Varied Graces: The power of He is Risen
He is Risen. As I write this, it is Tuesday of Holy Week and He is Risen. By the time you read this it may be Good Friday or Easter Monday or the middle of July, but He is Risen.
We temporal beings have such a tough time with that. Or, at least this temporal being has such a tough time with that. I’m talkin’ about the “time” part, the “is” part.
There’s a new book – well a relatively new book – called The Power of Now that has been getting a lot of criticism in Christian circles as heretical. I haven’t read it so I can’t comment on the heresy, but the title intrigues me.
It intrigues me because most of the time, I am not here in this place at this moment. I’m always three minutes in the future or 10 years in the past. But not here and not now!
Here is usually fine. Now is usually okay. Here I have home and family and job. Now I am alive and breathing and feeling and thinking. And even if the moment, the now, includes some pain or loss, I am always coping and often surprised by how well I am coping. (There is a secret reason for my coping. More on my secret later.)
But, I rarely am here where things are well. This past week I took one of those very long trips into the past where all my sins live and where forgiveness has never happened. It’s a bleak, dark place – a winter place. It’s a place where I am held hostage by the “should not have’s.” And I run from there to the future full of “what if’s.” “What if’s” that have been caused by the “should not have’s.” And in neither place do I find the He who is Risen.
It’s such a paradox for me because usually these trips are taken to avoid the here and now – to avoid paying the bills of the now or doing the work of the now or the loving of the now or the confronting of the now. But if I quietly settle into the now, He is here and the confronting and working and the loving are supported by His yoke. (That’s my secret.)
We have come through a season of darkness, a season of tidal surges and bear markets. And in some voices I hear the rush from the past to the tomorrow. And in that rush they miss Him. Never has it been this bleak, they say. Not since the depression, they say. It will take a long time, they say.
These words from them echo across the days of my Holy Week. And I think, “Who looks more bleak than Jesus on the cross? Who more defeated than the Christ crucified?”
And the old catechism comes alive again for me. These are not days of drama nor the times of reenacting myth. No, this is the now and real. He is Risen now in this moment of rebuilding from tidal surges. He lives in this here of recovery from bear markets. So where is your sting? The Christ crucified is Risen.
Easter Stewardship Reflection: In the language of my grandparents, “Chrystus Zmartwychwstal!” (He is Risen). And in their grand-children’s response, “Prawd-ziwie Zmartwychwstal! (Truly, He is Risen!)
Easter Stewardship Challenge: So in this moment, even if this moment is a hot afternoon in mid-July, remember He is Risen. There is another response to that Polish Easter greeting. Some respond, “He is giving us an example,” meaning that we can rise too. Now doesn’t that make this moment on Easter Monday or this moment in July a little easier?
