite cat curled up next to him and purred. And we know that because Jesus rose from the dead, every squish of mud between our toes and every cat sitting on our chest and in every minor little pain, Jesus is with us.
And therefore all of it is transformed. All of it. The little stuff of waking in the morning, the little stuff of dreaming of the vegetables poking up through the ground at the community garden, all of it is transformed and seen in the new light of day, just as the things we think of as the great movements of life where justice finds its place, where mercy is given, where new, real life is seen like Jesus rising in the sky.
For instance, when a friend faces death and thereby all who surround this person more deeply understand life and are offered the possibility of transformation in their own lives, that transformation is courtesy of Jesus who rose from the dead.
Or our brother is discovered to be an alcoholic, and the troubles mount up like a wall, perhaps he will confess this situation and find transformation, perhaps he will kill himself and we have to, we must step back and, in our love, only watch and give it over to God, we know that in our limitation we are still all that we can be because Jesus rose from the dead.
When we go to war with each other, and raise the anger in our souls against each other, and call each other names, and devise ways to judge each other and punish that which we deem to be wrong, and create weapons to hurt and kill, we are offered a moment when we can see beyond our anger, beyond the hatred we manufacture, and we see that even in great violence the world can be changed, it can be transformed into something rich with life because Jesus rose from the dead.
And we can follow him in leading the world in peace because he rose from the dead.
When a child’s growth, a little defenseless child’s growth, is blunted, her bare feet stand on the hard dust and her arms become tooth picks and her belly distends because she does not have enough food, because her parents were killed in the war, because there isn’t enough money because someone with more power took it, because no one cares, because know one knows she is there, because the adults around her would love to help her and yet they are without resources and themselves also starve. . .
When humans harden their hearts against each other and enslave each other . . .
When we find ways of naming others to be less than human, less than the dogs and cats we keep in our own homes, so that we can enrich ourselves at their expense or so that we can find unity with each other by creating them as our enemy . . .
When those who know do not invite those who do not know to be taught and ignore them in their ignorance and, perhaps, even blame them for it. . .
When we don’t care about others so we are glad to give them all our garbage and spew chemicals into the air caring never who breathes them in . . .
When we carelessly scatter gases which will change everyone’s environment, killing millions if not billions, destroying the animals and plant life God, the most tender, loving, careful gardener has planted about us, blinding ourselves to the reality of the situation hoping for the storm to come after our deaths so that we don’t have to taste the consequences of our actions but rather foist them off on our children . . .
. . . there is still hope . . . . . . because Jesus rose from the dead.
And I know that my savior lives, and you know that your savior lives, and the whole world, no matter what race or nation or religion or educational level or amount of wealth can also know that their savior lives because Jesus rose from the dead.
And because he lives.
Jeff Neuman-Lee
Easter 2008
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