Resurrection is everywhere. It’s so obvious, that I can’t understand how anyone can miss it! Everything in the entire universe is resurrected bits of something else. So why does it surprise us that we would speak of the resurrected Jesus?

Now here is a real mystery: every day a stone is rolled away to reveal an empty tomb. Each moment that we live is one in which we escape the death of the old us and embrace the resurrection of the new person who has awakened rededicated to God and ready to evolve. If you don’t like who you are, change it. If you do like who you are, refine it, there is still work to go, and every day is full of resurrection: multiple opportunities to be the hero you want to be. Evolution is a string of resurrection events leading to change over time: a process. Without resurrection, without evolution, there would be nothing. Renewal isn’t a task that is accomplished and then it’s done, like slapping a new coat of paint on the walls of a room that has become dingy by years of living. Resurrection, or re-newal, or re-cycling or re-demption are all processes. They are on-going! And if the universe resides within the living God, then the whole universe, including us, is literally restless, and so it will never be done. You will never be done, a work in progress. So, don’t ever give up. Great artists or great athletes or people great at anything, are the ones who steel themselves with resolve, because they know that the journey is a long one. And sometimes you can’t see the incremental progress until you look at the road behind you and realize how far you’ve come. Sometimes it’s tedious, and sometimes you get hurt, and it seems like you have to start all over again. And the beauty of resurrection is… it ALWAYS come again. Just like God. Resurrection is everywhere and always, and you engage in it before, during and after your life here on Earth. Resurrection transcends our understanding, because it’s a paradox that something is forever, yet forever changing!

My life’s journey to walk in faith began before I was formed in the womb, and so did yours. Where is that journey now? Where do you stand in your ability to tap into the endless well of resurrection? What do you imagine the next chapter to be? Do you even recognize that there will always be another chapter of your life to unfold? I promise you there will be whether you are intentional about it or not. You can have a role in your evolution, or you can just let your environment make it happen to you. Is that what you really want? Aren’t you just bouncing up and down to see who you can become next? Don’t just focus on your children or your grandchildren and who they will become—you are not done yet! There is no retirement from evolution. Holy cow! That is AWESOME!

Resurrection is not just a story about something that happened on a Sunday morning nearly two thousand years ago. Resurrection is your story. So perhaps you’re wondering how to get the most out of it? The short answer is: it’s different for everyone. But here’s what has worked for me, and I can tell you—I am genuinely excited to be alive.

First: get enough sleep. Make it a priority. If you can’t sleep, find out why. Second, you must engage in some kind of spiritual practice where you tune out everything but you and God. How you do that is up to you. Some people do yoga, others sit quietly in a chair meditating and listening. Others pray, having complete conversations with God. Jesus gave us an example of how to do that, even providing us with a sample prayer and telling us to do it in private. Prayer is not a performance, even though it might require practice to get comfortable.

Get into a rhythm where you can feel the breath of God propelling an ever-expanding universe. However you are comfortable connecting with God, make it happen as often as you can, because God does not filter your resurrection through someone else’s agenda.

And finally, don’t shy away from loving as many people as you can; they are a gift because God emerges in relationship and we are social animals.

There are lots of things you can do to facilitate your own resurrection, but these three things are a good start: resting, getting in touch with the divine that underlies everything, and loving other people are the three big ones. That’s what Jesus did and it worked for him. He rested, he prayed and he loved the people that God sent to him until the end.

And the stone was rolled away. That’s your story too. Alleluia, Christ is risen, and so are you! Thanks be to God!

Now you’ve heard the highlight reel of our faith history from beginning to new beginning, well it was new as of 1,986 years ago. So, where’s the rest? No sequel? Is there no canon that continues the chronicle of the New Covenant in action after the gospels were written? There’s a lot more to be learned about both the glorious and the despicable behavior of latter day and present-day so-called disciples. These stories are important. So, why in the world would we think that God has stopped talking to us and inspiring us to tell the rest of the history?

Our God is living and active. And by the way, even if we get things wrong about God, someone can still learn from what we say and what we write in the future, even if it’s only to say, “I am going to try hard to do things differently.” Have we put ourselves out of the business of writing the next chapters of our faith history because we are afraid we’ll get it wrong? Or are there no new additions to our canon because we really don’t believe in a God who is still living and loving?

I have been all over this world: the arctic, the Antarctic, fourteen to sixteen-thousand-foot mountain peaks, and I have sat on the floor of the Pacific Ocean in a submarine. I have seen with my own eyes what God has made, and I have absolutely no doubt that God is living and active. You don’t have to go to such places to know that. So why then do we think that only this limited subset of writings about God is all that there will be going forward? If people are reading it less and less, and research indicates that to be the case, isn’t it possible that we have given poor instruction about how to use it? Or maybe the people need to hear stories that speak to them in their own contemporary context? Isn’t it possible that we have boxed God into a coffin by ending the story when it only was just beginning? Jesus did not come to start a church—his followers did that. Jesus started a renewal of life. When you read the stories about Jesus and pay attention to the way he told us to live, he didn’t say anything about church. He talked to people in deeply personal and practical ways about fulfilling their potential as children created in the image of God. That is the mission of the Christian!

