Dear Edwards Church Community,
Soon the forty days of Lent will be drawing to a close. Are you ready for Easter? Are you ready to recognize the risen Christ, not in a familiar story or in a sanctuary decked out in dozens of beautiful white lilies, but in the setting of a world-wide pandemic? I know I am working overtime to be ready, not because I am your pastor, but because I have never in 65 short years seen anything like this.
Easter and the reality of resurrection do not tell us that we will never face death, the loss of our life or the lives of others. Rather, Easter and the resurrection tell us that there is a new life, another life after death, a life larger even than the life we are now living, and that by following Jesus and his teachings we can have an experience, a foretaste of that other life while we live this one. We can know in advance something of the realm in which God’s love and justice is fully realized. We just need to let go of whatever holds us back from it, and that is the journey of Lent, the journey of faith.
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr, once said, “Faith is taking the first step, even if you can’t see the whole staircase.” And who could? Could Jesus foresee every step in the life that would lead him through all the stories in the gospel to Calvary? I wonder. There are instances in which he seems to know a lot (he knows everything in John’s gospel). And there are instances when he confesses not knowing.
His greatest lesson for us may be trusting the One who gave him life that he was not living it in vain. In the garden of Gethsemane, while his disciples struggled to stay awake, he wrestled with his own fears, his own uncertainties. This is not a pious Jesus, but Jesus in a painful struggle to keep going until the end. Finally, he accepted what was coming, so that in the end he was able to face death not unafraid, but more assured than afraid. “Father-Mother, into your hands I commend my spirit.”
People entrusted to accompany individuals and their families near the end of life are graced with moments when they can bear witness to how the dying and their loved ones sometimes savor all the sweetness and meaning that life can hold, even as they pass through its most painful parts. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.”
We cannot be certain how Edwards Church, all our friends and loved ones, or our wider communities will fare in the short or long run. We can – and do – gather information, assess likelihoods and make responsible plans. But that is not a guarantee, just prudence.
In the end, we can only choose how to live with uncertainty. We can choose faith, which enriches our experience of this life with a foretaste of another. We can choose to trust that by orienting our lives toward a fuller realization of God’s love and justice – what we call “everlasting life” and “the kin-dom of God” – we will more deeply connect all our lives to an unending life with God.
“Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen!”
Blessings,
Michael
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