Do We Need A Physical Resurrection?

John 20:19-31

Today we come to the story of Thomas whose critical mind puts him at odds with the other disciples. He needs more that the words of others to confirm the presence of the Christ in the world. He needs to see it for himself.  To be there and engage with the physicality of Jesus the Christ in such a way it proves the words of others.

He needs a personal experience.

We live in a world where we need evidence, proof, the truth. We are always seeking to know, see or experience something before we will attest to its truth, its beauty, its existence. Often we say that you had to be there, you won't know until you experience it, you have to se it for yourself. We live in a world which channels Thomas into our everyday life and existence. It is the reason we who value rational thought struggle with myth and the primal experience of those who are yet to be seduced by rational thinking. Wisdom eludes us because it cannot be embodied or experienced in the way provable facts and visible evidence can.

And this poses a problem for us all. Was Jesus the product of a miracle, a virgin birth defying all the physical implications of such an event? Did Jesus who was dead on the cross, placed in a tomb and treated with 100 pounds of nard, walk out of the tomb for all intents and purposes as alive as he was before the crucifixion?

Pastor and author Tim Keller, “The Christian Church is pretty much inexplicable if we don’t believe in a physical resurrection.” NT Wright, the Anglican author, argues that without a physical resurrection than can be no viable explanation for the birth of the Christian church.

Both men are examples of our need for evidence, for a physical presence which is, at the same time, beyond the rules and laws of the physical world. Do we need the physical and the miraculous to experience the Cosmic Christ? We may need such if we are only concerned about the man Jesus, if Jesus from Nazareth is the focus of our faith, or if we need an interventionist God to do big things, then perhaps we need the miraculous and the material to maintain our faith. If we only focus on Jesus then I understand where both Keller and Wright are coming from.

But you see it is not about Jesus, it is about the Christ, the Cosmic or universal one who was there at the beginning of all creatures, was present in the life and death of Jesus, and remains with us into the future after this cataclysmic event in the form of the Spirit, the pointe vierge (virgin point) within.

After Jesus, the Christ continues.

This is the crux of our faith, not a belief in the improbable just because, perhaps as some say, God could do the improbable if God wanted to, but a personal experiential faith in the Christ who imbues all with life and gives birth to a life that continues long after the cross. My question is always why does God need to break all the laws to prove God-ness? Why do we always look for these demonstrations of greatness to bolster our faith? Is it more about creating a God that fits into our image instead of finding a God who simply is? If our faith rests only on miracles, virgin births and a physical resurrection is that enough?

David Ewart writes, "John doesn't care what we see with our eyeballs. He wants us to SEE with our inner eye who Jesus really is –(the Christ). That is why he has written these signs for us. That in SEEing, we might believe; and in believing, we might have the life that is in Jesus (the Christ, not Jesus the human figure)." This is the purpose of Thomas’s critical eye. This is the purpose of the encounter. Thomas doesn’t even touch the physical body. In the end he doesn’t need the physical. He simply needs presence, awareness, the awakening of his inner eye to the truth about Jesus the Christ.[1]

"John is not anti-miracle, but he is critical of the focus on the materiality of miracles and Thomas surely approaches that stance. Blessed are those who believe who did not need the proofs (20:29)."[2] The need for miracles to prove God is God is not what John is about. There is no need for an improbable virgin birth or a risen dead man, what is needed is the capacity to see the invisible – the essence of all being – love – at work in the experience of the Christ.

Thomas arrives and in the presence of his friends experiences the presence, the empowerment, the reality of Christ without the need to verify it by putting his hands in the scars.

I, like John, am not anti-miracle, just don't need miracles to affirm my faith and in a world committed to the physical and the material we need a counter-cultural faith, a faith that is empowered solely by presence and awareness, by stillness and silence, by the unspectacular and the ordinary, by the authentic and the foundational thread tying us all together. In a world of the spectacular we need the value of the hardly noticeable, almost invisible unspectacular presence of the Christ in our ordinariness.

Yes, Thomas had an experience but it was more than a physical experience, it was an experience that opened his eyes to the truth about the identity of Jesus. It was an awareness of the Christ as the centre of all being, the Alpha and the Omega of all existence. It was not of resurrected human being but of the continuing existence of the powerful presence of God in all life. The resurrection, however it occurred, brought to the disciples and those who experienced it an incredible sense of the enduring and unceasing creative power of the Source of all life and it was sufficient to take them out into the world to face whatever the future held for them.

