Resurrection Day

 

April 8, 2023.  Tomorrow is Easter Morning.  The celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus, the Christ.   

I’m reminded this Easter weekend of the passing of my dear friend Bob Upton.  Bob entered my life at a very delicate time, just a few months after my father’s passing.  Bob was the associate minister of the Presbyterian Church we transferred to after my fathers passing (another story).   He quickly became a friend to our family as we immersed ourselves into the life of our new Church.

Over the next couple of years, as Bob visited our home, it was noted that my Mom would always make stuffed mushrooms – because Bob really loved them. I hated mushrooms, but it was ok, because my Mom also made brownies, and when Bob visited, they would be cut into 3 inch squares instead of 1 inch squares. 

Years later, after enjoying almost exclusively, dozens of trays of stuffed mushrooms, Bob coaxed me into trying a stuffed mushroom.  So, I reluctantly gave it a shot. Wow!  I couldn’t believe it!  Not only did I love them, but I could’ve kicked myself for passing up all those trays of stuffed mushrooms that I passed up over the years.   It was a palm to the forehead moment.  And it wasn’t just about stuffed mushrooms, it opened up many culinary opportunities – mushroom gravy, mushrooms pizza topping, mushrooms added to stuffing and a multitude of other casseroles.  

But wait! How many other foods had I been convinced were horrible, were actually wonderful?  In the years that followed, especially after getting married to a California girl whose dietary taste had been far different than mine, I learned a lot about opening my mind to things that I may have previously rejected, either through ignorance or prejudice.  My diet had been born anew.

As I’ve read various devotionals and scripture during this Holy Week, I’ve spent a lot of time considering what resurrection means to the Church and the building of the Kingdom of God, on Earth, as it is in Heaven.  Contrarily, and unfortunately, I also have considered the very real resistance to resurrection that is so very clear, within the Church today. 

As I read Eph 2:1–10, I’m reminded that it is in resurrection - being born anew of the spirit - that my entire being has changed, and it could never have been the way that is now, as long as I held onto the ignorance and prejudice that I had developed as a child.  In Ephesians 2, we read:     

“It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin [living outside the Kingdom or will of God).  You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience.  We all did it …  [God though], immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us!”

“… Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It's God's gift from start to finish!”

“We don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.”  

Bob comes to mind again.  When I was young, for me, Church was about attending regularly and obeying the 10 Commandments and being right minded and then, in my teen years, being saved from hell.  Ministers were about wearing robes and collars and being above the fray and teaching and preaching. 

Bob didn’t seem to fit that mold. He didn’t even like the preaching part of being a preacher.   He preached from the pulpit as little as possible.  Nor were studies or “talks” his thing.  My memory of Bob, as a minister, is about him setting up work parties, to help his elderly friends with chores in their home. His ministry was about service.  He sought out ways to serve the most vulnerable among us – the elderly, the disabled – in mind and body, the widow and the poor. He loved visiting the shut-ins and all the “little old ladies” loved it when he would visit them for tea.  In 1975ish, six of us young people piled in "Albert", his station wagon, and drove in a loop across the U.S. to participate in a workcamp in Utah.  The loop had us traveling as far southwest as Texas and the Grand Canyon and as far northwest as Yellowstone.  I don’t remember any formal studies or talks along the way, either. He let God’s creation speak for God. 

After he left First Pres as Associate Minister, he reveled in his calling to serve a Church that had united a Presbyterian Church with a Methodist Church together – due to the damage of both churches after Hurricane Agnes.  He loved it that both had maintained their own identity and ties to their denominational structure, while worshipping the same God.   In his later years serving the Presbyterian Church, he primarily served as an interim minister, where he could help heal the divisions that had developed among the congregants, as the Churches transitioned to new beginnings.  

Such healing and uniting of God’s children was central to Jesus’ ministry as he walked the Earth.  He called on the Church to be reborn, resurrected in spirit.  The Church had taken the 10 Commandments, which he pointed out could be summed up in two Commandments, to Love God and Love Your Neighbor, and turned them into 613 laws.    

When Jesus speaks about being “born-again”, he’s not speaking about how we must live according to the law, but rather, he’s speaking about how we must be made alive in the spirit.   Even if a person were to be able to obey all of the 613 laws, they could not enter the Kingdom, without being born of the spirit.  

The 613 Laws were about conforming to the pattern of the world, but resurrection is about being transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Only then are we able to test and know what God’s will is – what is good and pleasing and perfect, to God.  (Romans 12:2)

Bob was certainly not perfect.  He would bristle at the idea of that. There were some in the Church that sometimes thought he should be more reverent.  And his e-mail address was revcranky@..., a nod to his self awareness. But the focus of Bob’s reborn spirit, was about  participating in building the Kingdom of God – on Earth as it is in Heaven – the Resurrected Church.  He didn't put on any airs.  For him, it wasn’t about talking, with right theology. It was in living, with a reborn spirit. 

Rom 4:17: We call Abraham "father" not because he got God's attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Isn't that what we've always read in Scripture, God saying to Abraham, "I set you up as father of many peoples"? Abraham was first named "father" and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing.

And,

John 3:1-3: There was a man of the Pharisee sect, Nicodemus, a prominent leader among the Jews. Late one night he visited Jesus and said, "Rabbi, we all know you're a teacher straight from God. No one could do all the God-pointing, God-revealing acts you do if God weren't in on it." Jesus said, "You're absolutely right. Take it from me: Unless a person is born from above, it's not possible to see what I'm pointing to--to God's kingdom."

And,

Galations 2:20 Christ's life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not "mine," but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

And finally,

Rom 8:15  This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike "What's next, Papa?"

 Happy Resurrection Day