What will the scriptures yet to be written say about our time? Will they talk about institutions who fought with one another over doctrine, or will they talk about how we walked hand in hand with each other to resurrect lands torn apart by endless war, how we worked tirelessly to teach people the skills and give them the opportunities to be lifted out of poverty. Will we welcome the stranger in the name of Jesus or will we be recorded as saying, “Sorry—no room at the inn?”

Speculating about the future is far less fruitful than building it. And I cannot even imagine anything more exciting than building the future and writing about how we worked with our creator to do it. Humans have gotten a lot of things wrong about God and about creation during our relatively brief tenure on Earth by geologic standards, but there are a couple really important things that we have gotten right. The first is that there really is one force so powerful and so unexplainable that it created and still enervates this universe, we don’t even have words to describe it. That power, that creative energy—that IS God. The second thing we got right, is that yes—there IS resurrection always and everywhere. It is still happening, and you need to write it down or record it in your smartphone or take a photographic image to remind yourself and your descendants what it looks like, so when things get tough, they know to look for resurrection and maybe be part of making it happen.

Our faith history tells us that people have always suffered from a failure of imagination, a lack of creativity, and a failure of spirit, and in spite of that—we are still here and we are still loved. And yes! We are still evolving toward the fulfillment of our potential to be compassionate, intelligent children of the light Because of resurrection, redemption—renewal. Be the story and then tell that good news. God is not done with this story.

Alleluia, Christ is risen!

Last summer, I witnessed the secularization of the chapel at my seminary, which had been closed the year before following the graduation of my class. It was a very poignant occasion for generations of alumnae and faculty because St. John’s chapel was beloved and the focal point of our community of disciples in formation.

We worshipped in that chapel every day. It was the place each new student signed the matriculation book in a special liturgy of welcome, the place where we prayed and learned and answered the call of the Holy Spirit as individuals and as a community. It was the place where we went to seek the comfort of worship when things went wrong and we needed healing. We could count on the great cloud of witnesses to hold us up when we entered into that sacred space.

A couple hundred people steeled themselves for the liturgy of secularization.  The bishop began, “We who are gathered here know that this building, which has been consecrated and set apart for the ministry of God’s Holy Word and Sacraments, will no longer be used in this way, but will be taken down…”, and he paused as his voice broke. The bishop had also been formed at that seminary, and he loved St. John’s chapel as much as any of us.

I tried to think about other things so I wouldn’t cry, like whether or not my return flight would be on time. All I could think about was the Christie’s auction that had taken place the previous month in which strangers had bid on the artwork that had adorned the walls of our holy space. The sound-track paying in my head was “They divide my garments among them; they cast lots for my clothing.”

Somehow, I made it through the liturgy, but the ceremony became intolerable when the recessional began and emeritus faculty members, alumni themselves, carried out our most sacred artifacts from the walls and the altar as we stripped a building that was now no longer our church.

As we stood together on the lawn in front of the chapel in the June evening, nearly all of us shed many tears and held each other up. We knew that what we had shared in deep support of one another over generations of seminarians could not be deconsecrated like a building. We knew that you can strip the altar, you can strip the whole building, but a community of disciples formed by love and shared service cannot be stripped of its identity because that shared service to and for one another is the real church, not the building where we met, however symbolic of the experience we shared inside of it.

If we embrace and follow the new commandment that Jesus gave to his disciples to love one another as he had loved them, it forms a deep and unshakable bond between us as disciples. That bond is life sustaining. And it’s necessary to do the work of being Christ’s hands and feet in the world.

When we serve one another by tender ministration the way Jesus taught his disciples to do with the foot washing, we are inoculated against grief and doubt. And that’s why the Maundy Thursday liturgy of many churches memorializes Christ washing the feet of his disciples by offering the congregation the opportunity to wash one another’s feet.

This year, I invite you to look at the chair and the wash basin and the towel. Consider what opportunities you have taken in the last year to serve one another and what opportunities you let pass you by.

Some of you will not be here next year for any number of reasons, and there’s no reliable way of knowing who it will be. If tonight turns out to be your last opportunity to serve each other as Jesus served his disciples, will you sleep tonight, knowing you gave each other your all in the responsibility we affirm as Christians?

If tonight were the last celebration of the Holy Eucharist ever to be had in our church—if the stripping of the altar were to be permanent, would your heart be torn in two like the Temple Curtain when Jesus was executed?

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Love is not some sanitized “thoughts and prayers.” It’s often uncomfortable and up close, maybe for people you don’t even like. The love of a disciple is the work of building relationship. It’s the kind of love that serves tenderly with a wash basin and a towel. It’s the act of feeding one another with material and spiritual food. And it’s a time limited opportunity for each relationship you have, because you don’t always get tomorrow.