I don’t need my Jesus to be the result of a rule breaking God, I can not do the intellectual gymnastics to embrace the physical resurrection as a necessary part of my faith experience. And I suspect, in the modern world, many mature believers and thinkers are unable to do so. We do not have to because neither did Thomas in the end.

Christ the source of all life who Thomas saw via his inner eye is sufficient in all Christ’s mystical beauty and cosmic presence for a vibrant faith in this world. We need no thing else. Amen

---

[1] Parentheses mine.

[2] William Loader

Fourth Day Living - The Day Beyond Hope

John 11:1-45 

 

"LOST: male dog, has one eye, mangled left ear, missing left hind leg and most of his teeth, crooked tail. Answers to the name, ‘Lucky'.

 

In our modern day world I suspect many of us feel a little like Lucky. We are bombarded by bad news – bad news on a world scale, bad news on a local scale and bad news on a personal level. It never seems to stop. You turn on the tv to watch a little news and relax, and all you get is one bad story after another, even the shows which are supposed to entertain are full of anger, bully and violence. Watch an episode or two of Married at First Sight, My Kitchen Rules or The Block to see what I mean.

 

Talk a stroll through the local bookshop or record store (are there any of these any more?) and take a look at the covers, the story briefs or the lyrics and you will be surprised by the  words used, the storylines or violence and horror which seems to permeate almost everything out there.

 

Erich Fromm, the psychoanalyst, wrote in 1956; “We have a literacy above 90 per cent of the population. We have radio, television, movies, a newspaper a day for everybody. But instead of giving us the best of past and present literature and music, these media of communication, supplemented by advertising, fill the minds of men with the cheapest trash, lacking in any sense of reality, with sadistic phantasies which a halfway cultured person would be embarrassed to entertain even once in a while. But while the mind of everybody, young and old, is thus poisoned, we go on blissfully to see to it that no “immorality” occurs on the screen."

 

Little seems to have changed in the 60 years since he wrote that. There seems to be no end to bad news and we may find ourselves overwhelmed and feeling we are living in the worst of times not the best of times. Despite the capacity for human beings to grow and develop knowledge, skills and quality of life we seem not to have mastered the art of living well together.

 

No wonder we feel a little like Lucky the dog, broken down, dragged out and not all there. We may indeed feel as if we are living in the hopeless days. And it is when we are living in the hopeless days that we are the closest to the sense of another long Gospel reading from John. This is the story of loss and grief, of facing up to the inevitable death that faces us all in some way every day. We receive bad news about our own health, about the health or death of a friend, about the health of our beloved pet, we lose a job, we face divorce, we face financial ruin, we risk everything for a better life only to be told no and more.  For whatever reason we find ourselves living in the hopeless day.

 

Martha, Mary and Jesus find themselves in this very place. Their brother, his friend has died. He gets the news on the day it happens. He is sad but does not rush back but waits 2 days before travelling to their home. Perhaps he was worried about the reception he would get. The disciples were because they intimated it was beyond risky for Jesus to show his face there. Perhaps he was so overcome with the thought of going back and facing it immediately, it was just too much. So it wasn’t until the third day that he began the trip and he arrived on the fourth day, a day when it was going to be too late for heroics such as a healing, the body had already started to decompose.

 

Martha and Mary were both upset at his tardiness intimating he had known about Lazarus’s health prior to his death and hadn’t come back. They were well aware of his ability to heal and couldn’t come to grips with his failure to heal the one he loved. Their confrontation with him may have been a little more forceful than John relates and his defence that this was all for God’s glory probably was not an appropriate answer. And it isn’t ever.

 

Yet here they were in what was to them a hopeless situation.

 

Peter Woods writes that "Jesus knows that Lazarus is dead. He tells his disciples this brutal truth. Only then does he decide to go to nearby Bethany. He arrives on the fourth day. The day that is beyond all hope. All through Scripture the third day is the day that God acts. Jesus arrives on the hopeless day, the fourth." 

 

This is worth keeping in mind as it is the only time it is recorded. The day that is beyond hope is a place where people live and where God is not absent. Yes God acts on the third day, timely and appropriately, before everything decomposes and falls apart and we live and have been taught to live with the expectation that this will happen. But God is not absent from the hopeless day, the day beyond hope. What actually happens in this story we do not know but we do know something happens and Lazarus is somewhat restored, at least in the story if not in real life. God in someway restores equilibrium and balance in so dramatically that in a few verses on from this reading, Jesus future is doomed by those in power who will see to it he dies.

