Yesterday was one of the longest days of my life; at least in recent memory. You see it all began when our five-year-old had a stomach bug over the weekend…Holy Saturday night…you know, the night before Easter Sunday. So here I am the night before one of the biggest days of the church calendar changing bed linens and caring for a very sick child and thinking all the while, “I’m staring down the barrel of a gun.” For most of Monday and Tuesday I thought maybe, just maybe I had escaped the clutches of this foul intestinal bacteria beast. But alas, that was not the case. Tuesday night, although not in the same fashion or severity, I slept maybe about two to three hours total due to stomach cramps and anxiety over what might come next. The most worrisome part about all of this was my lack of sick day accruing as a teacher and so I knew the next day would be rough.
I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired in my life…and I was a youth pastor for eleven years with annual lock-ins. After a day of stomach cramping, heavy lids and middle school students I was barely able to drag myself in the door. Luckily I have a wife who was looking out for me and allowed me to sleep for 12 hours…12 hours. She handled bed-time and even kept the kids or pets from waking me. But the next morning she had one important direction for me. I had to wake our three-year-old and spend time with him before going to school. Evidently him not being able to see daddy for a day was a little much and he was suffering from major daddy withdraws. So after recovering from my early spring hibernation I roused my little monster a little early and he spent about thirty minutes on the couch with me watching Thor or Hulk or some other super hero that inspires our special relationship. And I began to think about how important these moments are.
Sometimes in the midst of our hustle and bustle we forget about the most important things we have here. Was it important for me to be at work? Sure. But perhaps it was even more important for me to recover so I could be the best for those around me. In The Sermon on the Mount Jesus speaks a bit as to our most important investment. “Stop collecting treasures for your own benefit on earth, where moth and rust eat them and where thieves break in and steal them.Instead, collect treasures for yourselves in heaven, where moth and rust don’t eat them and where thieves don’t break in and steal them.Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” – Matthew 6:19-21 I came to an epiphany earlier this year as to the treasure that Jesus is pointing us to. What does God value more than anything else in the entire world? His children. So the treasure we are called to invest in is…(wait for it)…each other. So yes, there will be times when we are busy or sick or spent or worn out, but we are called to take those moments that we do have to invest in those who are a piece of God’s heart as we seek to reveal God’s heart to the world. This is the treasure that we seek to store up for heaven’s sake.
This morning I write surrounded by chaos. For almost a week now we have been living in a house turned upside down. You see, shortly after Christmas we had some of our floor get ruined by a leak from our laundry room. Also the carpet in the boys room was ruined by an air conditioner malfunction so that was torn out as well. But, although we’ve been living on partial concrete floors for a while now, the real fun has come during the last week when we had the floor installers scheduled and realized all that needed to happen before the installation. We now have even more bare floors, our dressers are all in the garage, all the rooms have all the other furniture shoved to the side and most of the rooms are missing doors. So yeah, it feels a little chaotic, a little incomplete, a little unfinished. But the end is in sight…at least I think it is.
I can’t imagine what it must have been like that first Easter weekend. On this day, which we call Maundy Thursday, the disciples gather with their teacher to share a final Passover with him; not even knowing it will be their last. A few hours later he is arrested and through the night he is tried, mocked, beaten, whipped, ridiculed and eventually sentenced to death in the early hours of that Friday. It was the end. The disciples had fled, the movement had died and even some of the last words of Christ on the cross himself were, “It is finished.” And yet for those who knew Jesus best, for his closest followers and family, something had to feel unfinished. It really couldn’t be the end, could it? When Jesus was alive during His earthly ministry he was once confronted by religious leaders who were frustrated by his actions and teaching. The gospel of John records it this way, “Then the Jewish leaders asked him, “By what authority are you doing these things? What miraculous sign will you show us?”Jesus answered, “Destroy this temple and in three days I’ll raise it up.” The Jewish leaders replied, “It took forty-six years to build this temple, and you will raise it up in three days?” – John 2:18-20 Destroy this temple and I will rebuild it in three days? We of course have the insight to understand what Jesus was talking about and yet…it still seems impossible. Rebuilding the temple in three days would have been an engineering feat to daunting for any nation, let alone a person. Resurrecting a body was something that just didn’t happen. So either way we look at the passage it seems unfathomable.
If ever we need the story of Easter it is in our world today. It is easy to see that we are surrounded by chaos, brokenness, incomplete stories, unfinished lives, death, sin and hell. We need the story of the Resurrection. We need the temple (Christ body, but also the church) to be rebuilt into all that God intends for it to be. We need to feel as if there is a work being completed in us that will bring wholeness, healing, life and love to the world around us. We need to be caught up in a hope so fierce that it defies anything that the news, the nations, or the naysayers might throw at us. We need the finality of Easter because in the end death does not have the last word. Unfinished is not the end of the story and love and life reign supreme for Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen Indeed!