God willing, our stripping of the altar tonight will be symbolic and temporary. You owe it to yourselves as a disciple AND to the people you love to think about what your lives might be like, if tonight were the last time you will come to this altar for the holy food and drink.

Who would you be if you never see each other again? John tells us that “Having loved his own who were in the world, he [meaning Jesus] loved them to the end.”

Please dear God, and beloved disciples… can we commit to doing likewise?

I am guessing that there is not a person here who hasn’t been tempted to do something you know you shouldn’t do—the kind of thing that might make you shrug and throw up your hands, saying, “the devil made me do it.” I’m talking about the kind of things that you know could cause harm to you or to others. Texting and driving, eating a steady diet of burgers and fries, getting involved with someone who you know to be abusive (but you think they’re really attractive anyway), tossing your candy wrapper out of the car window, staying up way too late night after night, spending every waking minute on Facebook, driving a motorcycle without a helmet, and refusing to get a colonoscopy because you don’t like the preparation…

Do any of these things seem like behaviors you’ve noticed in either yourself or someone you know?

Our lives are full of temptations that beckon us, big and small. It is part of the contract for having a brain and lots of sensors like eyes, ears, taste buds, and tactile skin sensors. It is simply awesome that we get to have this sophisticated machinery. However, none of it comes with an instruction manual, and the development of careful discernment, also known as good judgment, is a lifetime pursuit. There are resources to help: parents, teachers, siblings, friends, written history, our Holy Bible… and God. But the actual decision-making is left to us.

Your community, whether it be family, friends, church, sports teams, classmates, and colleagues helps train you to make moral and just choices; to make good and healthy decisions that will enable you to fulfill your potential.

When the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness, it was so he could be trained in the making of right choices. That’s what the testing was about. We cannot imagine what doubts and other destructive temptations the demons put before him during the forty days in the wilderness, but Luke tells us that at the end of it, when Jesus was hungry and weak, the devil mocked him by suggesting that he magically change a stone into a loaf of bread. Jesus resisted. The devil put before him fame, fortune and power. And again, Jesus held fast.

He had been told directly by God in front John the Baptist and John’s followers that he was God’s son just before the Spirit had led him into the wilderness, and I cannot even imagine how shocking that might have been; he surely had a lot to think about!

Can you imagine discovering at the age of thirty that your father is not your father at all, much less that your father is God? When you learn something truly shocking about yourself, it really throws you for a loop.
You might begin to question everything about your life, and maybe some
things that previously seemed confounding finally start to make sense, but there is likely to be a lot of processing, and most people want to get off by themselves to try to digest what a dramatic self-revelation might mean going forward.

Jesus was already a righteous man of God at the time of his baptism because, well, he went to receive baptism from John as a symbol of his turning to God. The Bible gives us his birth narrative and a tiny bit about him as a child, but mostly we don’t know much between then and the baptism. I wonder how much he already knew about who he was and how he got here? What had Mary and Joseph told him in his growing up years?

No matter what his previous life as a carpenter looked like, no doubt Jesus had a lot to think about after God’s dramatic revelation about him at his baptism. And because Luke tells us he “returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness” (Luke 4:1), he must have had quite a tumultuous head full of thoughts after that baptism. So off he went into the desert, and we’re told that Jesus passed the exhaustive testing by the devil.

This wasn’t about eating or drinking too much, and it wasn’t about driving without a seatbelt or trying to text behind the wheel, or whatever the first century equivalent might have been. It was the gut wrenching and soul-searching stuff that keeps you up at night and prevents you from eating for forty days. It was the evil intent to rob him of his confidence in following the Law and trusting in God. It was the lure of riches and power, easy satiation of his hunger.

And Jesus stood his ground. He passed the testing—all that the devil threw at him. Wow, Jesus! I wish I was that steadfast under fire.

Unfortunately, that was not to be the end of it the devil’s attempts to undermine Jesus’ relationship with his father and the accomplishment of his mission of salvation through forgiveness and love on Earth. Luke says, “When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.”

And that is how it has always been for us as well. We might be getting on with life just swimmingly, and then the demons find us again because it has become a more opportune time. Self-doubt and recrimination; hurt and anger leave us vulnerable, and many of us succumb to the temptation of power and wealth, forgetting responsibilities to God and neighbor—to make moral decisions followed up by righteous behavior.

The nature of life is such that there will always be another temptation, another decision to be made, another test of our resolve to be the children made in the image of God. And that is why we were made to live in community, because as much as we need to pay attention to our
own relationships with God, we will never be Jesus, and that’s why he left us with the Holy Spirit and told us to love one another.

Until you draw your last breath, there will be demons who seek to undermine you, but there will also be love unimaginable and the promise that when we call upon God we will be heard. Don’t be afraid of asking for help from God, and don’t be surprised if it comes to you looking like one of us– your friends and family.