 

We always want God to act within the 3 days, within a timely framework that works for us. We also want God to restore it to the way it was. But it has changed no it is different and uncomfortable. We find the day that is beyond all hope too painful, to dislodging, to traumatic, and it often leaves us with scars we can never erase. Yet if we look closely to that day or days we find God is not absent, stuff is happening to us and others, the ground is shifting and life continues, different, changed but it is still life.

 

Fourth day living is where the church has been since the promised or expected immediate return of Jesus has yet to occur. Fourth day living is the ordinary experience of each of us and has produced wonderful spiritual practitioners, writers and saints. Fourth day living is the norm for the majority of people throughout the world, not the exception in places where God does not appear on the third day to prevent children dying of starvation, people being bombed out of their homes or others feeling the wrath of racism and oppression.

 

It is in fourth day living that we begin to experience the necessity of faith, hope and love; the value of community and belonging; and the expansiveness of God’s presence, even when God seems to have gone missing. Fourth day living pushes our boundaries, reshapes our values and expectations and beckons us forward into an ever-expanding universe open to surprise, beauty and possibility.

 

The truth for Jesus friends is that they have not avoided the inevitable encounter with fourth day living, only postponed it; but they may have lived the days after Jesus’ visit, the day after they experienced for the first time the day beyond all hope, very differently, intentionally, focused and with an awareness they didn’t have before.

 

Like Lucky, they panted for more.

 

The Amazing Void

Luke 24:1-12

 

Sometimes a nod is as good as wink, don’t you think? As a kid I thought so. If I didn’t get a direct no to something I asked my parents, teacher or someone supposedly in charge, then I took it as a yes. A nod is as good as a wink.  The result; I was in trouble more times than I thought it fair.

 

On Easter eve we need to be careful to not invoke that saying here. The women come to the tomb. They have a special task to do. They had the necessary spices to anoint the body with even though the tomb had been sealed by the Romans. Were they aware of this or were they expecting to have the customary access to the body? They were surprised, not that the stone had been rolled away, like they were expecting to be able to get in.

 

What they were surprised at was the fact that the body was missing. As I am sure you and I would be. What they had expected was not the case. How did this happen? What had happened?  Even the words attributed to the young men in shining clothes only hint at the possibility of a resurrection. It is not enough for the Peter and the disciples. They need more than a nod is as good as a wink, and they go home and put all down to the emotion of the moment.

 

 David Ewart suggest "This passage contains no resurrection. But this lesson also contains trusting the amazing void."

 

What a powerful though for us tonight as we envisage what is to come, “trusting the amazing void”. Nothing is definite. It could be or it could not be. What we seek may come and it may not come. Children waiting for the tooth fairy, Santa Claus and Easter Bunny embrace the amazing void – that huge dark hole between when they start wishing for the special day and when it actually comes.

 

Dogs live in the present moment so much that when you say I’ll be back in an hour, they immediately look at you and go ‘are you back yet?” There is no gap between now and later, all is now.

 

Not for us humans and we often want to rush over the void to the moment when all is as it should be. We will do anything to get by the ‘amazing void”. The idea of trusting it is foreign to us. We need certainty, health, happiness, control. The dark place of emptiness and uncertainty is to be avoided at all costs. Yet for many of us we will spend a great deal of time in that place and be asked to trust it as a place of renewal, hope and possibility.

 

For example:

Only a handful of Rhodes scholars have had a disability but the newest Australian scholar Matt Pierri is not out to change the world, just people’s perceptions.

His own world changed three weeks before his 16th birthday in 2007 when he broke his neck playing Australian football at school and was left a quadriplegic.

He spent the next three weeks in hospital followed by five months in rehab.

The Year 11 student kept up his studies while attending rehab and regaining movement in his hands and returned to school to complete Year 12 the following year. He is now the recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship”

He trusted the amazing void.

 

Our world is full of those, who like Matt and for various reasons, have had to trust the untrustable and find a new way of making meaning. Often it is no where as exciting as a Rhodes Scholarship, it is often just the courage to keep on keeping on, doing what needs to be done, and doing it over and over again.

 

Mother Teresa writes in her letters to her spiritual advisors that for some 30 years she had no confirmation of the presence of Jesus. Somewhere along the way Jesus had seemed to disappear yet she kept on doing what she was called to do, even in the midst of the dark and threatening void.

 

Henri Nouwen, Catholic priest and writer, Thomas Merton, modern mystic Eckhart Tolle and others all talk about the dark night of soul in which they were forced to trust when all seemed lost.

 

Easter Eve is that moment in the story of holy week. Jesus has died on the cross and been placed in the tomb. Now, when they thought they at least had the certainty of his body, they are left with no thing to mourn. The dark place of mourning just got darker. When you think it can’t get any worse, it does. Murphys’ rule and Murphy was an optimist!