Next week is Holy Week. I repeat, next week is Holy Week. I know, I can’t believe it either. It really did sneak up on me this year. I’m not going to say I was too busy or anything like that, but I feel like Ash Wednesday was just the other day. So now, maybe like some of you, I am scrambling to prepare myself for what is to come: Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, our Easter Eggstravaganza, and Easter Sunday itself. Even as I sit here and type this out I think I can actually sense my blood pressure going up. But regardless of how I feel or if I seem too busy, the resurrection still breaks through. I mean, think about that first Easter Sunday for a second. Do you think any of the players in this amazing drama actually truly expected resurrection? Mark’s gospel records it this way, “When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they could go and anoint Jesus’ dead body.Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they came to the tomb” – Mark 16:1-2 Everyone was doing what they had always done when something like death enters the picture and then, out of nowhere, the resurrection breaks through.
I am thankful though, that nature has an incredible way of reminding us even if we seem too busy or overwhelmed. Maybe it’s the increasing minutes of sunlight. Or maybe it might be like my back patio where the smell of blooming wisteria almost bowls you over. Or maybe it is even like the photo one of my friends from Michigan posted of a small flower fighting its way through the snow encrusted landscape. Whatever the sign might be for you, the world around us is never surprised by resurrection and new birth. It’s built into the very fabric of being of all that is. Yet for some reason we often become so busy, overwhelmed, anxious, scheduled, (fill in the blank with your appropriate adjective), etc. that we NEED the resurrection to break through in a way that reminds us that this is built into our very identity as well.
So maybe you find yourself coming into this Easter season overwhelmed. The resurrection still breaks through. Maybe you find yourself coming into this Easter season lost in grief and sorrow. The resurrection still breaks through. Perhaps you find yourself coming into this Easter season fearful of the future and the unknown. Guess what…the resurrection still breaks through. Whatever emotion or feeling or predicament you find yourself consumed with today still doesn’t stop resurrection from breaking through. For once the world was covered in sadness and sorrow from that which had taken place on Calvary and yet, Sunday morning still came and the universe was reborn because Easter broke through.
I am by nature a relatively lazy person. Truthfully, I think we all have to fight this. I mean if I were given the choice of doing something I do in my every day routine or taking a nap, I think would always opt for the nap. I even find myself resonating with my 11-yr-old every time I ask him to do the simplest of task, you know like brush his teeth. “Ugh. Right now?!?” And yet, it’s the procrastination, the laziness, the not wanting to stay ahead of the game that so often adds stress and frustration to an already hectic life. My wife and I were talking recently and she mentioned something she had learned once. A speaker had shared a talk about “five minutes”. Basically the person shared that if you were staring something in the face that you didn’t really want to do, but you knew it would take five minutes or less, that you should go ahead and crank it out. I know it seems overly simple, but it speaks volumes into our overly hectic lives.
We truly are over-scheduled people. We have work and school and church and rehearsals and practice and gym time and lessons. And somehow in the midst of all of that we are called to foster healthy homes and families and spiritual lives and do you see where I am going…? So sometimes we do need something as simple and as profound as “five minutes” to help us take back some semblance of order with our lives. In the 90’s there was a Christian record label called 5-minute walk. And 5-minute walk’s motto/vision was simple. They urged people who listened to their artists to begin to spend five minutes a day with God. Just five minutes; and see where it would lead. Now think about this for a minute…each person in their life has an average of 39,000,000 minutes. Of course some have much fewer and some have a bit more, but if we take out five minute increments from 39,000,000 it really doesn’t seem like that much and yet the impact could be huge.
In his letter to the church at Ephesus, Paul writes these words, “Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise,making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.” – Ephesians 5:15-16 And Ephesus was a very busy place at the time. It had the temple of Artemis and an extremely healthy guild trade system, while also being a port city for the Roman empire. So when Paul urges the believers there to make the most of every opportunity he realizes how busy their lives are. But maybe the same challenge exists for us today. If it only takes five minutes to go out of your way and be nice to someone; do it. If it only takes five minutes to write a hand written note to someone you know is going through a difficult time; do it. If it only takes five minutes to stop and pray for someone you know is hurting or someone that has hurt you; do it. I think we will all be amazed to see how profound of an impact five minutes can have on us and the lives of those around us.
