We are Easter people! St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, wrote a great truth, almost 16 centuries ago, “We are Easter people and hallelujah is our song!”
We live our lives not burdened by the period, the full stop of death, but joyfully with the exclamation point of the resurrection!
A professor friend of mine once said that "We live in a Good Friday world." That I understood. A Good Friday world is a world full of suffering, questioning, unfairness, trouble, mistakes, hurts, losses and grief. Good Friday in the Christian faith is the day Christians commemorate Christ's suffering and death on the cross. So that certainly made sense to me, for we often have tough times in our lives. We are often affected by the brokenness of our world, and the pain of being humans in it. The pain breaks into our lives, and the dysfunctions of life assault us.
"But remember," the professor continued, "We are Easter people." Those words lifted me up! The idea of being "Easter people" gave me hope. And it can give others encouragement that there is light beyond the darkness, and healing after the pain.
What strikes me is that this believing in "Easter" in the midst of "Good Friday" is faith wrapped in joy, a transformational act. Christians are a people who believe in possibility. When our hearts are shattered, we are sometimes shocked to discover that there is joy as well as pain inside. There is hope in the midst of difficulties. Out of the ashes of our mistakes, from our defeats and even our despair, we rise again in better lives.
Yes, being an Easter people means that resurrection is part of our life experience, part of who we are, part of what it means to be us. Easter celebrates how Jesus dies and rises in each of us, in our personal lives, in family, church, and community. It celebrates how Jesus is present in our daily work, in our home life, in our relationships, in the joys and sorrows of the world. Our faith is founded in Bible truth and it is honed in experience - the experience of light following dark, of joy following pain, of hope out of defeat, of warmth beyond cold, of life out of death.
We have a story to tell and a song to sing - the story of our risen Lord and a jubilant song of hallelujah that should ring in our church and community's ears! Let us sing it together, holding each other up in the winds of life. We may not have the breath ourselves, but others can fill in our gaps until we can sing, too!
In a world where so many people die in hopelessness, where people are poisoned by cynicism and defeated by disillusionment we have to tell our story, we have to sing our song. We are Easter people and that song is Hallelujah!
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Dr. King Knew "God is Able!"
A friend recently testified to me of that core truth of our faith: Our God is able. He reminded me that when we are lost, God’s able to find us. When we’re crushed by guilt, God’s able to lift this burden.
When we’re without vision, God’s able to inspire us. When we’re overwhelmed, God’s able to calm us. When we’re attacked, God’s able to deliver us. When we’re feeling disconnected, desiccated and discouraged, God’s able to reconnect us, refresh us and revive us.
God can take death itself, and transform it into life. God is able. Where do we need the Spirit of God to be at work among us? What will new life look like, after we open ourselves to the power of the Spirit?
As I was reading afterward, I came upon the inspired words of Dr. Martin Luther King, a Baptist minister, as he reflected on God's ability when he preached a stirring sermon. Dr. King stated: "At times we may feel that we do not need God, but on the day when the storms of disappointment rage, the winds of disaster blow, and the tidal waves of grief beat against our lives, if we do not have a deep and patient faith our emotional lives will be ripped to shreds. There is so much frustration in the world because we have relied on gods rather than God.
"We have genuflected before the God of science only to find that it has given us the atomic bomb, producing fears and anxieties that science can never mitigate. We have worshipped the god of pleasure only to discover that thrills platy out and sensations are short lived.
"We have bowed before the god of money only to learn that there are such things as love and friendship that money cannot buy and that in a world of recessions, stock market crashes, and bad business investments, money is a rather uncertain deity. These transitory gods are not able to save us or bring happiness to the human heart.
"Only God is able. It is faith in God that we must rediscover. With this faith we can transform bleak and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of joy and bring new light into the dark caverns of pessimism. Is someone here moving toward the twilight of life and fearful of that which we call death? Why be afraid? God is able.
"Is someone here on the brink of despair because of the death of a loved one, the breaking of a marriage, of the waywardness of a child? Why despair? God is able to give you the power to endure that which cannot be changed. Is someone here anxious because of bad health? Why be anxious? Come what may, God is able."
Dr King concluded his message, which is just as relevant today as when he gave it years ago, by proclaiming:
"This would be an unbearable world were God to have only a single light, but we may be consoled that God has two lights: a light to guide us in the brightness of the day when hopes are fulfilled and circumstances are favorable, and a light that guides us in the darkness of the midnight when we are thwarted and the slumbering giants of gloom and hopelessness rise in our souls. And so we know that God is able to give us the interior resources to face the darkness as well as the light.
"Let this affirmation be our ringing cry. It will give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom.
"When our days become dreary with low hovering clouds and our nights become even darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a great good Power in the universe whose name is God, and God is able to make a way out of no way, and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. This is our hope for becoming better people. This is our mandate for seeking to make a better world. Amen!"
I agree, Dr. King. Amen and Amen!
When we’re without vision, God’s able to inspire us. When we’re overwhelmed, God’s able to calm us. When we’re attacked, God’s able to deliver us. When we’re feeling disconnected, desiccated and discouraged, God’s able to reconnect us, refresh us and revive us.
God can take death itself, and transform it into life. God is able. Where do we need the Spirit of God to be at work among us? What will new life look like, after we open ourselves to the power of the Spirit?
As I was reading afterward, I came upon the inspired words of Dr. Martin Luther King, a Baptist minister, as he reflected on God's ability when he preached a stirring sermon. Dr. King stated: "At times we may feel that we do not need God, but on the day when the storms of disappointment rage, the winds of disaster blow, and the tidal waves of grief beat against our lives, if we do not have a deep and patient faith our emotional lives will be ripped to shreds. There is so much frustration in the world because we have relied on gods rather than God.
"We have genuflected before the God of science only to find that it has given us the atomic bomb, producing fears and anxieties that science can never mitigate. We have worshipped the god of pleasure only to discover that thrills platy out and sensations are short lived.
"We have bowed before the god of money only to learn that there are such things as love and friendship that money cannot buy and that in a world of recessions, stock market crashes, and bad business investments, money is a rather uncertain deity. These transitory gods are not able to save us or bring happiness to the human heart.
"Only God is able. It is faith in God that we must rediscover. With this faith we can transform bleak and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of joy and bring new light into the dark caverns of pessimism. Is someone here moving toward the twilight of life and fearful of that which we call death? Why be afraid? God is able.
"Is someone here on the brink of despair because of the death of a loved one, the breaking of a marriage, of the waywardness of a child? Why despair? God is able to give you the power to endure that which cannot be changed. Is someone here anxious because of bad health? Why be anxious? Come what may, God is able."
Dr King concluded his message, which is just as relevant today as when he gave it years ago, by proclaiming:
"This would be an unbearable world were God to have only a single light, but we may be consoled that God has two lights: a light to guide us in the brightness of the day when hopes are fulfilled and circumstances are favorable, and a light that guides us in the darkness of the midnight when we are thwarted and the slumbering giants of gloom and hopelessness rise in our souls. And so we know that God is able to give us the interior resources to face the darkness as well as the light.
"Let this affirmation be our ringing cry. It will give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom.
"When our days become dreary with low hovering clouds and our nights become even darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a great good Power in the universe whose name is God, and God is able to make a way out of no way, and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. This is our hope for becoming better people. This is our mandate for seeking to make a better world. Amen!"
I agree, Dr. King. Amen and Amen!
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