 

Yet there is a glimmer of light, a word that points to the possibility of a risen Jesus. For Mary and the women this sends them running back to the men. For Peter it is just another strange event in his experience of Jesus and seems to far fetched and bewildering to even consider.

 

All this leaves them with a void, an amazing void, a void that is the tomb and the incredulity of the situation. So this is what Jesus talked about at the temple about pulling it down and building it up in three days, is this what he meant? Surely not. Yet…..

 

Sitting in the dark place of hopelessness and bewilderment allows our senses and reason to expand to embrace the possibility, to get us looking for something else, something that transcends and transform our situation. We need to take the time to allow the mysteries held in the void to become clear to us and to speak into our lives, not all at once, a little bit at a time. For Mary and Peter and the disciples the empty tomb and the possibility of a resurrected Jesus was too much to hold at one time, and needed time to allow them to begin to embrace the situation.

 

Loss of health, death of a loved one, a tragic accident, shocking news and more can hurl us into this amazing void from which we will eventually emerge transformed and different, but not all at once. We have to sit in it and allow it to unfold itself one frame at a time over, often, a lengthy period of time.

 

In the Easter story from Palm Sunday to Easter day we are asked to sit in each space and explore the experience of that day, the challenge of Palm Sunday, the love of Maundy Thursday, the violence of Good Friday and now the void of the empty tomb.

 

Each will unfold itself as it will and you will be transformed by the journey. Amen. 

Thomas Encounters Jesus!

(John 20:19-31)

Susan R. Andrews writes when I was a student: "When I was in seminary, Doubting Thomas was my soul mate. Jesus kept "appearing " to my fellow students within the rich stories of the Christian tradition. But like Thomas, I never seemed to be there when Jesus arrived."

Oh, I know what she means. Jesus seemed to be appearing in prayer, bible readings, silence for every other person in the training college, they all had great tales to tell of being touched by Jesus.

Not me. He seemed to take a detour when he came my way. For me faith was more like looking through a dust and bug spattered windscreen of an eighteen wheel road train in the Gibber Desert, I knew Jesus was out there some where, but like the road he was hard to see, let alone feel.

An encounter with Jesus is not something you can import from another person, book or song. You have to encounter Jesus yourself. People can tell you all about their experiences, but if it’s not happening for you, its not happening.

Thomas missed the first time Jesus appeared. It was 8 days after Jesus death and Thomas joins them in the room. No doubt he was quizzed and pestered to believe. But Thomas maintained his integrity. He had given this whole scenario some deep and critical thought. Yes, he wanted it to be true but logic mediated against it being true.

Modern people need proof. It has to be true, true meaning provable, testable, concrete, not the unchangeable meaning of being sitting underneath our treasured rationality. True here means something like to be certain. It is what our young people want and we want it because it gives a sense of being in control of our lives. Nothing uncertain can be countenanced because it can’t be true.

Thomas, though, simply wants to own his faith for himself and puts himself in the place to test his logic, in the room where Jesus had appeared before. He was not closed to the idea, and in the best critical thinking practice, was prepared to dialogue with the possibility that Jesus was alive.

And Jesus Turns Up. The truth is that Jesus just keeps turning up for those who genuinely desire to know him. Elisabeth Johnson writes: " As he came back a week later for Thomas, Jesus keeps coming back week after week among his gathered disciples -- in the word, the water, the bread, and the wine -- not wanting any to miss out on the life and peace he gives." And we know, from experience, how real that is. It is what draws us back here every week. It is not about the liturgy, although the liturgy is important. It is not about others in the congregation, though they are important, it is not about the choir though the choir is important and it is not about the priest, though he or she is important. It is about the fact that Jesus keeps turning up and I, you, discover something new about the resurrected Jesus, just by being here.

Jesus doesn’t chastise Thomas. He doesn’t tell Peter to excommunicate him for his lack of faith. He doesn’t leave Thomas hanging out to dry, another failure to put beside Judas. No, Jesus turns up and offers his presence and his body for Thomas to inspect. He doesn’t. He doesn’t have to touch Jesus. He knows without needing the evidence he said he needed.

When truth comes, we know. We don’t have to test it, try it out or prove it. It just is. Thomas gets it and abandons his need for scientific proof saying, “My Lord and my God!” 

This Encounter Reminds Us That Bodies Matter.