I was very hesitant to write today. Not that there aren’t a lot of thoughts running through my head. Honestly if people heard my inner monologue I think they would think I was even more strange than I appear to be. No, I think my hesitancy to write today’s blog post stems from the type of dialogue that I see going on in our world…particularly from those of us who claim the name of Christ. You see, for a couple of weeks now I’ve been listening to and watching the rhetoric going on between my friends about issues surrounding things like guns and rights and everything in between. And I honestly think as Christians we’ve evidently been operating under a very false pretense that has absolutely nothing to do with the gospel of Christ. I hear people say things like, “It’s obvious it’s a gun problem.” Or, “It’s obvious it’s not a gun problem, but a people problem.” Or even, “If they take away one right, what’s to stop them from coming for all my rights.” And I don’t want to invalidate any of your arguments or stances. Hear me again, I don’t want to invalidate any of your arguments or stances…but…
I think as Christians we need to have the veil pulled back from our eyes. I think we find ourselves in this world operating with an illusion created by sin and it mask itself in the most clever of ways. It looks like rights, defense, independence and even love…and yet, it’s an illusion. The illusion is the belief that my life, or the life of any one I love matters more than the life of anyone else on earth (I know I just lost some friends with that one). But honestly, if the gospel doesn’t teach us that we all come to the foot of the cross as equals, then we have misread the gospel. The writer of Matthew puts it this way in the words of Christ, “Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘All who want to come after me must say no to themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.All who want to save their lives will lose them. But all who lose their lives because of me will find them’.” – Matthew 16:24-25 If you wish to follow Christ, then you must realize your life is forfeit. If you choose to follow the crucified Messiah, then you must realize your life is worth no more than the person you despise the most.
Now you may say to me, what in the world does this have to do with all the debate about guns and rights and sin…honestly, everything. Until I can come to the table with any one of the human race realizing that Christ gave his life for them as much as for me, then I might as well not enter into the fray. So by all means, continue to have your debates and discussions and solutions ad nausea, but if you don’t pull back the illusion and think of each and every life as just as valuable as your own and those you love, then you need to reevaluate the Christ you have chosen to follow. Because he may have ended up looking more like you than you think. I’ll leave you with one more thought that I think continues to pull back the illusion for us all and it comes from Dorothy Day. “I really only love God as much as the person I love the least.” You are loved, Grace and Peace.
Today, instead of boring you with my words, I think I will let others share their words. This video was a surprise that my wife made for me for my 40th birthday. I am both humbled and blessed by the words of my friends…who just happened to be former youth group students. I think 40 is going to be pretty great.
Do you ever find yourself doing something that you thought seemed totally coherent and well thought out and then milliseconds later it reveals itself to be completely stupid? Just me? Oh well; yesterday held one of those moments for me. For those of you who follow the Christian calendar, you know that yesterday was Ash Wednesday. And at Odessa First we hold a brief Ash Wednesday litany in the evening. That also means we need ashes prepared from last years palms. The last couple of years I have burned the palms in our backyard a few days prior. One year I even ruined one of our stock pots. So this year, I thought I could try something different and decided to burn the palms on some foil…on a cookie sheet…in the oven. Now everyone reading this, except for myself at 5:20 AM yesterday morning, knows what is about to take place. All of a sudden I am receiving texts from my wife in the back of the house in a panicked state because she thinks the house is on fire. I quickly realize how far south my experiment has turned and even this morning I find myself sitting in a house that has the vague aroma of burnt palm leaves…which, strangely enough, kind of smell like cheap cigars.
But this is kind of what the season of Lent is for; our stupidity. Lent is a season of repentance and preparation. It’s a season where we confess and reflect on the ways throughout the year we may not have fully lived up to all that God has called us to be. Sometimes the ways that we failed God are just dumb. Sometimes the ways we have failed our neighbor are more malicious and evil. But all the same, Lent is a time where we remember these things, we remember our mortality and dependence upon God and we recognize once again our need for Grace. Psalm 51 is a passage that is sometimes read near the beginning of Lent and one of my favorite verses reads like this, “Create in me a pure heart, O God,and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presenceor take your Holy Spirit from me.” – Psalm 51:10-11 This passage was thought to have been written by King David after he was confronted by the prophet Nathan. Now many of us don’t find ourselves in that same boat as David. But when we fail God or hurt our neighbor, the sentiment should be the same.
I can’t help but smile a little bit this morning as a I listen to the drone of an air filter doing its best to clean the smoke laden air in our house. I’m not sure it’s up to the task. But when it comes to us, God has no trouble creating a clean heart within us. He doesn’t long to take His Spirit from us, but rather seeks to abide with us. Lent is a season that reminds us that through repentance and humility that we are able to make space for God to work within us and create something new in our lives. May you find yourself being renewed this Lenten season. May you recapture the joy of your salvation. And may you be reminded that even for the incredibly stupid things we sometimes find ourselves caught up in with life, that there is grace.