Christianity has a poor record with bodies. In the philosophical duality we bring to our world, western people have seen the material as an opposite to the spiritual and body as inferior to soul or spirit. Many early forms of Christianity treated the senses of the body as evil and something to beaten down. There was no room for the body in a religion that was focussed almost entirely on the hereafter. Even the great St Francis of Assisi, the father of ecological spirituality commented that he had wished he had treated the donkey better. The donkey was what he called his body.

Yet the body plays a major role in spirituality. Greg Carey suggests: "The resurrection story implies that bodies matter. Jesus’ resurrection is not merely a spiritual thing – the apparition of his ghost, or his ongoing spiritual influence. The Gospels all insist that the resurrection includes Jesus’ body.”

The medieval mystics, particularly the women mystics such as Julian of Norwich, Hildegard of Bingen, Mechtild along side John of the Cross and Meister Eckhart recognised the role bodies played in encountering God. Julian of Norwich’s classic work, Shewings, is simply the record of her encounter with Jesus as a result of illness and its impact on her body. Bodies are not be worshipped, sculpted to the point of the ridiculous as is the modern trend. They are to be respected as the receptacle of the spiritual.

Bodies, our bodies, the bodies of those we live with, of those in agony or in exile carry scars, just like the body of Jesus. And they are important. Wesley White writes: "Wherever there is a wound, Christ calls us to find belief by putting our finger there and to energise that belief with a life lived to reveal what is behind the wound." That is the reason for our scars and was the reason for the scars Jesus carried with him. They are not trophies of survival but testimonies to the truth that we are human, alive and infused with life to share so others to can live.

Thomas was far from a doubter who needed to touch the body. He saw. Not physically. His was a Spiritual Seeing which sees beyond the body. I am consequently amazed at the prevalence of such a seeing in our world, despite the fear many Christians have that it has disappeared.

We were sitting discussing the eucharist. These were my secular monks, year 9 & 10 students. They were having great difficulty with the idea of ‘eating Christ’s body and drinking his blood.’ Understandable really. Suddenly Corey, eyes wide with insight said, ‘I get it. It’s about respect, awesome respect for who he is!’ Spiritual seeing isn’t limited to those who believe. It is the providence of all, including Thomas, Corey and each one of us. It is beyond our vision and we see within reality what is hidden from those that only look for what can be seen physically.

David Ewart suggests: "John doesn't care what we see with our eyeballs. He wants us to SEE with our inner eye who Jesus really is. That in SEEing, we might believe; and in believing, we might have the life that is in Jesus."

Thomas sees with his spiritual self. There is no need to touch the wounds. Yes the body is important. But it is what we see that counts. We can look at another and see only a behaviour, a stereotype, a prejudice (all defined by us) and fail to see what is within, the true person. We fail to see the scars and ponder where they came from. We fail to see the possibility for both us in the connection of bodies. 

Jesus does. He keeps coming back, as he did for Thomas, to encourage us, to show us how to look beyond the surface and to encounter the real. It is a challenge, one we will fail over and over again, but when we get it right we will discover, as Thomas did, ‘My Lord and my God”.

Transformation and Change

John 20:1-11 (10) Then the disciples returned to their homes.

People rarely make instant decisions. People rarely get it straight away. No matter how obvious it may seem, no matter how remarkable something maybe, we seem to resist accepting what is there in front of us. Particularly if it impacts on the status quo. We like things to stay the way they are, especially if we are comfortable where we are. We resist.....

Transformation and change.

We want things to stay as we know them, as we expect them to be, as they are. Even when that maybe uncomfortable, life-sapping and soul destroying, we tend to, or want to at least, stay right where we are.  It is the the frog in the boiler syndrome. We resist…..

Transformation and change

God struggled to get the chosen tribes of Israel to confront change, to leave behind the practices and traditions of the tribes they lived amongst. He sought to get them to leave behind their trust in things, in violence and in strange gods. God was sometimes successful, more than often not, any success was short-lived, and the people soon drifted back to what was familiar.

Jesus complained out of frustration about the lack of faith of his chosen ones, the disciples; the fickleness of the people was well demonstrated with the change from the euphoria of Palm Sunday to the crucify him of Good Friday, and the 'hurry up and come down from the cross' taunts of the religious leaders standing around late in the day.

Jesus was there because he preached transformation and change, the letting go of our dependence on things - material and immaterial - wealth, power, status, control and the familiar.  His sermon on the mount, his outburst in the temple, his countercultural embrace of women, prostitutes and the outcast; all demanded.......

Transformation and change. 

It was ignored then and it is ignored now.

Craig Fitzgibbon, Australian Labor Party minister said this week, ''In Sydney's west you can be on a quarter of a million dollars family income a year and you're still struggling, coal miners in my electorate earning 100, 120, 130, 140 thousand dollars a year are not wealthy.''*

At the same time the ABS statistics released at the beginning of the year says the average income of an Australian worker is just over $70,000. The average income for pensioners is $20,059 single and $30,242 for a couple.There seems to me to be a lot of poor in our society created by an addiction to the great god wealth and possessions by others.

Any conversation started to discuss this discrepancy becomes one in which people become defensive, protecting what they have against those they fear are wanting to poach what they believe they are entitled to. Yet, the good news of Jesus asks us to become countercultural, to let go of our possessiveness and to ensure others have sufficient for their needs. Our present policies and practices fail to demand.....

Transformation and change.

The disciples are summoned to the tomb, having been told the good news. Jesus is risen! You would have thought they would have spread the word quickly and gathered in praise and worship at the tomb. If they wanted a sign of Jesus' authenticity they had it. If they wanted proof Jesus was who he said he was, they had it. If they wanted evidence of his power, here it was. They had nothing to fear now…….

but fear itself.  

And that is it, for them and for us. We fear what will happen next, how the ruling powers of our society will respond, how governments, corporates and financial institutions will respond when we pull the plug on their multi-billion dollar exploitation of the desire for more.  If society embraced  a simplified and minimalist lifestyle, all would be able share more equitably in the wealth and wholeness available.

The disciple feared the Romans and the synagogue heavies, the people who manipulated and controlled the ordinary person through violence and corruption. They didn't want to be blamed for bringing down the military might upon their people; they were also afraid of bringing down the system under which they lived, for fear of what would happen next.

Jesus is risen should have been their cry. It was obvious. The Romans wouldn't have taken the body and run the risk of making him a martyr, the Jews surely wouldn't have for the very same reason and because it occurred on the sabbath. Grave robbers were unlikely to rob the body of a man so poor he was laid in a borrowed grave.

It had to be true. And only the women got it. These were the representatives of those without power or position in their society, ruled over and possessed by men. They were ready for transformation and change, and stayed around in the hoe they had just witnessed it in the empty tomb.

The men went home, where it was safe, where they were comfortable, waiting for something or someone, preferably a man, to tell them, what happened. They weren't going to embrace this transformation and change without more evidence and proof. 

This morning is the beginning of a new way of living and the end of the power of death - not physical death, but the death we suffer when we remain where we are for fear of transformation and change.

The challenge to you and I is this, is this just another Easter day when we walk away and remain the same, or is it the beginning of something new?

Or are we like the disciples, who after witnessing the most awesome event in history, 'returned to their homes'? Worth thinking about. 

They did, and how that changed their world!

*Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/fitzgibbon-joins-chorus-of-labor-mps-concerned-about-super-tax-20130327-2guo4.html#ixzz2On1FoCsx

Resurrection!

On the last day of the silent retreats, we get up early to watch the sun rise.  After 3 days of silence, watching the sun rise reminds us of the new day dawning in our lives.  After a time of self-reflection and the struggles which often accompany it, we step into the resurrection occurring in our own lives, symbolised by the rising sun.

In the shadow of the cross we partake in the Eucharist and commit ourselves to living our lives to the full.

Living Into The Resurrection

Last week an 8 year old boy walked into his classroom in a school in the US prepared for show and tell. When his turn came he produced his fathers coat. He put his hands in the pockets and produced 50 small plastic bags containing drugs. It was a surprise for his teacher but an even bigger surprise for his father when he came to collect his coat!

Show and tell is always a surprise as Thomas found out - yet Thomas's experience came from his questionning of the claims of his fellow disciples.  The claims of Jesus' resurrection were not so much unbelievable for Thomas but required him to have an encounter with Jesus. When this happens he doesn't do what he said he needed to do - touch and feel the wounds on Jesus body - being shown the present Jesus was enough for him to see.

In discussion with a patient re treatment and drugs a doctor recently said,'do not give any drug or doctor the power over your life. See for yourself and decide.' Important words in a world where science has become the most powerful good news and where people give away responsibility to others - primaily through diagnosis - hallelujah, I have an excuse for my behaviour.

Thomas did not give his power to live into the ressurrection story away to others who had seen Jesus.  He retained the right to move into the resurrection experience at his own time and space. Interestingly Jesus honours that and makes it possible for him to do so. One little meeting was all it took to kickstart Thomas' into a new man, but it was accomplished at his pace.

The resurrection is key to our faith. The possibility of hope and light after the dark night of the soul which was Good Friday and the subsequent Saturday transforms the life of those with Jesus, and has the possibility of transforming ours. Yet it is more than the physical resurrection story of Jesus. It is how we see the world, the circumstances of our lives and where we are now.

I fear too many Christians are locked into a world view that is Good Friday - their life is dark, of little hope and they cannot or do not see the green shoots of resurrection rising under their feet. While they know the world has changed, and they need to embrace that change, they are locked into failed mindsets, pointless ideological positions and structures which prevent them doing so. Perhaps they are locked in Saturday, the inbetween space betweeen despair and hope unable to make the move into full blown possibility. They can see clearly what has happened, the world has changed, yet they can't see what is coming, so they stay where they are, waiting for some certainty before they move forward, before they embrace the green shoots of hope that is the resurrection.

Living in the resurrection is a dangerous place. It asks us to leave behind old paradigms and ways of doing things and of being in the world, and to embrace risk, ridicule and failure. It asks us to see for ourselves the possibilities and to seek after them with all our being. It asks to see what is all around us - life, hope and adventure - it asks us not to give away our power to others, to the what if's,  to the looming disaster and the perceived certainty of failure. It says too us all things are possible, it says to us go on, step out and discover the excitement of being alive when you where once dead, trapped in fear, locked in Good Friday or Saturday.

In the movie the best exotic marigold hotel the Indian proprietor of the hotel says, 'Everything will work out in the end; if it hasn't worked out, it's not the end.' If you haven't seen the movie, please do so. It is a movie about the resurrection, those who choose to embrace and those who choose not to, who want what they had, not what is there for them now. The characters embrace, slowly the possibility of the future and in doing so discover themselves. Each grows into the idea and experience in their own way and time, some, alas, do not.

And that is the truth about resurrection and being resurrection people - it is something we grow into. We grow into a changed viewpoint, a new perspective on the world. We see it differently and we do life differently.  We take control, we push the boundaries, we explore new posssibilities and take enormous risks, aware that if it doesn't work out this time, it's not the end. The resurrection is our life now and it's our choice whether to live it or not. Choose to be a resurrection adventurer and go for the ride of your life. It will challenge and scare you, but it will always be full of surprises and new experiences. Go on, I dare you!

The Whole Armour of God

Today is an important day as I feel compelled to share with you what well-dressed Christian children wear to bed. Inspired by today’s Ephesians reading, a mother has designed the “Armour of God Pyjamas”, complemented by the whole armour of God blanket and either a Anna or Samuel doll with matching headband and beanie. The pj’s consist of a helmet of salvation, a night shirt of righteousness and belt of truth as well as a pillo of faith for the little angel to put his or her head on. All this is ensures God will protect the child as she or he sleeps.

Bizarre - I never cease to be amazed at how far people will go to justify their actions. Perhaps a cleric who wears red shoes has no right to comment!! The mother says she doesn’t want her child to feel lonely, to remember God is with her, even when she dreams.

While I wonder at the effectiveness of the Armour of God pyjamas, isn’t this the truth for which we are all searching, to find the cure for loneliness.

Patch Adams, whose taste in everyday wear is way more exaggerated than either my redshoes or the aforementioned pyjamas, says; ‘The medical professionals are a lot more comfortable calling it 'depression' than calling it 'loneliness.' And he should know.

As a young man of 17 or 18 years he had his mother commit him to a mental hospital because of his reaction to an uncle’s suicide not long after his father’s death. In the hospital he recognized two things, both the same, not only was he lonely, most of the people were in that hospital not because of their mental illness but because of loneliness. It was their unattached presence in the world which placed them in these places and resulted in them being diagnosed with medical categories.

For Patch Adams: ‘All of life is a coming home. Salesmen, secretaries, coal miners, beekeepers, sword swallowers, all of us. All the restless hearts of the world, all trying to find a way home. It's hard to describe what I felt like then. Picture yourself walking for days in the driving snow; you don't even know you're walking in circles. The heaviness of your legs in the drifts, your shouts disappearing into the wind. How small you can feel, and how far away home can be.’

On leaving the hospital he committed himself to eradicating loneliness, if not eradicating it, at least making people laugh. He says ‘in Russia most of the hospitals don't have any pain medicine, they don't have any money. So if you're with kids with cancer, they can have metastases to the bone; which some say is the worst pain a human can experience. So a mother can be in a room with a child who hasn't stopped screaming in five months. ...85% of the time I walk in there as a clown they'll stop screaming."

He takes seriously the admonition of Paul in Ephesisans when Paul says, “Put on the whole armour of God’ for everyday of his life he wears his clown outfit from the time he gets up until the time he goes to bed, he sees patients, runs workshops, lobbies big business and governments in full clobber – the whole armour of the clown.

He knows who he is and he is that person all the time – there is no wavering from the truth about himself. While he admits to no religion, ‘he calls a friend his "god" and the love of other people, God's spirit.’ He fully understands the truth Paul is giving to the Ephesians, you cannot live in this world and flourish unless you clothe yourself with yourself in all your glory. And if you do so you are not alone.

For Paul that glory is found in the Word of God, Jesus, who came into the world leaving behind his glory in heaven to take on the whole shape and form of humanity. It is in the truth about this living word of God who spoke God’s love into the world and who’s righteousness and obedience sets us free and whose resurrection stands us firmly in the world as the beacons of hope, that we have been welcomed into the family of God and made one with him who is one with God.

We are home.

We can complicate this passage by stripping down each part of the amour as described and providing prescriptions for each in such away it becomes all too hard. We can theologize on the meaning of each point Paul makes and set ourselves up with a conundrum which trips us up, not sets us free.

Yet, for Paul it really is as easy as getting out of bed and getting dressed. Now for one of the people who live in our house this not as easy as it sounds – we need to look at what we are doing, where we are going, what the weather is going to be like, what shoes go with what handbag which goes with what lipstick – it can take some time to get dressed!

But for me, every morning I get out of bed and my major decision is not what colour shoes I put on but which pair of red-shoes best fits the day. The shoes are always red (except for most funerals). There is no question. Paul says each day put on the armour of God which is Christ, the resurrected life of hope and fulfillment of all Gods promises, with Him as your day wear you will stand firm.

Paul says it is all there for you, simply put on Christ and you have in yourself the fullness of God and the fullness of humanity. You have communion – communion with the trinity and communion with humanity. You belong to all but yet you are still yourself. You share in all yet remain truly yourself. You share in the joys and tragedies, the success and failures, the health and ill health of all but remain free to be who you are. You are the image of Jesus who put on the humility of man to remain always the glory of God.

You do not succumb to those Michael Leunig calls the awfulisers, or Paul calls the principalities and the powers, the people around you who have allowed themselves to become victims of the world. People who put on the whole armour of God are over-comers and find a path through life which not only lights up their own lives but the lives of all they encounter.

This is the answer for loneliness, for it is in relation to others we discover who we are and that we are not alone. For Christians this begins with our relationship with God through Christ and continues in our relationship with others proceeding from our relationship with Christ. As Patch Adams models it, it is in our engagement with the world that we discover we are not alone and we have all we need to survive its horrors and its joys.

Home for Patch Adams, ‘is both a place of origin and a goal or destination. And the storm? The storm was all in my mind. Or as the poet Dante put it: In the middle of the journey of my life, I found myself in a dark wood, for I had lost the right path. Eventually I would find the right path, but in the most unlikely place.’

For us that unlikely place is in the shape of an ordinary man with an extraordinary purpose, to speak us into our home where we belong. ‘Put on the whole armour of God’ which is Jesus the living word of God and step out in to the world firm in your faith and the knowledge that you belong in it and the world to come.

Easter Rising

Well we have travelled quietly, and perhaps for some of us, not so quietly through Lent and are now on the verge of Easter and it's tale of tragedy and triumph, of melancholia and great rejoicing, of confusion and hope.

The story of Easter challenges us with its brutality, it's inhumanity of man to his fellow man, it's mystery, it's wonder, and in the end it's beauty. It is traumatic journey for us if we engage each of the stages of Easter from Palm Sunday's parade, the Passover meal, the Garden of Gethsemane agony and the terrifying moments that go to make up Good Friday.

If we stop there there seems to be little sense to it all and we too would be excused for taking ourselves into hiding, confused, abandoned and disappointed. Yet the Easter story does not stop there.

The danger is that if we get stuck in the events of Good Friday and the lost day that follows it we will always be slaves to sin. It s not Jesus death alone which fulfills God's plans for the world he loves, and for us, but what happen next.Tony Campolo comments that this was Friday, but they didn't know Sunday's coming! To hear him in person preaching this line is awe inspiring for it cements the wonder of Easter, yes Jesus died, but that's not all, that's not where it finished. On Sunday he rose, came alive visibly for those who were there, but spiritually for all of us who believe in him.

In this resurrection we find hope that allows us to go on when death is all around us, in our own lives and relationships, in our plans and dreams, in our finances and work, in our families and friend. The hope is that through the act of Jesus resurrection we know that this, not matter how bad it may look, is not the end. It is the beginning of something new.

Like Tony Campolo says Sunday's coming and that is hope.